Preseason is over - -Now what?

I love you!  You cared enough to read my byline, appended to all of my posts!  "'Geno Auriemma is a leaky pus-bucket.' Albert Einstein" !!  (Or not?)

You are correct to bring up Mr. Auriemma in the same conversation as Mr. Wooden.  They are both iconic figures, and as such they are immune to criticism by the media.  Since he is successful, he must be great, right?  Is that really an example of the best reasoning that modern humans can do?  

Perhaps you are unaware of the sexual harassment allegations (dismissed in court) against him, and the verbal abuse he has heaped upon athletes, parents, and fans.  He is NO gentleman.  And, once again, you are proving my point:  Your sole criterion of greatness is win/loss percentage.  Look at the character of the man, and look at the possible alternative explanations for getting lots of wins, like the various reasons that outstanding athletes are attracted to one school over another, foolish though they may be.  You should not be judging him a great coach when he consistenly gets the top athletes in the country.

I tire of these exchanges.  The Geno discussion has been thoroughly explored already, and this thread has devolved into personal attacks, into which I have been drawn, too, rather than a rational discussion of WBB issues.

I never belittled his accomplishments.  I just said it is politically incorrect to belittle him.  Any sports commentator who questioned his coaching skills today would be summarily fired.  That was one of my points.  He may have been a good coach.  If you look at what I said, it was that you can't judge a coach by his win/loss record when he's loaded with talent.  But just for the record, here's some fact checking:

1) I've seen his team lose to an OSU team with far inferior talent that was coached by Ralph Miller.

2) They had 2 players on that UCLA team who were 6'7" tall.  One of them scored 8 points in the championship game.  And when a team has 3 players on the team who each go on to play 10+ years in the NBA, then yeah, I EXPECT that team to win the NCAA championship, especially when one of them is Walt Hazzard.

Wooden's $32500 salary back then was enough to buy a house.  It would be equivalent to probably $300,000 today.  I'm not feeling sorry for him.

But what really bugs me is that you apparently totally misunderstood my 2 major points, and that I did NOT say he was a bad coach.  On his coaching, I really have no opinion, which is the best anyone can really say about him for sure because his teams were loaded with talent.

Good advice for all (those who need shoes, at least, and if you've got a matched pair). 

You just flatter me by responding to my posts.  Of course I'm not sold on Urban Meyer or Nick Saban or anyone with the best players.  That is my point:  You can't call a coach "great" in comparison to other coaches when he has dramatically better talent, since it can be somewhere between difficult and impossible to distinguish coaching skill from player talent.  Since you persist in implying that you can judge coaching competency simply by looking at a coach's record, I assume that you actually believe that.  You should enlighten the rest of us on the basis of your reasoning and tell us why you believe the quality of a coach's players is irrelevant to his success.  I suspect that you will remain silent on this challenge.  I also expect that your reply, however silly it is, will be the last post on this thread.

In 29 years of coaching from 1946 to 1975 Wooden never had a losing season.  That includes his first 2 seasons at Indiana State and his years from '49 through '64 at UCLA when the Bruins had no real home court, playing most of their home games at 1300 seat Men's Gym while OSU was playing in palatial 10,400 seat Gill Coliseum.

He was a VERY good coach.

Period.

However, even a coach's hires are not necessarily indicative of great coaching.  Good hiring is easier for rich schools and prestigious schools.  Of course Saban and Meyer have great assistants, and those assistants came at a price.  His recruiting is similarly improved because of the traditions of their respective schools.  So recruiting and coaching hires are both muddying up any attempt to rate coaching ability.  Coaching skill, whether in recruiting, hiring, or game planning, will likely contribute to more wins, but some people still idolize coaches SOLELY based on those great win/loss records.  The need for heroes runs deep.

Let's do a simple "gedanken" experiment to clarify things.  Two identical twins who are coaches with identical coaching ideas in all aspects:  One coaches at Alabama and one coaches at Podunk University (PU for short).  Now, by your own admission, the Alabama coach has a greater pool to choose from.  They both want assistant X, but the PU coach has to settle for some lesser choice while the Alabama coach gets his first choice.  So the greater pool has PROBABLY resulted in a better assistant for Alabama.  So right down the line, it's clear that Alabama has an advantage.  Therefore, higher win probability.  So it DOES taint the approach of picking best coach according to win/loss percentage:  We started with the assumption of identical twins, who of course are equally good at coaching.  The same reasoning can be applied to the pool of recruits available to each school.  I don't know how you can argue that.