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lack of conditioning/work habits

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RUtimes5

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Mar 7, 2006
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From today's APP:
Steve Pikiell admits it: "At first there were a lot of 'wow' moments" when he started working out members of the Rutgers men's basketball team.

He's not referring to the positive kind of 'wow.' More like holes in their conditioning and work habits. In nearly a month of workouts before the players head home next week for an early summer respite, Pikiell has endeavored to change the tone.

I know we didn't have the talent to win a lot of games, but this is why we lost by 40 plus points in a lot of them.
The lack of work habits started with the coaching staff and trickled down.
 
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When you are a college coach building a program up essentially from scratch, you are not going to consistently overwhelm opponents with dazzling talent - you gotta work with what you have & you want to dial up the team to be a bunch of tenacious, pesky, relentless, scratching, clawing, never ever ever quit, fearless Tazmanian devils
- other teams may beat you - but they will truly hate playing you .. one game with you will feel like a 3 game road trip
...and if they take you lightly or lose focus - they could easily lose to you.
 
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It is extremely disappointing to hear that comment. As someone stated above, if you have less talent you need to outwork the other teams.
 
RUtimes5 said:
From today's APP:
Steve Pikiell admits it: "At first there were a lot of 'wow' moments" when he started working out members of the Rutgers men's basketball team.

He's not referring to the positive kind of 'wow.' More like holes in their conditioning and work habits. In nearly a month of workouts before the players head home next week for an early summer respite, Pikiell has endeavored to change the tone.

I know we didn't have the talent to win a lot of games, but this is why we lost by 40 plus points in a lot of them.
The lack of work habits started with the coaching staff and trickled down.
Click to expand...
No one should be surprised by this. Practices under EJ and conditioning were a joke. As many coaches have said in the past, including some of mine: "In games, you play like you practice..." No one should be at all surprised by this.
 
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RU MAN said:
No one should be surprised by this. Practices under EJ and conditioning were a joke. As many coaches have said in the past, including some of mine: "In games, you play like you practice..." No one should be at all surprised by this.
Click to expand...
You hit the nail on the head.

giphy.gif


I have a friend who is high school basketball coach. He's been invited to RU practices going back several years now. After attending his first practice with Jordan at the helm he said, "Well, that's the last practice I'll go to with Jordan leading the team." I asked, "Why?" He said, "He basically just rolls the balls out and the team scrimmages. There's nothing to learn by attending one of his practices." Conversely, this same coach loved Rice's practices. "He taught and had drills that really improve individual and team play. The practices I went to I found out something I could use with my team."
 
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EJ's coaching experience was with NBA players, the elite, who knew the fundamentals, were in good condition, and played hard, at least until garbage time. He never adjusted to out of shape players who had skills, but had few fundamentals, especially on defense. And his staff was no help.
TL
 
PiscatawayMike said:
You hit the nail on the head.

giphy.gif


I have a friend who is high school basketball coach. He's been invited to RU practices going back several years now. After attending his first practice with Jordan at the helm he said, "Well, that's the last practice I'll go to with Jordan leading the team." I asked, "Why?" He said, "He basically just rolls the balls out and the team scrimmages. There's nothing to learn by attending one of his practices." Conversely, this same coach loved Rice's practices. "He taught and had drills that really improve individual and team play. The practices I went to I found out something I could use with my team."
Click to expand...
 
RUinFla said:
EJ's coaching experience was with NBA players, the elite, who knew the fundamentals, were in good condition, and played hard, at least until garbage time. He never adjusted to out of shape players who had skills, but had few fundamentals, especially on defense. And his staff was no help.
TL
Click to expand...
His staff was no help because Jordan didn't allow it to help. As I'm sure you've heard many times before, Jordan kept his assistants under wraps. He wanted the team to only listen to him. He believed his message became muddled when the players heard too many voices.
 
I've also got a good friend, fairly well known HS coach, invited to practices the last few years who expressed the exact same sentiment. I'm not a coach and at first I wasn't sure I bought into his comments about the practices, thinking Jordan has been an NBA coach, of course he knows how to run a practice. But as Jordan's tenure rolled on, I began to buy into it. FWIW he said O'Koren would spend the whole practice on the exercise bike. What a waste of RU's money.
 
