via misterirrelevant.com

Coach Howland seems more skilled in coaching defense than offense, which makes me wonder about position coaches. In football, if the head coach is a defensive mastermind, he can boost his chances of winning by hiring an excellent offensive coordinator. When we talk about Coach Mora, we often discuss his offensive coordinators and position coaches as keys to the Bruins’ success, not just in terms of recruiting, but also in terms of strategy and skill development. I wonder how our basketball team’s assistants are doing in compensating for CBH’s coaching weaknesses.

According to the Athletic Dept’s roster descriptions, we have these assistants:

• Scott Garson: "Handles the development of the perimeter players, working on both the offensive and defensive ends. He worked with the post players in 2006-07." 2006-07, by the way, is the year we had James Keefe at power forward, scoring as often as Chancellor Block talks to students, and He Who Must Not Be Named laying bricks at shooting forward.
• Phil Mathews: "Working primarily with the guards, Mathews helped Sadler turn Nebraska into one of the top ballhandling teams." He has been at UCLA for two years, which means he was probably the asst. coach most responsible for the development of Zeek and Jerome Anderson.
• Korey McCray: "Working since 2004 as a skill development trainer…created tailor-made, off-season training programs for…players." McCray has trained centers (Dwight Howard), point guards (John Wall, Acie Law, Javaris Crittenton, and Jarrett Jack), and shooting guards (Von Wafer and Anthony Morrow).

Other top-tier basketball schools don’t always describe their assistants in terms of offense, defense, or position (see Kansas or UK, for example, neither of which emphasizes these roles), so maybe these distinctions aren’t so important in basketball. Recruiting clearly stands out as a priority time after time. Beyond that, does anyone in our BN community have a perspective on the roles assistant coaches play – or should play – in the way our team plays offense and defense?