What Happened?

[old65horn]

I am not a follower of women's basketball, but I do want the 'Horns to win.

What was going on this year with the team? They beat aTm home and away and yet could not win enough games to finish above .500 in conference play.

I know Baylor is in a class by theirself, but we seemed to flame out in the B12 and nat'l tournaments.

What was going on in the program?

 

[TempestHorn]

Very good question as to what went wrong with this year's team. Trying to reflect on that with the benefit of hindsight and not being caught up in the emotion of yet another year of poor/under performance is what I'd like to do. There were a lot of injuries for sure. But healthy players played fundamentally bad basketball alot. Even when we had enough healthy players the team would be unable to execute. I think now I believe the team lacked the mental part of the game, the ability to be mentally tough. That means executing the fundamentals, executing a game plan and when someone is trying to take you out of your game fighting through that to reach your goal. We were a very mentally weak team. They say teams are a reflection of their coach. I think with what was revealed by Goestenkors and Plonsky last week, you would be hard pressed to say we had a mentally strong coach. She probably did her best to shield her team from how she was feeling but I think young people are pretty perceptive and whether on a conscious or subconscious level the mental tenacity was not coming through.

I know some will take offense to these remarks. I credit her with realizing this to be the case and leaving it to someone that can come in and get the job done.

 

[outlookdude]

What went wrong was that they lacked consistency. That is the easy part of the answer. It’s more difficult to answer with any certainty why they lacked consistency.

The easy thing to do is to blame it on the coach. I agree that the coach accepts responsibility for the play of the team along with the job. I wouldn’t ever say that any coach was completely without responsibility for the performance, good or bad, of any team. But, I don’t think it is that simple.

I also think you have to be careful about defining “wrong.” This was an NCAA tournament team. It was a good team. I said in a different post a while back that what makes a good team into a great team is consistency. This was not a great team because they failed to consistently play at the level they demonstrated twice against aggy, and on a few other occasions. I am sometimes referred to as a sunshine pumper because I don’t get as upsetmadfrustrated as some others, or maybe because I don’t complain enough. But, I’m not satisfied, and never will be satisfied. I just feel like the sunshine pumpers are the ones who feel that they have the right to demand Texas field elite teams in every sport, every year, because by God we’re Texas. To my mind that is the worst sort of Texas sunshine pumping. If it was that easy it wouldn’t really be worth the time, and that viewpoint precludes someone from being able to acknowledge any accomplishments less than championships. This was a good team, just with less success on the court than fans, players, and coaches expected going into the season. I see a significant difference between disappointment and failure.

Despite my disclaimer, you still have the question of consistency. Start by remembering that consistent play at a high level takes a great team. It doesn’t happen for many teams in any given season. This isn’t so much about placing blame as it is finding how to get to the next level.

This past season should have been a guard driven team. There was depth in the post, but it lacked experience. One senior post was followed by a red-shirt sophomore who was not completely healthy and hadn’t played the past 12 months, two sophomores, and two freshmen. Consistency usually only comes with experience and while there was talent at post there was not much experience.

Two senior starting guards, plus a third sophomore starter who was younger but who had played with remarkable consistency as a freshman gave Texas a solid foundation to work from. The problem was that often they were the only guards cleared to play. The sign of how desperately they needed relief was in the near celebration of having one healthy guard on the bench. Playing extended minutes game after game through a brutal conference schedule does not usually lead to consistent play. Teams that play consistently at a high level usually have different players step up in different games. Guards, posts, and bench players all have their moments to shine. But, this was a Texas team that needed great guard play from the same small group minute by minute, game after game. That is a recipe for inconsistency.

There is no way to reasonably discount the impact of illness and injury to this team. With only three healthy guards it becomes difficult to even practice. But, there was still enough talent to win several more games. Those games could have put Texas into a better tournament seeding and likely brought at least a trip to the second round. There had to be more than just the injuries.

I agree that this is very much a question of mental toughness. Maybe a mentally fatigued coach contributed. That is just one of the things that we can’t prove either way. Maybe the physical fatigue of the guards also impacted them mentally. I thought at times they looked like a team with player chemistry issues. Sometimes it seemed liked they played as though they were afraid to lose, instead of working to win……..There is no way to know any of that. In all likelihood all that was a factor to some degree, and some players would be more affected by some issues than others.

I just don’t think there is one easy black and white answer. But, this is a program that is trying to go from good to great. That isn’t supposed to be easy.

There is talent here. If both the expected incoming freshmen make it here there will be plenty of talent to win this coming season, and for years after. We need a coach who understands what it takes, mentally and physically, to go from good to great. And, we need the players to commit to putting in the work to make that difficult transition. I really want to see Texas hire a coach very soon because that transition starts and, I believe, is most important in off-season preparation.

 

[Moooooo]

That's a tough question to answer, especially as outsiders.

What I did notice more often than not is that when Chassidy Fussell wasn't hitting her shots and struggling on the offensive end, it was rare for the other players to pick up the scoring slack. That sort of happened against West Virginia, too.