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Originally Posted by sooner333
What do you think of Ford's system and do you think it will work at the big conference level? Mizzou's tried with Anderson from UAB (not sure exactly how the styles are different except for maybe Anderson is press based, and Ford is more up-tempo) with not so great results as of now.
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I'm not that enamored with Travis Ford's system on offense, especially with the 3-point line moving back. At UMass, he had 3 phenomenal players in Lasme, Freeman and Forbes leading the team, and he hasn't shown he can recruit big men at all. (He has been fantastic at recruiting/coaching Guards. I mean, Chris Lowe was an unrecruited borderline 2/3-star sitting there unsigned in August and he'll probably be UMass' all-time assist leader. Ricky Harris averaged 18 a game as a Sophomore, and David Gibbs has NBA-talent.) At the same time, I really believe getting athletes and then running pressure defenses and offenses that like to get out in the open floor and fast-break are what almost every team should be doing. Tennessee under Pearl, Memphis under Cal and even Kansas/UNC under Roy are big time teams I think have been very successful using this tactic.
Under the system, it's not even like we had good games and bad games, there would instead be horrific 10-minute stretches and great 10-minute stretches. Games were simultaneously exciting and frustrating to watch - it didn't matter if we were up 10 or down 10, the deficit would be reversed within 5 minutes. That'll probably excite the fanbase early on during the rise up, when making the NIT/competing for an at-large is considered an achievement, but will probably frustrate the fanbase and turn on him once they're expected to make the NCAA's. And of course whether he can recruit a legitimate big man is yet to be answered.
In another sense, it really doesn't matter - if the UK job opens up, he'll be jumping there in a second.