this is all i need to read to pretty much discredit any other opinion in this post. MMQB at it's finest. unreal.madness31 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 1:08 pmThe 1 and 2 seeds were more the result of an improved SOS due to league affiliation. I'm not overly impressed with the BE other than obviously Nova but what is great about the league is that there are no terrible teams or at least not several. Generally the conference has done well against non conference opponents until the tournament at which time the conference folds other than Nova the last few years. X has also made some runs but should have made several more.
Some of you call attention to the years X has overachieved with a focus on seed but ignore the years the team underachieved. I'd also suggest seed alone is not an appropriate measure. X should have been a top 5 team Tu's senior year but bad coaching had them limping into the tournament. A confident Frease suddenly emerged and the team was saved from complete embarrassment. Lyons was a talent but his shot selection and decision making was destructive to the team. That is exceptionally bad coaching. Even Tu, who obviously had a great career, was slow to grasp the concept of shot selection. Had that team won games it should have during the season they would have been a 2 seed and expectations would have been much higher. The team overachieved twice in the tournament under Mack and underachieved 4 times. That is not a resume that screams great coach. It is well within the range of average.
This still puts too much focus on wins and losses which only partially speaks to a coaches ability. To properly judge a coach you have to look at player development, in game adjustments, defensive and offensive strategies, out of bounds plays, etc. Mack showed improvement over the years in some of those categories. His zone was unique but overall defense has been a huge liability. Rarely did X make halftime adjustments that got them back into a game. Occasionally a player was able to heat up and put the team on their back but I don't credit the coach with those heroics. Riding the hot hand is 1 thing but demanding 1 to win a game is very different. That is desperation coaching.
If I didn't watch most of the games and simply looked at the record and the tournament results I would assume Mack was a great coach. But since I did watch most of the games and experienced the frustration with much of the coaching I can safely conclude he was about average. There was a lot of undeveloped and underutilized talent during the Mack years. There was also a huge dependency on a star to emerge each year and carry the team. Most coaches live and die by their star player, which is exactly what makes someone average - when they do the same thing everyone else does.
good luck.