I ran into two guys at the Springsteen show last week who lived near Stony Brook. When I mentioned Pikiell and that I was an RU fan, they were adamant that he would have RU straightened up and flying right in a couple to few years. They could not believe what he accomplished when he was at Stony Brook. Hope they are right.
 
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PiscatawayMike said:
His staff was no help because Jordan didn't allow it to help. As I'm sure you've heard many times before, Jordan kept his assistants under wraps. He wanted the team to only listen to him. He believed his message became muddled when the players heard too many voices.
Click to expand...

He also didn't bring in the type of guys who would shore up his weak points. Where was the long-time, successful college assistant who knew what it took to build/run a winning college program? The guys he brought in had no experience with successful, high level NCAA basketball... and neither did he.
 
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Eddie just wasn't equipped to be a college coach. Really, you can argue that he just isn't a head coach.

He is very lucky though. He has received more in severance packages that he has in earned salary. Must be nice.
 
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AreYouNUTS said:
I'm at a loss for words...so here's what I've got:

What the flying fast Eddie F*CK were Jordan and Co doing for the last 3 years?
Click to expand...
Besides losing a lot of games and collecting a pay check far too much idle time was taking place.
 
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I was told by someone who watched a lot of our practices last year that we had starters who couldn't run half speed baseline to baseline 3 times without being completely gassed...in high school we used to routinely run baseline to baseline upwards of 20 times at the end of practice and barely be out of breathe after.
 
What is done - is done ... EJ has left the building - many things were lacking on his watch - but about the best that can be said is that he did not leave some toxic NCAA investigation brewing up .. he pulled the program away from the flaming Mike Rice Dumpster .... then the next best you can say is he let it lay out on the lawn with the sun bleaching the toxins out of it ...

he did not get much in the way of resources - but then there is ample amount of skepticism as to what sorts of productive things he might have done even if he did have more resources.

Really seems like he was stuck in a mediocre NBA mentality - front office should get good players - coach will expect them to be skilled practitioners of their craft & coach will outline what is desired in the game - go do it.... rinse & repeat 82 times...
 
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Relatedly, I was told by someone in the know that MSU's pregame practice was harder than anything he had seen at Rutgers. And I believe it based on what was seen on the court.

It's water under the bridge at this point, but those are 3 years a competent coach could have been building the program instead of rolling balls out saying do your thing.
 
AreYouNUTS said:
I'm at a loss for words...so here's what I've got:

What the flying fast Eddie F*CK were Jordan and Co doing for the last 3 years?
Click to expand...
Sadly EJ was just taking a really nice paycheck from dear ol' Rutgers.
 
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It makes me mad. I was a big fan of Jordan coming back to his alma mater. Boy I was wrong about him...
 
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cRURah said:
The same AD had oversight on both programs. WTF would take RU seriously with her at the helm?
Click to expand...


what did you want her to do...fire Jordan in year 1..RU was coming off a scandal. The program was losing fans. They were still working on the facility plan... what could be done except wait until year 3 to get rid of him...she would have got rid of him this year. I dont think Julie had anything to do with how deplorable Eddie was especially when the focus was on the Olympic sports and football
 
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Are there any new college coaches in any sport who arrive and say they are satisfied with the strength and conditioning of a team? Isn't it really coach speak for newly-arrived coaches? We are making a mountain out of a molehill here. The talent-level is the overwhelming shortcoming of the roster. Tom Izzo and Bill Self couldn't whip this roster into a .500 season.
 
Very excited we have a solid hoops coach. I expect a quick turn around
 
RUtimes5 said:
From today's APP:
Steve Pikiell admits it: "At first there were a lot of 'wow' moments" when he started working out members of the Rutgers men's basketball team.

He's not referring to the positive kind of 'wow.' More like holes in their conditioning and work habits. In nearly a month of workouts before the players head home next week for an early summer respite, Pikiell has endeavored to change the tone.

