College Basketball - Year of the Blue Bloods?

[RedEyedGhost]

7 hours ago, Ramsay B. said:

Ha, I know who Mason is! I'm not that out of the loop because of Uconn sucking. I meant the #0 on Baylor, Lual-Acuil. Dude kept getting outrebounded when I was watching. 2 boards the whole game for a 7 footer.

Ah, I was watching on a really crappy stream at work, and I'm not familiar enough with Baylor to know their numbers.  I think Lual-Acuil will eventually be a really good player, but this is literally his third year playing basketball.

Here's an article about Frank from my favorite CBB writer, Mark Titus, from a few weeks ago talking about how he has outgrown the song.

[Ramsay B.]

2 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Ah, I was watching on a really crappy stream at work, and I'm not familiar enough with Baylor to know their numbers.  I think Lual-Acuil will eventually be a really good player, but this is literally his third year playing basketball.

Makes a lot more sense. 

[Rhom]

Lonzo Ball's dad doubles down on saying that his son is better than Steph Curry.

Not "will be better"... is better.

Quote

“Hey, let me tell you this right now. I have the utmost confidence in what my boy is doing. I’m gonna tell you right now, he better than Steph Curry to me,’’ LaVar Ball said. “Here, put Steph Curry on UCLA’s team right now and put my boy on Golden State and watch what happens.”I doubled down on it again. Like I said, if I don’t know what my boy is about, I’m not going to make that statement. Steph’s going to have problems trying to guard my boy. Play 1-on-1!”

I know UCLA fans have been starved for relevance, and the Ball family has them set up for about four years of being back near the top of the NCAA heap... but is it worth it to have to put up with Lavar Ball?!!?   

[RedEyedGhost]

I hate UVA's "brand" of basketball so much.  They scored 48 points in 45 minutes tonight.  That shit's disgusting.  

[sperry]

It's also just dumb basketball, unless your team sucks.

[S John]

11 hours ago, Triskan said:

Damn, is Huggins OK?  He took a knee during the game, and it looked kind of scary, but he didn't leave.  I had it on in the background with no sound.

New rankings have the three pac-12 schools 4-6 in the country.  How was UCLA a 4 seed a week ago?  UCLA @ Arizona this Saturday which is the last time these three play in the regular season.

I read that he has an implanted defibrillator from his heart attack in '02 and it went off which apparently gives you an electric shock when the heartbeat gets a little erratic.  From what I've read that isn't a huge deal unless it happens multiple times rapidly.  Still he probably should've went and got checked out at the hospital, but he's a stubborn old bastard.  I'm sure he'll be getting a check up today.

[S John]

16 hours ago, Triskan said:

I would hate to have some kind of chest implant like that just out of fear of malfunctions like that to say nothing of other problems.

 

Cal is probably the 4th team in the Pac-12, and they have a scary big guy in Ivan Rabb.  They are probably into the tournament but could have used a signature win, and they were up 16 on Oregon tonight, but they blew the lead and were down 2 on their last possession.  They scored to take back the lead 2-0 before Dylan Brooks hit a game-winning 3 with 0.02 left, 2nd game-winning 3 with the other being in the win over UCLA earlier this year.  I think he's going to be conference player of the year even over Lonzo Ball.

It's at that point in the season where I try to make a point to watch bball from other conferences a bit more.  Watched every WVU and every Texas game all year so I have a pretty good feel for all of the teams in the Big 12, but don't know a ton about the other conferences aside from catching a few games here and there.  I caught the last 10 minutes or so of the Cal / Oregon game.  I just had a gut feeling that their lead was not safe and that proved to be true.  Oregon's press really messed them up, and then that last second shot.  Ouch.  Second one of the night since I also watched about half of Duke / Syracuse.  Interesting to see a court storming at the carrier dome.

 Also caught enough of UNC / Louisville to see Pitino go ape shit on a fan.  Tell you one thing, I don't think there's a more mafioso appearing coach in all of sports.  If Pitino hadn't gone into basketball he'd surely be holding court in the back of an Italian restaurant in NYC.  

And finally the other day I watched Iowa beat Indiana in overtime.  What the hell happened to Indiana?  They had some nice early wins (UNC / Kansas) but it could not be more clear that those teams and many, many others would crush the Hoosiers if they played today.  Almost dead last in a pretty lukewarm B1G, what the hell happened?  They've lost 5 straight and 7 of the last 8.  They should probably hope that they do not make the tournament.  

