College Hoops Open Thread

Watched some games on a snow day.

By half time, it was clear Stanford vs. Cal would do nothing to advance my knowledge of humanity. Reid Travis is still really good, and they have some other guys who can knock it down.

Oklahoma is so disappointing. Defend someone for goodness’ sake. They also make terrible decisions at the worst times.

Luck of the Irish - Colson had a prayer answered - he really just threw that one up there. And then they got some calls down the stretch. But Virginia Tech just hit a wall. Make a damn shot. They also couldn’t make a damn shot because they really, really started choosing the wrong shot. Wrong guys, wrong spots on the floor. Massive lead blown.

BC-NC State was a great game.

Didn’t see any of their game, but sure seems like Bucknell was the best team in their conference by a long shot.

Watching Tyus Battle is painful. He’s such a good scorer being criminally overworked at Cuse. He’s played 39+ minutes in 13 straight games and all 40 in 11 of them. It shows in his efficiency.

1 Like

Watching Texas is more painful. They just play terrible basketball. Smart is so overrated. I would pull my hair out if they were my team.

Truly one of the worst offensive minds out there.

Went 4-1 his first NCAA tournament. Hasn’t been to the second weekend since. He has been able go milk that Final Four for all its worth.

MAAR has been a great contributor the last2 years, and I am so happy for him and his breakout senior year; but I think Battle (especially) and Langford really would’ve been pushing him for minutes. Battle would’ve looked so dang good with JB’s tutelage and system.

3 Likes

Rooting for Texas is painful.

Those five kids on the floor, what’s Shaka’s value add on offense? Zero? Grab an average HS coach from some gym and tell him to run the Texas offense, I think the kids have more of a plan.

1 Like

They barely pulled that game out versus a bad Iowa State team. Hard to expect them to beat Tech today, but you never know. Maybe the guards get their collective heads out of their arses but I doubt it. We really need UCLA to win a couple games and get that back to a Q1 win because PSU and Maryland probably won’t be in that category when all is said and done.

1 Like

They’re hardly running even Amaker level offense. Those guards look like college guards who have spent an entire season not making any sort of leap in skill set or understanding of how to effectively lead a college offense. Which is an utter condemnation of their coach. Are those guys really any different from what they were at the beginning of the season?

The PSU/MD road wins tumbling out of Q1 seems like something people didn’t see coming around here, which surprises me.

The head of the committee said they’re not looking at it as black and white as people think they are. I.e. they will note that Michigan has 3 top 10 wins and they may note that they have 2 wins that are right on the Q1/Q2 border. Fingers crossed anyway.

3 Likes

Honestly, that would make much more sense than treating it rigidly.

1 Like

Yeah, obviously they kinda have to set arbitrary boundaries at some point to make this process not impossible, but blurring the lines of those boundaries would be very nice.

4 Likes

Although I agree Shaka is better suited for a mid-major, I’m not sure what everyone expects out of that team right now. They lost a key piece in Andrew Jones early in the year. Bamba has been hurt recently. Although Davis is meh, it still hurts their depth.

To still make the tournament in a tough Big 12 shouldn’t be taken lightly. I don’t think he’s been as bad as people think this year.

Funny, I was just typing to a friend that quadrants are useful, but you have to go back to the actual numbers ultimately instead of just consigning this result or that result to being part of a somewhat clumsily drawn set of quadrants. Otherwise things that aren’t really that alike are treated identically, and that’s a miss.

1 Like

Their offense is so lousy!

Horrible memories of Amaker running “passing game,” ugh

1 Like

Eye test does not check out in their case. The offense just looks awfully coached.

1 Like

I’m just not sure how good they should look with the eye test given their two best players are out, one for the majority of the year who was very good offensively.

I mean you can expect that they won’t score much, but you can still run an offense with bad players. They don’t.

Looks like Bruce Weber will go to his 4th NCAA tourney since Illinois fired him 6 years ago. The Illini have made it once in that time.

Separately, UConn’s fall to irrelevance has been swift.

2 Likes

The shine has completely come off Kevin Ollie. I really thought he would have kept them at least above water. That’s some amazing fall.