Your implication is that the system doesn't fit Cousins, and that part I'll agree with. It doesn't! That doesn't mean that with the right tweaks here and there, and with Cousins getting used to the system, it can't work. The parts that bother me, is Cousins coming down the court with the game in crunch time and were down four points, and he jacks up a three. That's not on Karl. I can guarantee you that Karl wasn't happy with that shot. Maybe the biggest problem with Karls system is that he gives too much freedom to his main players. That means he's relying on their decisions to be good decisions. When they do make good decisions, we win.
I'm a huge Cousins fan, but some of this is his responsibility. And some of it is Karls, but it's not all on one person. Of course the buck stops with the coach, and at the end of the day, Karl will take the heat for whatever the outcome of the year is. I'm not a big fan, as a matter of fact, I hate when he plays Collison and Rondo together. Were basically playing what amounts to a zone defense, and with both of them on the floor together, it almost always allows the other team to get a mismatch, and on offense, if Collison gets the ball, it usually stops with him. On the nights he hitting everything, it's easy to overlook. I'm not a fan of Rudy at PF, although his defense has improved there. Overall though, Rudy looks a bit lost at that position.
I went and looked up some stats to see what leaped out at me. Our team 3pt shooting percentage is fine at 35.9%. We take 22.9 threes a game, which is around 12 or so in the league. Our rebounding is a little better than the middle of the pact. We're tied for the 12th spot and are around 9th or 10th in defensive rebounds. We're 4th in the league in assists, 10th in the league in steals, 8th in the league in shot attempts at 86.0 attempts a game, and 6th in field goal percentage at 45.6%. The only two stats that leap out at me are blocks a game, where we come in 23rd in the league, and in turnovers, where were the 3rd worse team in the league averaging 16.7 turnovers a game.
So on paper alone, it looks like if we can protect the basket better, and turn the ball over less, we'll win more games. Of course that's a simplistic way of looking at it, but you have to start somewhere. Personally, I think if we were to stay with the same passing and moving without the ball, but slow the whole thing down a tad, everything would improve. By the way, the system that Karl us using, the dribble drive system, doesn't usually put the big man out on the perimeter. It usually puts him right in the low post to clean up missed shots or post up. Kentucky uses the same system, and Cousins never wandered out to the three point line there. So maybe giving Cousins the freedom to do what he wants isn't the best way to go. I think Karl is giving Cousins the freedom to take three point shots, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants him to take those shots.
