Posted by girt25 on 3/27/2013 1:28:00 PM (view original):
Minnesota is a crappy program with poor facilities that had recently been racked by scandal.
He turned that around, made the tourney three times in six years, and ran a very clean program. I think it's better than the vast majority of coaches would've done under those circumstances, and I think it's highly unlikely that a program like this will be able to attract someone better than Tubby.
He is leaving some talent on the roster, and there is a great junior class in state. So it's possible that the right coach could do better going forward ... I just tend to doubt it.
Tubby was a good coach for what the school needed to do: get out from under that scandal and run a clean program, like you said. The man knows how develop players on the defensive end and is/was actually pretty good at finding some gems out of nowhere.
The fact is, he cannot coach offense or manage subs. Period. His teams at Minnesota consistently stood around the 3 pt line and fired off terrible shot after terrible shot at the buzzer of the shot clock. His sub patterns are absolutely ghastly. On the road, when you are tied with a top 10 team, you don't mass sub out your starters for the bench 9 minutes into the game. He doesn't appear to have any rhyme or reason to his rotations, and insisted on playing his entire bench, even if the 11th and 12th guys aren't good enough to refill the Gatorade cooler, let alone play in the Big 10.
Another problem I had with Tubby is he refused to ever put fullcourt pressure on teams despite utilizing so many players. When the Gophers would press (particularly the 08-10 teams), they would force turnovers that would lead to easy baskets (something that didn't come very easily in the halfcourt game, as I said earlier). But Tubby would only use it sparingly. It was mind numbing to see a talented thief like Al Nolen not even be allowed to pick up the opposing PG for 3/4 court pressure.
In the end, Tubby's stubbornness is what cost him his job. I just think the AD felt that the ceiling for a Tubby Smith team was too low, and watching this year's team badly underperform was the nail in the coffin.