Her clock management in the last :36 of today’s game alone should get her booted. I’ll let @DICK explain it when he gets home. He can better describe the sequence of events. Our + 14 rebound margin was offset by 18 turnovers, in the first quarter Ball St. was literally driving to the basket for layups on every possession and we never adjusted and her substitution patterns seem random and inexplicable. With under five minutes left and within five points of Ball St. she takes Peyton out. We immediately turn the ball over on a bad pass, a play that likely doesn’t happen with Peyton handling the ball.
To be fair, I should mention that we improved to 19 losses this season compared to the 20 or more in her three previous seasons. If we somehow make it to Cleveland she can still hit that 20 loss mark.
This has been said before. I’ll say it again. Replace Hendrix with Colleen Day, Miami HOF, strong recruiting ties. Offer her husband Jermaine Henderson, former Miami player and former assistant men’s coach, the Assistant HC job. Unless a job for Jermaine opens up on Steele’s staff. Both love Miami. It has to be a package deal because they have a newborn and they won’t come otherwise. Colleen currently an assistant at Akron and Jermaine an assistant on Cleveland State’s men’s team.
Colleen will be unemployed after Akron’s next loss as the HC Is not being retained. A friend expressed to me today that Sayler is unlikely to hire her since she was part of a Miami staff that was terminated by him.
Since you asked, a big part of late game strategy in Women’s hoops is they use the NBA advance the ball rule. With 36 seconds left Ball State made a free throw, we were down maybe 5 or 6 points. We had two TO’s left. Standard strategy is you call TO, the ball is advanced up court, side out. The coach gets a chance to set up a play with the goal of getting a quick catch and shoot or maybe a catch and one pass and a shot, you make the shot and then go into a full court press. What our coach does is let our players dribble the ball up court, then calls TO, costing us 6 seconds to get into the exact same situation. Then she repeated the same exact strategy again with 25 second left, this time it only took us 4 seconds to get the ball up court where she called TO. So she used both TO’s and lost ten seconds to get the exact same result, all timeouts used and you had time to set up an out of bounds play twice from side out. The only difference is that we burned off 10 seconds for no reason or gain.
Another very troubling situation was something we have been screwing up most of this season, that is late in the quarter as time is running down situations. So the standard coaching strategy is if you have the ball with less than 30 seconds to go in a quarter, hold the ball until 10 seconds or so, depending on what play you are going to run, and then try to shoot the ball with around 3 or 4 seconds to go, so that if you miss you have a chance for a stick back basket and if they get the rebound they can only heave it towards the other end. Today, we held the ball up and Wolf started to soon, Cluse shot with 9 seconds left, she missed, Ball State grabbed the rebound and sprinted up court and hit a three. Thus instead of going into half down 1 point, we were down 4 points. I actually think hitting a 3 like that has happened against us at least 4 times this season.
Well, when you are getting beat by 20 or 30 like we have been so often over the last 4 years I guess it doesn’t cost you any games, but since we have gotten to the point where most of our games go right down to the last minute, doing all these little things right makes a huge difference. It seems like the girls don’t even know what they are doing is wrong. These are things you should be practicing with a clock regularly, these situations come up 4 times a game. Teach them what to do!
Those were the time and score mistakes that I noticed us making today. I also might mention than in a close game in the final minutes the last two game she took Peyton Scott out to give her a breather. and we had to run several possessions without her. Our bench players are a huge drop off from one of our best players ever. It did not cost us against Ohio but it burned us today.
Grumpy, As I read the contract ( thanks for sending me a copy) it does have the clause that the buyout would be reduced by the amount of money she would earn from her new job for next season if she is let go, so unless she would just take the year off, it would be significantly less than the $215K.
I’d think someone would hire her as an assistant, but then Maria Fantanarosa was stuck as a personal coach for prospects for several years. And she had a track record of actual success prior to the decline.
There is one factor in the college environment today that argues that Hendrix will be terminated.
How do you argue you are committed to equity for women’s athletics when you fire the men’s coach with one year left on his contract (with a better overall record than Hendrix) and do nothing about the women’s coach?
It sends the message that you don’t value the women as much as the men.
For this reason alone I do not see how Miami can retain Hendrix considering the circumstances.
Coaching hires are always somewhat of a leap of faith, no matter how objective an AD may try to be. Unfortunately, this was not a good one. She needs to go.
I watch an occasional womens game when my daughter cheers but I am hardly an expert- all of these mistakes seem to be coaching 101 plus 4 years without making it to Cleveland!?!?!
But I would be shocked if she is let go since they just put her in the new Miami commercials and for other reasons
It is possible they will argue that covid is a difference to the Cleve Wright situation plus the MAC record was better this year.
Maybe some of the issues listed above could be solved by hiring a former HC as lead assistant