I know we didn't have the talent to win a lot of games, but this is why we lost by 40 plus points in a lot of them.
The lack of work habits started with the coaching staff and trickled down.
Click to expand...
Did Jordan do anything well? What a waste.
 
Mr_Twister said:
Are there any new college coaches in any sport who arrive and say they are satisfied with the strength and conditioning of a team? Isn't it really coach speak for newly-arrived coaches? We are making a mountain out of a molehill here. The talent-level is the overwhelming shortcoming of the roster. Tom Izzo and Bill Self couldn't whip this roster into a .500 season.
Click to expand...

You could not be more wrong. The team had awful work habits. That's not on the players, it's on the coaches. Not satisfied with strength and conditioning is a massive misrepresentation. There was NO strength or conditioning. The players were not working out on their own at all. You can't coach talent. You can coach effort and hustle. The coming season has nothing to do with record. It has everything to do with instilling a winning mind set into a beaten down roster. The climate and attitudes are the only thing getting better this year. The record won't.
 
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Mr_Twister said:
Are there any new college coaches in any sport who arrive and say they are satisfied with the strength and conditioning of a team? Isn't it really coach speak for newly-arrived coaches? We are making a mountain out of a molehill here. The talent-level is the overwhelming shortcoming of the roster. Tom Izzo and Bill Self couldn't whip this roster into a .500 season.
Click to expand...

It really isn't. When you look at our roster talent, the one area any half way decent coach would have immediately tried to take advantage of is fitness and strength. Eddie had enough time to at least make some real strides in that area. We weren't the most skilled, but you can control those two things. You could clearly see this team wasn't putting in effort in the fitness area and that is on the head coach. Our squad didn't even look like D1 hoops players. Half of them were doughy, even Sanders. It's more NBA stuff, where you do much of your fitness on your own time. A coach at that level doesn't have the team do that stuff, and Eddie didn't either.

Good to see Pikiell focusing on an obvious area of need. That's what college coaches do.
 
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NYKnight, You are saying the record will not improve? So you are saying we will only win 7 games again this coming season? You could be right but I tend to disagree on that. I think we will win at least 12 games this coming season and maybe more.
 
RUMBA-JK said:
What is done - is done ... EJ has left the building - many things were lacking on his watch - but about the best that can be said is that he did not leave some toxic NCAA investigation brewing up .. he pulled the program away from the flaming Mike Rice Dumpster .... then the next best you can say is he let it lay out on the lawn with the sun bleaching the toxins out of it ...

he did not get much in the way of resources - but then there is ample amount of skepticism as to what sorts of productive things he might have done even if he did have more resources.

Really seems like he was stuck in a mediocre NBA mentality - front office should get good players - coach will expect them to be skilled practitioners of their craft & coach will outline what is desired in the game - go do it.... rinse & repeat 82 times...
Click to expand...

We're talking about kids not being in shape for the season. That has ZERO to do with "resources." No excuses please.
 
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Agree with everyone. No excuse for the players to be gassed, out of shape, etc. I mean, if they are playing 35+ min a game, I get it especially with a short bench. But this is bad. SP seems to know what's going on and I'm sure the players will be thrilled if they can stick it out this season!!
 
knights1212 said:
NYKnight, You are saying the record will not improve? So you are saying we will only win 7 games again this coming season? You could be right but I tend to disagree on that. I think we will win at least 12 games this coming season and maybe more.
Click to expand...
Even if we are a 7 win season next year, as long as we are tenaciously competitive in each and every game, that will shine a ray of hope for the future. It is the blowouts that just kill everything.
 
knights1212 said:
NYKnight, You are saying the record will not improve? So you are saying we will only win 7 games again this coming season? You could be right but I tend to disagree on that. I think we will win at least 12 games this coming season and maybe more.
Click to expand...

I would expect a couple more wins, Corey is a great player and some injured guys should be back. I guess my point is that the record next year is less consequential than the attitude and effort of the program. Having said that, if the guys buy in then the same exact players should win 5 or 6 more games based just on that.
 
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