Not sure who BM is recommending and not recommending, I'll admit I'm a but too young to remember some of the coaches beyond Hobbs. But that guy two coaches back never abused anyone and would've had GW in the tourney again, and I'll die on that hill.

The first point to make is if JC is feeling added pressure and that's negatively impacting his coaching abilities, then that's totally on JC.  For the record, I do not think this is what's happening.  Of course JC wants to win as much as anyone but when you go from being a competitive athlete to a fairly high profile head basketball coach, you should pretty much know what you're getting yourself into and I believe this is the case with JC.  I don't feel that concepts like "I must win at lease a certain number of games this season in order to keep my job" are even on the table as possibilities.  If this season ends up being very disappointing, I could more easily see JC jumping to a smaller program (based on reading the writing on the wall) than I can him getting released after this season.  Personally, I think there's a 98% chance that he is our coach in 2022-23.

As for the other part of the question, no, I don't believe we would have been any better off had JC stuck to an original philosophy or scheme.  JC is trying to coach to the personnel he has and I believe this flexibility is a benefit.  The reason for this is that he has been unable to replicate what he witnessed at VCU which was having a team of 9-11 guys who all played and all stayed fresh which was essential towards playing the style they wanted.  If his GW team had this type of depth, there is a strong likelihood that we would be watching mayhem.  JC knows he doesn't have it without experiencing some major drop-offs in talent on the floor.  This is why the team's best players are still logging 35+ minutes  as long as they stay out of foul trouble.  When you look at those very successful VCU teams, nobody played 35+ minutes.  Hardly anyone played 30 minutes.  The point was to get your rest so that you could go all-out on the court without getting tired.  Think changes in ice hockey lines.

Last point, my guess was that from a scheduling perspective, the Maryland game came late and threw everything off kilter.  Had Maryland not been scheduled, the team would have played on a Tuesday, flown to Cali for games on Saturday and Tuesday, and then flown home for a Friday night game.  But, Maryland says we'll do it but only on this date and it's understandably very hard to say no to that game.  So, we end up with 3 games in 5 nights which includes a cross country trip.  This is the reality.  It's not an excuse but it's not nothing either.  Without the Maryland game, maybe this team flys out on Thursday, is far more fresh and ready to play on Saturday,  and then who knows what happens.

So some of you will say "that's great but they did say yes to Maryland" and that's very true.  But it's also kind of a no-win situation for if we had turned down playing Maryland because of this upcoming California trip, people here would be going crazy wondering why it was more important to play the 3rd of 3 San Diego schools and Fullerton as opposed to scheduling the Terps.
 

I don't understand the purpose of the California trip in general.  We don't recruit out there and neither team was supposed to be any good, so you don't get the benefit of a good OOC, or experience playing in a tough environment.  It seems like those game were really a high risk low reward venture, to which we received no reward.

LSF, a few things.

First, I'll clarify that because JC is not getting fired after this season, for any reason aside from with cause, I don't believe that he or the school is fixated on winning or losing a specific number of games this season.  He's simply not being let go with two full years on his contract because he didn't win enough whether you, me or anyone else believes that firing him would be justified.  After next year becomes more realistic, but even that has some real uncertainties associated with it.

Next, I'll stand by my statement that he is trying to coach to the personnel he has.  I'm not sure this translates to changes on a game by game basis which may be part of the problem.  Perhaps Noel could have been dominant these past two games (though in the San Diego game, he looked rather winded to me after picking up many of Hunter's minutes for the first time).  But, JC does not perceive Noel to be one of this team's offensive strengths so his role offensively gets diminished.  The reason why James and Joe take most of the shots is because JC feels they are our best weapons offensively so his offense is structured to take advantage of their one on one skills.  Last year, all JC talked about was 3's because he had Battle, Jack and Seymour.  This year, not a lot of talk about 3's.  

Finally, any discussion about the scheduling of Maryland and how this impacted the California games is an unknowable one.  I am not making a definitive statement that without having played Maryland, we win one or both games out west.  Am simply saying, that because we played Maryland and this led to a jam packed schedule, who is to say how we MAY have looked in California without having played this game.  Of course you can say they had plenty of rest before Fullerton but maybe if they had rest before San Diego and played confidently and won easily, maybe the perform quite differently against Fullerton?  It's admittedly a "what if" game where nobody will ever definitively know the real answers but I do feel the discussion is grounded in real factors rather than pie in the sky assumptions.