Versailles has a good program no doubt but make no mistake they have had some very good players to get them to that point. There’s no doubt a good coach can do more with a good team I won’t say you’re wrong there but a great coach isn’t taking a bad team and making them good maybe better than they were but still not good.
Over what period of time and what constitutes good?
Troy Christian had some very good athletes before Ray Zawadski got there, but winning 4-6 games per year was very much the norm for the school. Taking the same athletes, Zawadski had a very bad first year, only winning 4 games total going 4-17 on the year and 2-10 in the Metro Buckeye Conference. The second year, after installing a program that featured summer basketball league in June (no coach prior had ever done more than open gyms in off season and zero discipline was expected of the players among themselves in the off season. So, with kids holding each other accountable and summer league ball played at Wayne , that same group of kids went 14-7 (11-1) winning the schools first conference title ever in 2011. That turnaround was not all about game prep and X's and O's, but was equally about instilling discipline, work ethic, leadership and buying into a system. Once tha program was built, players who would typically have left the school for better opportunities began to stay and the program continued to build,
Would a bad coach take the same players and win half those games? I seriously doubt it. Is there a limit to what a good coach can accomplish with less than stellar athletes? Absolutely.
I think of Bethel's coach Steve Fisher. He showed up for perhaps the greatest stretch of talent Bethel ever had in 1999 - 2002. He installed his 2-3 zone and they win a state title out of that in 2001. Then following the 2002 season Fisher decides to move on. He goes to Sidney and has great talent in the pipeline, that program never came together. He and I discussed some of the reasons things never came together at Sidney for him, I will just leave it at sometimes there are issues that a good coach can not solve if the athletes do not want to help solve them.
So I will say, some coaches have a personality and drive that extends far beyond the court (Zawadski), and some good game coaches do not (Fisher). But for those program builder type coaches, they really can turn a perineal bad program into a winner, but it will take a year or two.