Beilein & Izzo's Demeanor Towards Players
I've noticed a trend in a lot of MSU games that Izzo benches his premiere players for random weird guys for 10-20 minutes a game (anyone find JJJ yet?) even to the detriment of the team. On top of that, he goes ballistic whenever his players make mistakes.
Beilein on the other hand lets the players go through the ups and downs and even plays different combinations of players especially earlier in the season much to the chagrin of the fanbase. You also never see him get in the kids' faces and scream at them.
It seems kind of obvious that these kids respond better to learning on the job even if it costs us a few games early on rather than getting screamed at for small mistakes and benched in big moments.
on your take with JB. he often benches a guy immediately after a mistake. he then usually coaches them up during a break in the action and gets the player back in though.
i think he yanked simmons for not running man bun off the 3 pt line on a fast break which he drained.
Maybe its just how Izzo gets sneaky when dealing with players and their sexual / physical assault charges. Instead of sitting star players for complete games or kicking them off the team he takes away a few minutes here and there to really teach them a lesson before talking to their mothers.
I would add that Izzo overcoaches, burning through timeouts to make sure his players are doing exactly what he wants down the stretch of games. Today they had none left for the last minute.
Beilein in contrast is very judicious in his use of timeouts, trusting his players to make adjustments on the fly. This sometimes frustrates fans, but we almost always have one left for the final seconds, and that sure paid off yesterday.
from the off the court distractions. I think it affected the coaches and players. Much of that was Izzo's doing, so he only has himself to blame.
All I remember about MSU recruiting was they started losing a lot of battles for top-notch guys who wound up going to Duke, UK, Kansas, etc. Then recently, they started to get more of those guys, and it became a lot of hand-waving about "selling the program" and all that. Again, I think there was a time when Izzo ran a clean program and just had a system that worked. He'd get a guy like a Shannon Brown or a Delvon Roe, some elite midwestern recruit, but mostly he recruited the state really well and developed guys to be top-notch upperclassmen.
But then that stopped working as well because (a) the game of basketball moved away from the low-scoring, "hard nosed" defensive systems to a more pace-and-space, (b) he couldn't quite overcome the talent advantages his "peers" had anymore with his style, and (c) he just didn't get as lucky. Looking back at his championship season, I sort of forgot how few top teams he played in the tourney. He only played 3 ranked teams during his tourney run, and played a 4, a 2, then an 8 and then a 5 for the title. That's not his fault by any means, but he didn't Arizona or St. John's from the other bracket, and Iowa St. was the highest-ranked team he saw.
He has had some other runs, but like, when they made it to the title game in Detroit against UNC, you knew they'd be run off the court. Again, he's been a HOF coach. But everyone slows down and it's been pretty clear the past 3 years that Izzo can't really change his style that quickly. He wins with the exact talent level he has, and he doesn't seem to have that extra gear, at least in-game, to compensate for a team playing differently.
Could be that he just is a completely differnet person while recruiting them and these players believe their best chance to go pro is through that school. The kids that go there think it's their best shot to win and that they cant do better. They are only 17 and 18 year olds. In some or quite a few cases, they are probably actually 25 year olds but are lieing about their age. Either way, great to see sharty and bucville go down in the same weekend. Save the seals. Every time either one of them loses, a baby seal lives somewhere in the world.
Iznot has let the game pass him by - living on an old reputation. Recruits are going to tire of the yelling and sniping. Coach B takes the player aside and TEACHES; no yelling or sniping and certainly he does nothing demeaning to the player. Friends, there is no comparison. Iznot will be gone soon, especailly after we continue beating him regularly. Thanks Coach!!!
Beilein sometimes gives that disappointed look of a father after a dumb mistake but always immediately follows it up with instructions/coaching on how to improve on that. Never chews out or yells at his players.
(Harbaugh has the same approach, but I know, I know, football doesn't exist on mgoblog right now)