re: Alright, I'm done. Anderson needs to go.

I just want to know if any of you apologists believe MA has ever done anything wrong. Failing to acknowledge even 1 weakness in his system screams a lack of objectivity.

TALENT is not going to make up for deficiencies in the SYSTEM, IMO. Not if you want to win a national championship. If all you want to do is get to the tournament with relative consistency, Stan Heath probably should have never been fired, right? I mean...he got us to the tourney in back-to-back years. That's all that matters...GETTING THERE! And I'm quite positive that most of us probably hated Stan Heath in large part due to his system.

Does MA's system make sense under the current rule set of college basketball? I don't think so. When he was coming up, things were different. Guards and forwards couldn't bring the ball up the court against the press nearly as consistently as they can now. I think the full court press is a great tool at home, when we get the benefit of home cooking. And, under MA, it's absolutely critical that we have success with the press because we've been able to generate substantial scoring from it. But it's obvious that we can't generate the same level of success on the road. Instead, we pick up pointless fouls and put the home team in the bonus and fail to force enough turnovers.

Does MA's recruiting make up for the lack in offensive philosophy or execution? Because no lack of point guard can explain why we can't run simple half-court sets. Do any of you WATCH basketball outside of Arkansas games? For decades coaches have been using freaking forwards to initiate their offense in certain sets (point forward), not to mention the off guard.

You're telling me that we don't have anyone capable of initiating a play? I think we have plenty of guys with the capacity to bring the ball up the court and pass it off to the wing or high post as they initiate whatever set is being run. Effective point guard play is not exclusively about penetrating and dishing. Or scoring. Or assists. Give me a guy that can run the offense. I don't care who gets the assists. I don't care who takes the shots. I just want a guy to run the offense.

The problem, as I see it, is that the offense is too under-developed and lazy. Lazy screens. Guys not rotating the ball to open shooters and, instead, taking a few useless dribbles in place while never doing anything close to attempting to drive the ball (Qualls especially here recently), thereby allowing the defense to recover. We have gotten much better at attacking zone defenses in the half-court set, which has long been a frustration for me, by getting the ball to the high post more often. But we still don't do it nearly as often as we should. It's the weakest part of the zone and we should get the ball there every time down the court.

Those aren't talent issues. Those are coaching issues. Those are philosophy issues. If MA would alter his philosophy to align with the current realities of college basketball, I'd have no problem seeing what he could do. Bring in fresh coaches who have expertise in half-court execution. Another who is a excellent recruiter. Good enough. I'm fine with letting him roll with that as long as he heeds the half-court influence of the new coach and employs the full-court much less on the road than at home or even at neutral site games.