John Templon at Chicago College Basketball has finished his top 10 countdown of the city’s greatest college hoops players. The list includes two Wildcats in Evan Eschmeyer and Joseph Reiff. Are they the two best ever to play at NU? Well, they are certainly among the best. Others who are worthy of consideration include Billy McKinley, Kevin Rankin, Vedran Vukusic, Pat Baldwin, and Jitim Young. I also wonder where Kevin Coble will rank if he becomes the first player to lead his Wildcat team to the NCAA Tournament.
NU opened football practice yesterday. Though I consider this much more of a basketball blog, I can’t really ignore the start of what is many people’s favorite athletic season. I’ll have some football posts up in the next few weeks as we lead into the season opener against Towson.
Finally, The Purple Drank has run a couple tongue-in-check (and pretty funny) polls recently about NU’s basketball coaching situation. The first poll discovered that roughly 50% of NU fans think Bill Carmody could out coach a wet paper bag (why do I think some NU fan is going to create hirewetpaperbag.com in the near future?) and now that roughly 2/3rds of Wildcat fans think Pat Fitzgerald could out coach Carmody in basketball. Now I’m well aware of the debate about Carmody’s coaching skills. Personally, I think Carmody is a very good coach and he's about to prove Kevin O'Neill right about NU being a 10 year building (not rebuilding) project. But for those people who don't like Carmody, I'm wondering what do you perceive as Carmody’s biggest weakness? The new poll in the upper righthand corner gives you chance to offer your thoughts on Carmody both good and bad. I think getting a sense of such information might help focus this debate. You can also comment below.
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3 comments:
Personally I think Carmody is a good coach in terms of game preparation and schemes. I think sometimes his efforts in recruiting do leave a bit to be desired. He's a good coach though.
Bill C. doesn't seem to coach the fundamentals. A team like ours with less talent has to have excellent fundamentals. For example, our players should be hitting their free throws. There are many games we lost in the Carmody era when a few extra free throws would have made the difference. He also has to teach players how to draw fouls. How many time have we seen NU get 8 free throws in the entire game and our opponent get 20?
Basically, what I personally find disconcerting about the whole Carmody business is that it took him a decade to have anything resembling success. Obviously NU sports is a bit of a predicament, but still, ten years. Also, he's obviously a great x's and o's coach, but his inability to get anybody good to play for him renders that irrelevant.
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