2 points in 7 minutes for Texas to start the game. Good lord.
Way to coach 'em up out of halftime, Shaka, you mope. What a dreadful coach.
Where did this Jacob young guy come from? Shooting Texas back into this game.
Apparently son of a phi slamma jamma guy…
Shaka making a big fuss of coaching up some offense with Texas down 55-54 - no idea what he wanted, led to the ball stuck in a not particularly promising spot in the post and a travel…
I don’t think it was a bad decision to fire Weber, but they really should have been able to get a better coach than Groce considering the tradition and talent available at a place like Illinois.
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This. Weber’s program wasn’t pulling out of that stall.
They’ve looked like that all season.
Yesterday I said it sucked watching Tyus Battle get overworked and play 40 minutes every game, but I do enjoy the fact that he is now heading towards being 0-2 on even making the NCAA tourney (anything can happen, but the writing is on the wall). Nice choice there!
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"It was hard,’’ said Battle. "Going to Michigan, I loved the school. I loved coach (John) Beilein. He’s done an amazing job. But my dad always told me you have to do what’s best for your career and yourself sometimes.’’
Fucking Gary.
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I think he’s a lottery pick after two years under Beilein. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t have to stay 4 years at Cuse.
Fucking Gary indeed. Really F’d his son in the A.
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How nice would a UCLA win be tomorrow?
Not only a loss for Arizona who’s close in seeding, but UCLA would jump into the top 30 RPI and become a Q1 win.
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Watched a crap ton of college basketball today. Two random observations:
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Texas A&M is either being coached terribly or young teams just do what young teams do. After one time out they promptly proceeded to turn the ball over on 4 straight possessions. At the end of the game, they took a final timeout just to prepare their defense. After which 4 guys essentially ran away from Collin Sexton, which was an act of sheer madness. Force Sexton to pass to the big who probably had no time to get the shot off or at best was throwing up a hurried 10+ footer? Nope. Help off a 3 point shooter to make sure that someone, anyone but Sexton would beat you? Nope. Sexton’s drive and shot were amazing, but TAMU’s defense on the play was also pretty amazingly bad.
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Ricky Doyle somehow got into one of ESPN’s Championship Week promos. He looked happy. Was good to see him.
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Texas A&M has a lot of talent. They should def be better than what they are. Hogg, Davis and Williams are studs.
I always thought that going to a school where you know they are going to be playing zone, wouldn’t be the best preparation for the NBA.
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RE: your second point – Going to commercial during halftime shows ESPN has been showing celebration shots from what feels like every conference tournament winner to this point but Michigan…and I’ve watched a LOT of basketball the past few days (hurray for nasty colds). I’m sure they’ve shown Michigan but evidently I keep missing it. I think I’ve seen UNC Greensboro and South Dakota State about four times each.
Could it be because we were on CBS?
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That is almost certainly the reason.
I don’t think it was necessarily a bad decision to fire Weber either, and certainly understandable after the expectations from Self’s success and Weber’s first couple years there. But it’s an amusing comparison, as well as a good reminder of the potential downside of firing a guy who’s just a pretty good coach.
As to “a place like Illinois,” before Weber took them to the Final Four, they’d only made it there once in the previous 52 years. They’ve never won a national championship. Lou Henson won one B1G title in over twenty years and after we beat them in the Final Four won one NCAA game the next seven years, missing it entirely 3 of those years. Before Self, the Illini hadn’t made the Sweet 16 in 12 years and only made the tourney 6 of those years. And of course Self left. A really good coach can do really well at Illinois, but it’s not some blue blood program, and we’ve seen that top coaching candidates aren’t knocking down the doors to go there.
In this day and age, it’s hard to keep coaches who don’t succeed in the NCAAs. But getting upgrades isn’t always easy. Iowa chased off Alford and wound up with Lickliter, a downgrade, and then McCaffrey, someone pretty comparable. Minny axed Tubby and his 3 NCAA appearances in 6 years so they could hire Pitino and his one appearance in five years and a bunch of headaches.
I guess the overall takeaway - another reminder of how lucky UM is to have Beilein.
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My recollection, other than the spiraling record Weber posted, was that he had a slew of upperclassmen essentially refuse to play (Dmitri McCamey comes to mind, that tall white center with the jumper), a bunch of young talented guys look like being on the floor for Illinois was the absolute last thing they wanted to do (Jereme Richmond and Myers Leonard were both 5-stars who were utterly miserable), and a bunch of guys with solid freshman seasons who never got bad (pick your Illini here). Based purely on recruiting rankings, Weber fielded one of the 3 most talented teams in the Big Ten for virtually his entire tenure and routinely finished significantly worse. As a viewer, he frequently did perplexing things - he was a bad coach.
Nothing he’s done at KSU would suggest that’s otherwise - if you ignore his first year where he played with Frank Martin’s guys (shades of taking over Self’s team here) he’s sub-.500 in the Big 12. He is what he is - a guy who can sometimes take a major conference school to a 9 or 10 seed.
None of this is to say Groce was a good hire, given that the first thing he did was alienate the entire Chicago Public School coaches association (awesome move!). If I recall, this was even in his intro press-conference. Underwood seems like he isn’t terrible. We’ll see.
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Ahh, I didn’t think about that. Yeah, you’re probably right.