re: With all the talk about needing another big next season

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You guys realize that all the coaches in this search rely many of the same elements as Mike? Many of the same things Mike was mocked about?

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Don't get me wrong, I love Mike, but if that's true, then it would appear musselman has executed it better with less talent in the past 4 years than Mike could.

A few positives for me is that Nevada hasn't been one of the worst defensive rebounding teams in the nation and wasn't sending the other team to the line at such a quick pace (in fact only about 20 teams in the NCAA sent opponents to the line more than us, relative to the field goals they were taking, free throw rate). In addition, we should have been shooting a ton more 3's with kids that can shoot as well as Joe, Jones and Sills.

Guys you are pretty much all right imo. Yes roster management led to his demise. If he gets into the tourney this year he's likely still our coach. The 16-16 year when he failed to replace MQ and Portis was due to poor roster management.

Mike reminds me a lot of HDN. He's a players coach and bc he gives them a lot of freedom on the offensive end players tend to do well.

However, he recruits far too many athletes who just flat out cannot shoot the ball. And his sub patterns often killed momentum. But his guys fought hard and believed in him. Well some of them did. A few saw his shortcomings and transferred out.

Mike also gambled far too much and gave up way too many layups and wide open threes. They were also constantly out of position for rebounds and instant of getting in position for a rebound Gafford was often running out at the shooter.

Yes Muss has a lot of things in common with Mike. But we can hope that his recruiting will be better. His roster management will be an improvement. Rebounding will be better. Defense will be better. And thats just to name a few.

Space and pace is an over-simplification. The things they have in common like pace are one of the things that make this a good hire. In other words. Yes he has things in common with Mike. But there are glaring differences as well.

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but if that's true, then it would appear musselman has executed it better with less talent in the past 4 years than Mike could.

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Well, despite what Dale said (which is all true), the systems aren't the same. I like Musselman's approach just fine, but it isn't going to look like what we are used to seeing. Not on offense or defense.

And yes, Musselman is a better coach. By a fair margin.

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Muss' and Mike's philosophies are closer than any one who wanted Mike gone will admit, if they are aware.

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They aren’t similar whatsoever

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Ed, what makes you come to this conclusion. Just thinking back about how highly you think of CMA and all the things you said this season concerning how great of a coach he is.

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I do think Mike is a great coach, but Musselman's resume speaks for itself. He is a former runner up for NBA coach of the year. He won 24 games his first year at Nevada with a team fresh off a 9 win campaign.

We hit the jackpot here because this guy is fantastic. The 24 wins in year 1 is a dramatic statement. He did that with lesser talent. He developed them as players over the course of a single summer.

This team won't look anything like what we saw last year. They'll be better.

ETA: we should also see a big difference on offense. This guy doesn't run free motion offense. Meaning, he actually draws up offense. (when Portis says we don't run plays, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just means it's a different style of offense. Has rules and stuff, but not many)

We should see individual players take big steps forward on this team because they will have explicitly defined roles within the offense. With Mike's teams, the team had a tendency to get stuck in a rut sorta. Maybe a couple guys are tired and aren't hitting their shots anyways, they'll just clear out for someone to take their guy off the dribble and that never happens and there's no movement off the ball.

Often times I would wish that Mike would go ahead and burn a timeout to get these guys into a set offense, but he elected to just let them play through it. It even cost them games. He didn't care. He was trying to get them to play through that on their own so that by the end of the season they played like a well oiled machine.

I get the theory of it, it just never worked good enough for whatever reason.

That won't happen with this guy. He micromanages the game. He will switch defenses often. He will try to exploit matchup advantages all over the court. If Gabe shoots 3s it won't be very often. (He isn't expecting to make those anyways. He does it to stretch the defense, even if you miss. Next time you can feed it down low)