However, Connor Pay all but said in his interview that Etienne was getting near zero help from coaching staff.

If that's true, any backlash from fans for a player's poor performance was only (unfairly) directed at the player because the fans couldn't fathom that a coach being paid to coach was actually doing almost nothing. The unfortunate result that the players got undeserved public criticism for the whole situation is on the coaches who should have taken their own jobs more seriously. IMO this includes the HC who hired an assistant who would turn out to be that bad in the first place (bad hire), and then failed (for a while at least) to either notice the problem, act to fix it, or both.

I sincerely hope the unfair impact on Etienne, who is now a shining example of the positive difference high quality assistant coaches can make, is helping those running the program overall to understand more deeply the importance of making (much) better hires, monitoring their contributions more closely, and acting sooner when things aren't working out. Tough that Etienne had to go through this just to make that point more painfully clear to everyone involved. I hope we are learning from it.