Here is my angle at potential optimism

Posted on: August 17, 2021 at 08:12:40 CT

We are in roughly the same spot currently as the offseason of 2008. Similarly we had a coach who had inherited a program in disaster, and the early returns were less than promising. We had a returning roster of only one highly sought after recruit in Leo Lyons who had been rather underwhelming to that point and were bringing in a class of 5 non-top 100 freshman, a transfer from Delaware, and a JUCO big man. People thought we were building a mid-major program with a mid-major coach. Expectations were low, but those who understood what Mike Anderson was trying to do could see he finally was assembling the pieces and depth and skill sets he needed. We ended up setting the program record with 31 wins, won the Big 12 championship, and advanced to the Elite Eight that season.

I'm not saying that is going to happen this year, but it would have been equally ludicrous to suggest it was going to happen in 2008. In my opinion the last three seasons MU has been fluctuating between rather poor to very poorly coached, and that diminishes my optimism of Cuonzo being able to ever do good things at MU. But I will also acknowledge the possibility that what I see as poor coaching could be trying to adapt his style to the limited roster's strengths that he was working with, and it is realistically possible that this upcoming roster on paper may be less talented but more conducive to playing to Cuonzo's strengths as a coach.

If you were to isolate the two positions that Cuonzo doesn't seem to care about or understand how to utilize its pg and center. I'm not sure it really matters who plays either of those positions for us. Yet last year our two most talented players were our pg and our center, who both struggled and were poorly utilized and the team underperformed. Now we seem to have a roster with a bunch of interchangeable wings. Doesn't seem ideal from my perspective and I still don't get what he is trying to do from a roster construction standpoint, but maybe this aligns better to what his strengths as a coach are?

Cuonzo inherited and then built some rather poor athleticism rosters thus far at MU. While I was initially very impressed defensively what he was able to get out of that first roster he inherited that had many faults, as he started getting more of his own guys in place it seemed like athleticism and accordingly defensive effectiveness just kept dropping. I suspect this upcoming team will struggle mightily to score, but if they are in fact the most athletic of his MU tenure then that does maybe bode well for him being able to do things with it that he simply couldn't do with prior rosters and using it in ways that accentuate his strengths and mitigate his weaknesses as a coach.

If we could develop a team identify around defense like many envisioned when Cuonzo took this job and the pieces fit better into what he is trying to do, maybe we won't look so poorly coached going forward and the results will improve. We shall see. But in some ways we really aren't in that different of a spot as we were heading into 2008-09 other than at that point we had a bunch of returning players who were coming off a 16-16 season and hadn't really impressed and now we have a completely unknown roster. Like Mike Anderson's break through season I think Cuonzo needs to actually have a good season this year, not just surprise people by not being as terrible and irrelevant as they expect.

Edited by FIJItiger at 08:23:27 on 08/17/21