How would you rate Coach Miller for the 2023-2024 Season?

[ramster]

How would you rate Coach Miller for the 2023-2024 Season?

This is the 5th Annual Post Season Coach’s Poll

[rambone 78]

A D for me.

One caveat: Archie's hands were tied somewhat by lack of NIL money to offer higher rated recruits.

As for bench coaching, poor rotations at critical times.

Lack of player development, some players actually regressed during the season.

Lastly, an inability to deal with poor attitudes and lack of effort that were way too evident during games.

[Rhody15]

I predicted a 17-14 record without Green.

Finished 12-19 with Green for half a season.

Puzzling rotations, not being able to motivate the team to play a lot of the time, lack of development over the season.

F for me.

[adam914]

D for me. In my opinion F is only deserved for seasons that go completely off the rails in terms of off court issues or things like that. Or if we had someone lost even more games than last year. The D is for at least showing some very small improvement. Long way to go still though!

[reef]

Same D for me as well , 12 wins only 3 game improvement where most of us predicted 17-20 wins

[Rhodymob05]

C

It’s been an uphill battle from day 1 for him. Hard to imagine most coaches having significantly more progress. There’s been some establishment of a core and of a system. The real judging starts next season for me.

[section(105)]

D. Think the unwillingness to move off his defense, not being able to reach and develop Foumena, And getting no where his stated coaching methodologies stated in his intro press conferences, getting out coached in some games. Lack of players getting better under his coaching watch. Very much a disappointment for me across the board. Gotta add, his dismissive comment/answer regarding use of pressure defense in a postgame presser was it for me.

[SGreenwell]

I went C-, but could probably be talked into a C or a D, depending on which way the wind is blowing. I think it's clear that Miller identified the biggest weakness on last year's team - offense - and went at it hard. We were 342nd in offensive rating last year, and that improved to 206 this year. In the OOC portion, it was in the 150s IIRC. After a good four-game stretch in mid-January, capped by a 12-point win vs. UMass, we looked to be on the upswing...

... And then things went entirely to shit. We lost by 35 to the Bonnies and 34 to Dayton. Including the A-10 tournament, we went 3-13, and nine of those losses were by 8+ points. We lost to St. Louis twice, which seemingly has a lame duck coach and were missing significant starters each game. We didn't have a significant injury to explain our sudden slide, so take your pick for an explanation - the players checked out to an extent, A-10 teams scouted us way better than OOC opponents, there was fatigue or non-publicized reasons for drop-offs in player performance... This happened in 2022-23 as well, so I lean a bit more toward "A-10 coaches are pretty decent and figure out how to solve our shit," and that's when the lack of talent and depth up and down the roster becomes an issue.

I don't think the chasm we're in is as dire as the results this year would imply. After the 2022-23 season, we literally had one above average A-10 regular, and he transferred. After this year, we have three or four guys who are or could be OK, and the frontcourt in particular seems good, if it can be retained. The off-season to me hinges on Miller's ability to land dynamic players at the 1, 2 and 3 that can score and defend. Maybe he's already done that somewhat with Farrell and Hammond, but I think they need at least one more and probably two options at those positions, depending on who's transferring out.

[McRam]

C

It’s been an uphill battle from day 1 for him. Hard to imagine most coaches having significantly more progress. There’s been some establishment of a core and of a system. The real judging starts next season for me.

How about Frank Martin and Drew Valentine?

[theblueram]

I gave a D. Since it's his second year. Same results next year will yield an F.

[hrstrat57]

Beating the packline has become an art form and there’s lotsa painters out there. I’m not optimistic with Miller stubbornness to try anything else.

Go watch the tape of Virginia recently getting demolished by VaTech and Duke. The book on how to demolish it has been written. Defensive schemes come and go. This one gotta go.

I’m sure Parlange will be asking the coach about it. He’s infinitely smarter than me.

[RIFan]

Not only were they not talented enough, but they quit on him/tuned him out too. The only thing that could have been worse was a major off court issue. It was not a 3 game improvement…it was 2. The D2 game doesn’t count. And it was only 1 game in the A10. So basically no improvement.

[section(105)]

Beating the packline has become an art form and there’s lotsa painters out there. I’m not optimistic with Miller stubbornness to try anything else.

Go watch the tape of Virginia recently getting demolished by VaTech and Duke. The book on how to demolish it has been written. Defensive schemes come and go. This one gotta go.

I’m sure Parlange will be asking the coach about it. He’s infinitely smarter than me.

Yes, this. Not sure of Parlange discussing much on basketball with Archie.

[theblueram]

Who's the dolt that gave him an A-? Must be a friar fan.

[Rhody15]

Who's the dolt that gave him an A-? Must be a friar fan.

Sorry.

[reef]

Beating the packline has become an art form and there’s lotsa painters out there. I’m not optimistic with Miller stubbornness to try anything else.

Go watch the tape of Virginia recently getting demolished by VaTech and Duke. The book on how to demolish it has been written. Defensive schemes come and go. This one gotta go.

I’m sure Parlange will be asking the coach about it. He’s infinitely smarter than me.

Yes, this. Not sure of Parlange discussing much on basketball with Archie.

It’s a really good point , I wonder if Arch takes a good hard look @ it and maybe makes some tweaks

[Blue Man]

I'm giving Archie a C.

When you look back at it - with the deficiencies this program had/has, this is to be honest where you can be expected to be in year 2 of a rebuild.

