i'm kind of amazed the judgements people have made one way or the other when there just isn't much out there. My biggest issues with Justin Williams' report (which I have mixed feelings about) was not that they were all anonymous sources (which often make sense in situations like these where players / others are trying to protect their future interests), but that the anonymous sources offered very little clarity into the situation. In the end the most important thing to come out of the Justin Williams piece was the lack of specific conduct discussed by the sources from Brannen that would be detrimental to the team and cause the huge rift. This wasn't a Greg Marshall situation.
That isn't to say Brannen doesn't share in the blame, but for me the article offered no clarity into what extent was Brannen, the players at issue, the weird situation with COVID / lack of team building / lack of normal campus life / lack of offseason opportunities to get buy in, and lack of upper class leadership. Getting mores specific, a lot of the stuff in the piece was very unhelpful"
Quote:“There was no communication,” one source said. “Everybody down the line was unhappy at one point or another (this season).”
That's a quote from "one source". Player/parent/friend/coach? We don't know. But someone believed that. The problem is that it's a perception quote. There are no examples that follow, no specifics...it tells us almost nothing other than someone perceived a communication issue.
Quote:“It was just hard. To the point where, at some points during the season, I kind of didn’t love the game of basketball,” one player said. “It wasn’t fun to me anymore. I lost the love of the game. And I feel like that’s all because of Coach Brannen. That’s just being honest. It’s not the teammates, not the fans. It was never about that. It was about one guy.”
Again we get the perception of one source, this time definitively a player. But we don't really learn anything from it. He says he "feels" that's all because of Coach Brannen. Why? Explain what the specific issues were. What actions did Brannen take then didn't take that caused it.
Quote:One source explained a player’s decision to leave the program by stating, “How he felt he was treated, how he was treated, mentally, he didn’t want to go through that again.”
Another "source" but no idea what connection the source had to the player. The quote implies the player thought he was treated somehow in a way he didn't want to be treated but doesn't offer much more than that. Was he mistreated? Treated harshly? Not given playing time he wanted? We don't know what the issues were for the player. And we don't get any specifics on what Brannen might have done that made the player feel like he did.
Quote:Those sources characterized manipulation and exclusion, and players feeling lied to or misled about playing time and their role on the team. Perhaps most significant were claims of repeated instances of Brannen disparaging players behind their backs to other teammates, at times doubting whether certain players had the necessary ability or makeup to survive in the program. It was interpreted as pitting players against each other, by multiple accounts. Sources have said it continued even after transfer decisions were announced.
This is the closest we get to the issues, but it's mainly a characterization by the writer of the impression he got from sources. And once again we see no specific examples. It's just hard to parse through what happened with a bunch of vague quotes and little specifics.
All this is before we get to other sources who disagree with the assessment of these sources.
In short, we really don't know what was going on or what happened. We know the freshman were not happy with their time at UC. I tend to think that it was a combination of COVID year (no fans, no real campus life, strict rules to play), no offseason to really set expectations, limited upper class leadership in the program, players having unreasonable expectations, easy transfer rules and Brannen / staff not handling the weird season that was going to particularly effect the young guys who didn't know what a normal season would be like. Which factors were most important...I've seen nothing that really tells us much.
Ultimately the buck will stop with Brannen. This can't be the norm. But it's hard to really say how it all happened or whose "fault" it was.
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Keith Jenkins' Comments on Mason Madsen