[Rhom]

This Pitino thing has be cracking up.  I heard about it this morning on Mike and Mike and they were talking like whatever was said was something terrible.  "It can't be repeated on the radio... but its out there, its been reported.  You can Google it if you want."  Naturally, I figured it was something about adultery or strippers in the dorms or some such...

Then I actually saw that Maria Taylor had reported on it and was reportedly standing right there.

According to her, the fan yelled "Pitino, you suck!"

That's what all this is about?!!? 

Of course, Card fans are trying to say that the fan yelled racial slurs at Anas Mahmoud; but there's no proof of that and its made even more unlikely by the fact that Pitino didn't say anything about that.  The entire focus would change if he had said "Say what you want about me, but I won't stand for it about my players..."  The fact that he didn't just shows that it didn't go down that way.

Thin skin Rick.  Not surprising from the guy who flipped off the UK fans as he walked off the court at Rupp in 2015.

[S John]

17 minutes ago, Rhom said:

This Pitino thing has be cracking up.  I heard about it this morning on Mike and Mike and they were talking like whatever was said was something terrible.  "It can't be repeated on the radio... but its out there, its been reported.  You can Google it if you want."  Naturally, I figured it was something about adultery or strippers in the dorms or some such...

Then I actually saw that Maria Taylor had reported on it and was reportedly standing right there.

According to her, the fan yelled "Pitino, you suck!"

That's what all this is about?!!? 

Of course, Card fans are trying to say that the fan yelled racial slurs at Anas Mahmoud; but there's no proof of that and its made even more unlikely by the fact that Pitino didn't say anything about that.  The entire focus would change if he had said "Say what you want about me, but I won't stand for it about my players..."  The fact that he didn't just shows that it didn't go down that way.

Thin skin Rick.  Not surprising from the guy who flipped off the UK fans as he walked off the court at Rupp in 2015.

I remember when UL and WVU were in the Big East the WVU student section hit Pitino with a "Kar-en Sy-pher" chant, which is pretty god damn cold blooded ,  and he seemed to take it in stride.  Makes me wonder if Maria Taylor cleaned it up a bit, because "Pitino, you suck" is pretty mild compared to some things that I know he's heard before.  

[RedEyedGhost]

11 hours ago, S John said:

Watched every WVU and every Texas game all year so I have a pretty good feel for all of the teams in the Big 12, but don't know a ton about the other conferences aside from catching a few games here and there.

Have you noticed #34 on TCU's hairstyle developing over the course of the season?  It looks like he's going for some kind of fro mullet cross.

 

 

[Ded As Ned]

I'm also in the camp that starts paying attention to more teams outside the SEC / BlueBloods this time of year, bracket evaluation period and all that (not that I've won a pool since 2007).  

I'm not convinced Gonzaga will survive the first weekend, depending on who their 8/9 seed opponent ends up being.

[S John]

6 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Have you noticed #34 on TCU's hairstyle developing over the course of the season?  It looks like he's going for some kind of fro mullet cross.

 

 

Haha yea, I actually have noticed that because I watched part of the KU / TCU game the other day.   I watch bball with my girlfriend a lot and tend to give out a lot of nicknames to opposing players and TCU #34 became officially known as Butt Head in my household on Wed. night.  At least until he gets a haircut.  I hope that isn't the new thing because I relentlessly blasted the ever-present 'Buddy Heild' haircut last year that seems to have faded out, but that booty cut is far worse.  

[Mexal]

@S John why is Texas so bad? 

VCU has won 9 in a row and is 23-5. At this rate, they got a great shot at 26+ wins again to keep up with Kansas in terms of streaks. Big game tomorrow at Rhode Island and then an even bigger game at Dayton on Wednesday which will decide the A-10 regular season title. Win one of them and we're guaranteed in the tournament, especially if we sweep Dayton but if we lose both and lose first game of A-10 tournament, might be a bit dicey. I just wish we played better on the road and our prized freshman (Jenkins) could play. Hopefully he's a huge lift for us in the tournament with his fresh legs even though he has missed 15 games.

[Rhom]

23 minutes ago, Mexal said:

@S John why is Texas so bad? 

I've watched a handful of their games this year and I'm wondering the same thing.

[Mexal]

2 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I've watched a handful of their games this year and I'm wondering the same thing.

I always thought it was because they had poor PG play which should be less of an issue if Matt Coleman is as advertised next year. But I haven't watched enough games to really know. That reasoning just feels so shallow given how mediocre they have been.

[Rhom]

1 minute ago, Mexal said:

I always thought it was because they had poor PG play which should be less of an issue if Matt Coleman is as advertised next year. But I haven't watched enough games to really know. That reasoning just feels so shallow given how mediocre they have been.

