Wheels wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:53 am
With regards to the talent issue, yes, Milliman inherited what he inherited. However, good coaches put players in positions to succeed. Again, it's about his game plans and adjustments. It's hard to say that he's put those offensive players in position to succeed. Defense, yes. Offense, er...um...no.
Given the skill and athletes on defense, I'm surprised that Hop hasn't tried to push more in transition. If your size and athleticism limits you in the half-field, why keep trying to bang you head against that? Why not look for other ways to score or at least be different? Can you say that Hop is really taking its best swing on offense? That this is all they can do or should do? I'd be playing more like Hobart right now if I was Milliman.
Who isn't in a position to succeed that could be? What is he not doing that he should be doing? He has shaken up the lineup midseason more than I think any other coach in the country with the hopes of finding some answers. I don't know that there are any answers to be found right now. You saw it with your own eyes, what exactly are you supposed to do against a good defense when you lack literally a single capable dodger?
There are a couple lineup tweaks a reasonable person can point to that *maybe* would have made *some* impact over the course of the season, but not enough to fundamentally change things:
- Give a kid like Phillips, or one of the other freshmen, more of a chance at midfield. Hakim Hicks has unbelievable shake but I believe has either been hurt all year or is being redshirted
- Start a different goalie
- Schematically, I don't claim to know more than John Grant Jr. on how to score goals. If there was some magic answer with this group he'd probably have found it. The guy running your league-best offense right now looked similarly helpless from an X's and O's standpoint in 2020 and that was with Cole Williams, Forry Smith, Evan Zinn, and Owen Murphy on the team in addition to Epstein, Degnon, Angelus, DeSimone. With the exception of a season-opening win against a historically bad Towson team, that offense could get absolutely nothing going
flalax22 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:07 pm
Not all can be thrown on the Pietramala crew.
Are Epstein and DeSimone having the type of seasons we expected? Is that on them or the current coaches. You need your best players to be your best players and that isn’t happening for us. Has Peshko improved over last year? Really the only players I see getting better are Degnon and Angelus. Kirson, McManus, Lyne have all regressed. Now to be fair I’ve heard Lyne is really banged up.
I'm not sure it's fair to say McManus has regressed. He's one of the few true athletes we have on the team. If everyone had his size and speed we'd be much better off. I've liked him better this year than last.
Think Evans has improved, as you know he's dealing with injuries as well and has accumulated another one on top of the boating accident. The play of basically all of the shorties has improved from 2020 as well. That's more than you can say for years prior when seemingly no one made any strides from year to year. There were pages and pages in this thread devoted to how Petro couldn't develop players. I think more guys have improved individually under this current staff than did over the previous 5-6 years under the last one and that's not an exaggeration.