That’s a very nice road win. Good looks, Rockets
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Very good road win over top 100 opponent. Rockets were 97 on Kenpom coming into the game and I assume will move up. Would be nice for our NET ranking if Toledo establishes themselves as a top 100 team.
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DDJ’s Cincinnati team appears to be… not good. Lost at home to USF to move to 2-3.
ASU drops a game to UTEP… Josh Christopher looked pretty good though. He was the only player playing with any energy and made some nice effort plays. 4 steals, 2 blocks, and at least one charge taken.
That team certainly does not appear to be well coached.
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13-point home loss to KenPom #188 UTEP. KP prediction was ASU by 17.
But but GUARD U!
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Meanwhile Josh Christopher’s brother still gets no playing time
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OSU is really weak inside with Lidell out. Williams took advantage. Neither Purdue nor OSU really impresses.
Bobby Hurley, one of my least favorite players ever, turning into a churlish failure is just delicious.
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I’m not being facetious when I say that 100% sounds like what he signed up for
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Washington dropped to 1-5 today with a loss to our pals in Montana
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That’s brutal. Although maybe it should have been expected given how bad they were with two five star first round NBA draft picks on their team last year. Now those players aren’t on the team making them even worse. That program has gone south in a hurry after winning the Pac 12 two years ago
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Question… If you play for a bad coach on a mediocre team in a bad conference that never plays games on TV can you still build your brand? Asking for a friend…
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In 2007/8 and 2008/9 seasons, the Pac Ten was the top rated conference in KenPom. Since then they have never finished better than 4th and recently have been around 6th (aka the worst major conference) most years. 2 years ago they even finished lower than the AAC.
This season KenPom ranks them clearly #6 again, closer in quality to the A10 and AAC than to the Big Ten and Big Twelve.
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ASU was #28 before their game against SDSU last week Thursday. After last night’s loss to UTEP (a 1-2 three-game stretch with their lone win a one-pointer at #143 Grand Canyon), they’re now #58.
Also of note, just realized that Dan Majerle is no longer GCU’s coach. Former Valpo rising star and Vandy flop Bryce Drew is now the Antelopes’ head man.
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Don’t get me wrong, he gets to play closer to home and on the same team with his brother while being a star player who gets as many shots as he wants. His NBA draft stock will be fine because NBA scouts find prospects anywhere in the world…even if his “brand” suffers a bit from ASU struggling. Like someone else said, this is what he signed up for.
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I was down on ASU before the season started (obviously some Christopher bias/bitterness played a role), and it’s still early in the season…but woof. A really crappy start for them. This was universally expected to be a down year for Arizona and now ASU is behind them on both Torvik and Kenpom. Like what even is their best result? A 6 point win over Torvik #71 Rhode Island? A loss to Nova?
I just don’t really see how this team turns it around either. They have Martin and Christopher who are both really good guards, but Alonzo Verge is the highest usage player on the team and has a sub 95 ORTG (and was sub 100 last year). And with Romelo White transferring to Ole Miss, they have like nothing else. Pretty much everyone on the roster minus Christopher is either 6’0/6’1 or 6’8/6’9, and none of the big guys really do anything, all of them except for 2 have usages below 15%. The 2 that don’t are Marcus Bagley, who has been solid as a freshman and will get better, and Kimani Lawrence who has an ORTG of 85. Minus Bagley taking a massive leap I just don’t know how they get better.
Also when you look at Hurley’s history it doesn’t inspire confidence in a turnaround. He’s always had great guards, but he’s never finished higher than 55 in Torvik and never had a defense higher than 42, which was last year’s team and this year’s team is already down to 86.
Even with Christopher, he’s generally had a very good start to his freshman year and it wouldn’t be surprising if he gets better. He’s putting himself on track to be a first round pick, potentially a late lottery pick, and I would still kill for him to be at Michigan. But he’s also shooting 23% from 3 on less than 1 make a game, and has 8 assists on the year for an assist rate of 9%. Those are things he was expected to at least be average at, if not above average. It’s just bad over there right now.
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The one thing I will say is that ASU is in the PAC 12, and that league as a whole has been down the last few years. Wouldn’t be a total shock to me to see ASU pick it up in conference play which says a lot about the strength of the teams in that conference if that does happen. The PAC 12 has been like 6th best conference in the country at best the last few years. Certainly behind the BIG, ACC, SEC, Big 12 and Big East and arguably on par or below the AAC and A10 in recent years.
worth noting these bad 3 games all happened without Marcus Bagley. He was playing really well.
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