The team definitely seems to be less than the sum of their parts should indicate.  They have some athletes in there now, so I feel like they should be able to play Shaka ball... but they just don't.

[Mexal]

13 minutes ago, Rhom said:

The team definitely seems to be less than the sum of their parts should indicate.  They have some athletes in there now, so I feel like they should be able to play Shaka ball... but they just don't.

Yea. The inability to hit the three hurts since Smart's offense never really ran through the bigs. If they can't hit threes, especially off of turnovers, they can't go on the patented VCU runs. VCU games under Smart were a game of runs, ours and theirs though ours tended to be longer. Either we scored a lot of points really quickly and fed off that energy or we went cold for really long stretches. We never really used our bigs so the easy buckets only really came from generating turnovers. I'm not sure if Texas is getting enough turnovers and easy baskets, especially to combat their really poor shooting from 3pt (30%). 

The other issue just seems to be who they're playing. When you play good defenses like the Big 12 has and you're a terrible shooting team, it can be a long day. VCU always had a tough time with teams that played really good defense like UVA, Dayton, GW.

I think this is why I prefer Will Wade's approach. Less giving up of easy buckets from breaking the press and much stronger emphasis on feeding the paint and offensive rebounding. There have been some games where we've shoot like 5-7 threes and won by 15 pts. That's the type of game Wade wants to play.

[S John]

Youth and guards.  Losing two really competent guards in Felix and Taylor has hurt them this year.  They have nobody on the court that really takes on a leadership role or is at least a good game manager.  They are a collection of young, but very talented athletes who each, on occasion, does something cool but have a hard time putting it all together.  They are much better at playing fast than they are at setting up offense in the half-court.  

I think Jarrett Allen and Andrew Jones are their best players and they are both freshman.  Unfortunately for Texas, Allen is going to get a good look from the NBA and might be one-and-done.  Jones might come out after next year.  Texas does play really well in spurts, the potential is there, but I don't know if I've seen them put together a full game without some kind of horrifying lapse all season.  If Allen comes back next year and they bring in a true PG they could be a very dangerous team, imo.  But if Allen goes (and I think they also lose Claire to graduation) I don't think a freshman phenom PG is going to be able to carry them through a Big 12 double round-robin.  

 

[S John]

3 hours ago, Mexal said:

Yea. The inability to hit the three hurts since Smart's offense never really ran through the bigs. If they can't hit threes, especially off of turnovers, they can't go on the patented VCU runs. VCU games under Smart were a game of runs, ours and theirs though ours tended to be longer. Either we scored a lot of points really quickly and fed off that energy or we went cold for really long stretches. We never really used our bigs so the easy buckets only really came from generating turnovers. I'm not sure if Texas is getting enough turnovers and easy baskets, especially to combat their really poor shooting from 3pt (30%). 

The other issue just seems to be who they're playing. When you play good defenses like the Big 12 has and you're a terrible shooting team, it can be a long day. VCU always had a tough time with teams that played really good defense like UVA, Dayton, GW.

I think this is why I prefer Will Wade's approach. Less giving up of easy buckets from breaking the press and much stronger emphasis on feeding the paint and offensive rebounding. There have been some games where we've shoot like 5-7 threes and won by 15 pts. That's the type of game Wade wants to play.

It is kind of fun to find yourself cheering on a shifting style of basketball in the early years of a coaching change.  Beilein's WVU teams lived and died by the three.  Was very fun to watch at times, but those teams were all finesse.  Huggs' style really feels almost at the opposite end of the basketball style spectrum from Beilein.  

His guys get in your shirt on D and stay there, and the offense (while we are a better 3-point shooting team this year) is most effective when they get into the paint.  Other than a few guys on this years' team who are pretty consistent from 3, I generally cringe when WVU's shot selection is to launch a 3 rather than driving straight at the rim or a well-executed pass to someone in the paint or cutting towards the rim.  Today you watch WVU to see if the other team can withstand the relentless onslaught of WVU's D, but back in the days of good ol' Kevin Pittsnoggle the 3 is what you tuned into watch.  Both were fun.  Or maybe, I guess I just like watching basketball in general.  

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

He''s been a Eer's killer the last two years, but man, I love the hell out of KU's Grahams game. I can see him in the NBA as a guy that comes off the bench, while being an irrational confidence guy. He's no NBA starter (imo), but he could definitely be lightning in a bottle. I just love his game, so smooth and confident.