Not exactly tournament related, but since it relates to a non-Big Ten team I’ll post it here. Just one season after a sweet-sixteen appearance, Steve Alford is reported to have voluntarily returned his contract extension at UCLA. Although I think he’s a very bad game coach (not least because his son probably has the longest leash in the history of basketball), I appreciate the accountability of this move. More coaches should do this when they fail to live up to expectations – rather than just hope that big buyouts, accumulated goodwill, and anxieties about change will keep their seats cool regardless of results.
What are your guys thoughts on Mark Turgeon? Good coach? Bad coach? Mediocre?
I think he is mediocre his teams have a lot of talent but never seems to play to the best of their ability.
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I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had we put the Irish away. That bracket really opened up for us.we might have lost to Austin but there’s a shot we’d be elite eight ourselves. Not far fetched.
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I think there is a real good shot. And also a real good shot of losing to UNC by 40. Would you rather lose a hard fought game to ND in the first round, or get hammered hard by UNC in the EE? I guess I’d take the EE, but it would have been ugly.
EE 100 times out of 100.
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Not like we were a top seed. We were the 11 seed, we would have been expected to get blown out by UNC
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I would say Turgeon is pretty good, above average for sure. very good recruiter and he gets them playing pretty well (although his job this year was admittedly underwhelming). But I look at his job at Wichita State, and I’m very impressed, he made that program the mid-major power it is today.
Lon Kruger Final Four #2 in his career.
22 years since his last. I wonder what the biggest gap is between appearances for a HC
Virginia with a choke job to lose to Syracuse. They will be in the Final Four when it’s not even clear that they deserved to be in the tournament. But that’s the magic of the tournament.
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These games mystify me. The way UNC carved up Indiana, I was sure they would do the same to ND.
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We were up 12 to ND at halftime.
UNC did carve up ND. ND just had a pretty good offensive game of their own. UNC was getting a lot of easy looks, though, whereas ND was making a lot of really difficult shots. ND was able to really slow the game down to limit possessions, but I never felt like they’d be able to sustain their offensive output throughout the entire game.
Agree. I posted at halftime. UNC, although streaky, looks powerful
Anybody know the Ken Pom offensive/defensive rankings of the schools in the Final Four?
Offense-Defense
OU: 13-13, Syracuse 51-16, Villanova 4-7, UNC 1-21
Might be worth looking back at their pre-tourney numbers too because everyone sees their numbers sky rocket through NCAA run.
So not surprisingly, elite teams that have great offenses are not immune to playing great defense as well. There’s a novel idea.
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The defensive numbers scare me from a Michigan perspective. This idea if Michigan plays just average defense they can compete that may not be the case right now.
I don’t know. In 2014, the defense was well below average and the team competed. The difference, of course, was the elite offense. Obviously I’d rather have an elite offense and defense, but it’s possible to be a contender with an average defense.
Possible yes, likely…not so much.
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