I think a lot of it has to do with the ability to rapidly prepare your team for an unfamiliar opponent in a short time. John Beilein seemed really good at that. There might also be a psychological aspect to it, being able to get your players to deal with the pressure. I remember reading about the 1989 team, where players said they felt more relaxed playing for Fisher, who stayed calm on the sidelines, than for Frieder, who was a jittery guy. Frieder certainly didn’t perform well in the tournament at Michigan.
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I posted a tweet a while back, potentially into this thread, that showed that he’s lost to every single seed line except 16 over the years in the tournament. Not necessarily a meaningful statistic overall, but he’s lost to a 15 as a 2, lost to a 14 as a 3 or a 6, and so on. Pretty amazing.
I think I also saw that he’s won as a lower seed once, while being beaten by a lower seed 8 times.
It all results in this:
https://barttorvik.com/cgi-bin/ncaat.cgi?type=coach
388th out of 390 coaches in performance against seed expectation (though noting Tony Bennett even lower on the list, which shows the flaw in this metric, which Juwan may actually suffer from)
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Kevin Durant AND DJ Augustin, so he had a good guard to get KD the ball too.
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plus FRP Damion Jones and Dexter Pittman. Four NBA players!
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Tennessee is not gonna have an awesome team
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Not exactly a strong-a$$ offer. Disrespectful for the coach to get a smaller 
than his players. 
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I have had Rick Barnes on my mental list of “doing the least with the most” for years.
Dang, Tennessee is going to be something in the regular season.
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Interesting comment I just saw on Reddit: the last time Duke won an outright regular season ACC title, JJ Reddick was in his senior year.
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That is interesting. The ACC used to have a weaker middle tier. It was Duke and UNC for all the marbles and that was that. Now you’ve got UVA and FSU winning conference titles. Plus they’ve added traditional powers from other conferences like Louisville and Syracuse.
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Weird. He liked Richard that much?
There’s a little-known NCAA rule that all Mashburns must play college basketball for Pitinos
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If you found a coach that let you shoot whatever trash you wanted, you might be compelled to follow him wherever he went.
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Always thought he was a bit overrated at Rutgers but really solid piece for a UCLA team that needs a big.
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He was allegedly a good defensive big, but I’m not sure if that extended to stuff beyond what the normal fan notices like pick and roll IQ defense, help defense, etc.
I thought it was gonna be Stanford, to be honest.
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This helps me buy the UCLA hype a little bit more. Still need to see what Juzang does, and even with him back I wouldn’t throw them in the top 2 with Gonzaga like so many seem to be doing.
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I think he was a lot over-rated as a “great defender” which felt more like “bad at offense, big, blocks shots”. I like him and I think he’s a good piece, but I don’t think he’s actually very impactful on a good team. He’s smart, physical, tough, and decent on defense…but he’s terrible on offense and more plodding.
At the very least, UCLA now has a true big. And a solid if not good one at that. Big add for them
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