Sorry for the delay in response. Baby RJ was born last Thursday and I have already begun to get him primed to join Scout Friars and KeaneyBlue on 11/28/2033.
The frustrations from Cooley come from the fact that on paper this should have been one of his better, deeper teams, but they are performing like one of his worst teams.
That obviously puts the coach and team under heavy fire, and leads to mass judgement on X’s and O’s and style of play.
I’m on the record going as far back as February of 2016 as not like the way PC runs an offense, too much stagnant action, not trying to use athleticism defensively, etc.
Ultimately, when the team wins a tournament game that season, or makes 5 straight tournaments, they are still doing something right and makes it hard to criticize style of play, regardless of how many times it felt they had to sneak in off the bubble.
However, one point that does annoy me are people who say “Cooley only made those tournaments because of the NBE.” I believe maybe he had a slightly easier path, but regardless of conference, to make the tournament you need to best good teams and you need to have nice wins OOC (usually). Being in an easier conference and playing an easier conference schedule does not guarantee a bid.
I digress, but I think now you look at a team of players who are not equally the sum of their parts and it’s creating this sort of anarchy in the fan base. Continuing to try to slam the flex down a roster of athletic players who struggle scoring isn’t working. The team has shown solid pressure defense but coach sees it as a gimmick. He’s trying to run his offense with a roster that just is not capable of operating that offense at a high-level.
And now he’s got a team that many thought could make the 2nd weekend with the right breaks that already has 3-4 bad losses and hasn’t bounced back at all and the coaching has not responded at all to that adversity either. There has been no stylistic changes, no benchings for poor performance, etc.
This team is just off the rails, but if Cooley doesn’t wake up and try to “shake things up” rather than watching this car crash in slow motion, he’s going to start really losing people other than the crazy message board crowd.
I can certainly picture Cooley saying that. I love how you said “fr@#$s”. 