Answer Tuesday! (Part 4)
Some football recruiting and a Tim Floyd-Kevin O'Neill comparison in this segment.
Q: uscmike said:
How would you compare O'Neill to Floyd in terms of: ethics, on-court coaching, recruiting, discipline, offense, defense, or other categories of your choosing? Thanks for the forum, Scott.
A: My opinion of O'Neill is obviously based on a few conversations with him since he got hired plus what I remember from when he was at Arizona. He has a reptuation for being clean as far as the rules are concerned. His on-court coaching is respected well enough. He is known for having discipline with his teams. I would not use his year at Arizona as an example because he was an interim and only had so much control over his players.
He will be upfront with the fans and media. What I also like is that he will work as many hours as necessary to get the job done. That's a big plus in recruiting.
Compared to Floyd, obviously the ethics issue was his downfall. Floyd's recruiting skills were very good. His defensive coaching was excellent. He was not known, even among his friends, for his offensive coaching. I think discipline lagged this past season with the culmination being the Washington game. I also mentioned on this blog an incident where a player threw a ball at Floyd without reprisal.
Going back to ethics, I'm not saying that Tim Floyd did anything illegal. But he allowed Rodney Guillory to hang around the program, which created problems.
I think Kevin O'Neill's got good credentials to turn the program around, as long as he avoids some of the meltdowns that took place at Tennessee and Northwestern.
Q: superlaker24 said:
Lache Seastrunk did not come to the Rising Star Camp. Does USC have a chance with quarterback Jesse Scroggins, and running back Lache Seastrunk?
A: From the beginning, USC's been an outside choice with Seastrunk although they are not totally out of the picture. He is the game-changer of this recruiting class and I know USC will recruit him hard. However, getting a guy out of Texas is going to be tough.
I think USC would have a better chance of getting Scroggins if Matt Barkley were not already on the team. Plus I think Scroggins might be better suited for Florida's offense. So I don't consider him likely to come to USC, but who knows, it could happen.
Scott, your "getting a guy out of Texas" comment is so canned and spoken a thousand times about 50 states every recruiting season.
The reality, SuperLaker24, is that Lache is a silent commit to Auburn. So much for being tough to pull "a guy out of Texas."
Your last sentence says it all, "as long as he avoids some of the meltdowns that took place at Tennessee and Northwestern". What makes you think he is going to do this? He was not supposed to have been an interim coach at Arizona. After a mediocre year he was let go.
Thanks Brent.
"Your last sentence says it all, "as long as he avoids some of the meltdowns that took place at Tennessee and Northwestern". What makes you think he is going to do this? He was not supposed to have been an interim coach at Arizona."
That's the key, whether O'Neill really has "grown up" or whether he is, as hockey head coach Mike Keenan is often described, "a three year act with a five year contract."
I suspect that this year, O'Neill won't have any "blow ups." What's left of the roster is tough, scrappy, defensive-minded although offensively challenged. They'll play hard, they'll rebound, they'll guard people, they'll block out, they'll routinely pay games whether both teams score in the 50's.
The test will come in a few years when a flashy guard or small forward more prone to the fancy pass or off-balance shot fails to block out on defense. Then we will see how far O'Neill has come.