JG strengths are his recruiting, relationship to his players and good public presentation.
Weakness per this thread are X's and O's.
I would push back a little bit on this. When you say "X's and O's" as basically "ability to turn recruited talent into wins" I think you make it a bit too simplistic.
Groce is not Josh Pastner. We don't play AAU ball. We scout and gameplan for our opponents relatively well (not as well as Weber did - his greatest strength as a coach - but well). We play a real offense and generally look to exploit favorable matchups.
Where Groce's team usually fail in my eyes is in playing with confidence and trusting the system we're running in times of stress. Shot clock winding down, pressure in the backcourt, late game clutch situations, our guys continually abandon the plan. That's all about belief in what you're doing from a basketball perspective, and that's on the head coach to build that belief in the summer and during practice so that it's just muscle memory when the game gets intense. You could bring in the greatest greaseboard jockey to ever grace a sideline, if the kids can't execute it when it counts, it's not gonna matter.
Believe it is much easier to cover his weakness with a good assistant than it is to find someone with his strengths in the other areas.
An assistant who is going to bring in different fundamental basketball ideas is only as good as the level of trust the head coach has in that person. Groce has steadfastly refused to make any staff changes, shockingly in my view, and it's clear that he doesn't have any desire to hand over some of his responsibility to an outside voice. Forcing that upon him would be ineffective at best. It's not like football where you can take away playcalling duties from someone, and even that is a bad idea.
Even if we rebound and Groce keeps his job, I would hope there might be a new voice brought in going forward. But I'm not holding my breath. Single-mindedness is part of the John Groce package, for better and worse.
Recruiting is not a one year project but building of relationships and starting over is not a one year project.
The idea that recruiting is hindered in the first year of a new coaching administration does not hold up to scrutiny. Just off the top of my head, Cuonzo Martin at Cal, Mark Gottfried at NC State, Dave Rice at UNLV and Steve Lavin at St. Johns all brought monster, game-changing recruiting classes to non-blue blood schools in their first year at the helm.
This became a piece of folk wisdom around here as an excuse for Groce finishing as a bridesmaid for so many big recruits. It was a way to relieve the cognitive dissonance of JFG the elite recruiter versus the actual results. It isn't true.