In the new world of NIL, we barely had any last season (and literally zero the year before), so we couldn't pay the players we wanted.
This is a program coming off a cliff dive from the championship caliber program it was just 6 years ago.

Archie and KJ are two of the best coaches that were available on the market at their time of hiring. The excitement in this fanbase and the shockwave felt around college basketball when they were signed wasn't on accident. They were the best guys we could've got. Period.

They were both out of coaching and without pipelines for a season. Meaning they did not have players. They had to start from the ground up. In year one in meant just hope for the best. In year 2 in meant we could start to see that recruiting work - and we brought in two freshman who everyone agrees were bright spots on the year in Estevez and Fuchs. Next year it seems like Hammond is a cornerstone and a sorely missing piece. Farrell will be a massive defensive upgrade.

I see a lot of complaining about Archie's commitment to his system. I remember the same complaining about Dan's commitment to his system. It's a nothingburger. Let the coach who did all his winning with his system, run his system. For all the complaining about beating Tony Bennett's packline - I'm sure we'd take 10/11 NCAA tourney seasons, 13 wins, a national title, and a couple more sweet 16's in there.

I wouldn't call this season a "success" by any metric, but it certainly wasn't a disaster. It's a rebuild. This is year 2 in reality, and year 1 since we hired a coach who was on the shelf and out of the game. Then when we brought him into the game, we brought him into a world where you need to buy players and we gave him no money. But we hired the right coach for the long term. We didn't hire the coach to win games in year 2. We wanted to build a program. The building of the program isn't fun. The people who are acting like everyone was singing kumbaya in 2014 and fully supporting Dan are frauds. It was like this for the entirety of the Hurley rebuild until we went to the NCAA tournament.

This season saw improvement - in the face of a lot of things people are conveniently forgetting, like injuries and eligibility issues with players that we didn't expect. Namely the best overall player on our team. We had an entirely new roster. We returned 15% of our minutes from the previous season, and a chunk of that was Rory Stewart who didn't see the floor.

Even with that turnover, and a reliance on true freshman and a 90% of the roster that was playing their first full season at the A10 level, we improved.

NET 265 to 209
Wins 9 to 11 (12)
SOS .49 to 3.47
Conf Wins 5 to 6
Conf Standings 14th to T10
Q2 wins 0 to 1
Q3 losses 9 to 6
Q4 losses 7 to 4

Your best big ended up being a true freshman (who was robbed of an all conference selection), and while he had frustrating spurts of youthful mistakes - your team when 0-5 without him in the lineup.

Your best player wasn't given the waiver you expected and you missed 1/2 a season of having him - not just in your lineup, but for him to get playing and stay in game shape.

So was it the greatest season ever? No. It was your average rebuild. Does it feel like we're all dead inside right now? Yeah. It was probably a bit easier to come off of Baron having forgotten what it was like to be a relevant program rather than watching relevancy slip between our fingers in short order under Dave Cox.

But I'm not going to hang Dave Cox's 4 years of ineptitude on Archie's rebuild. The first 2 years are about the guy who was here before. Based on that, I think this is the result we should've expected. C.

[KeaneyBluBallz]

F

[rambone 78]

It's really much harder for a coach to develop a player who comes in with a low BB IQ.

A lot of guys are very athletic, but that's only part of the equation.

2 guys can be equally athletic, but ones a 4 star and the other a 2. The difference is BB smarts.

Baron landed a lot of athletic players, but not many of them were high IQ players.

That's the challenge for any coach, Archie included.

[bigappleram]

D

Some credence in the defense by Blue. But IMO too many misses with the guys that joined after the first year which IMO doesn't really count.

Still all in on Archie but as others have said this is a very very big offseason for him and this program.

[Blue Man]

D

Some credence in the defense by Blue. But IMO too many misses with the guys that joined after the first year which IMO doesn't really count.

Still all in on Archie but as others have said this is a very very big offseason for him and this program.

And I think that's a fair debate to have.

I'm just saying that I don't think the infrastructure was there last offseason to get the guys we truly wanted. We got the guys we could afford.

I'm hopeful the new NIL collective will give us the guys we actually want.

[hrstrat57]

The packline point is simple. Top coaching has figured it out. Can there be any question Bennett defense this season was superior to URI’s?

Crushed - not just crushed obliterated. Just like Rhody was by Dayton and ST Bonaventure.

I fear if we don’t move on from the packline or at least mix it up we have no chance at beating any strong teams with elite coaching.

Is Miller blinded by Bennett’s natty?

[NYGFan_Section208]

Hard and unquestionable F, but still the best option. Is "sad" a rating?

[hrstrat57]

I voted D.

Players melting down, disobeying publicly and total chaos is how you get a F from me.

I saw some demoralized players at times and some lack of effort but no total chaos.

Duh was the benchmark for F in my grade book.

[reef]

If D+ was an option I may have voted for it

[BruceW]

Just do not see a sign of remorse. This is a coach that took a year off to get him straight. Personally I think he should have gone into broadcasting. His grade this year is a solid “F”.

[DeanDome88]

He did not accomplish very much so gets a D from me. I sincerely hope he rights the ship. Nobody said the job was easy and that is why good head coaches make the big bucks. The front court was much improved the back court was not.

[UCH21377]

F. The lack of effort and defense out of many of the players is concerning. Archie MUST turn that around. The team needs a personality. Needs an identity. Not at all saying Arch is on the hot seat. But he needs to get things headed in the right direction. IMO that has not happened yet.