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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. Interesting quote that gives a lot of insight into the program. Not really that surprising, and is kind of a double edged sword. The team clearly likes playing for RT, play very hard, and seem to (generally) improve in March. On the other hand, it is clear that Beard was a much tougher coach as I'm sure we all appreciate. That will give you a more disciplined and mentally tough team, but it can burn out some players. You can also expect more attrition.
  2. Looks like our offense is now #29 and our defense is #30 on KenPom after yesterdays games. So I retract my argument that our offense and defense were the same. Our offense is indeed better than our defense. Carry on.
  3. Looks like Coleman stats got posted twice. Strange.
  4. We have had a few decent players over the years who turned it on and had great senior seasons. I am hopeful that could happen with Tyrese Hunter. Tyrese Hunter Javan Felix Matt Coleman: Kerwin Roach: If you look at all of these guys, their productivity and efficiency all went up in their senior year. Hunter improved in most facets this year except in his turnovers and free throw shooting. His defense was really solid. I attribute the turnovers as much to roster composition than anything. Last year he turned it over less because he was asked to do less. Pairing him with Abmas was just not good at all. You basically have two undersized shooting guards out there. Horton and Weaver are also not great to pair with him. None of them are great passers. If we can get a floor general in the portal, a mature player who can play defense and lead us in transition, it could really unlock Hunter. I could see him averaging 15 ppg and cut his turnovers in half with the right running mate.
  5. To be fair, I only subscribed to KenPom because it seems to be the Bible around here. Sorry if our defensive improvements in the last week suddenly made the data worthless. [emoji1787]
  6. Yes, they were 260th. Now they are 157th. Maybe if they would have played this good all year, we would have had a better year. Considering the WHOLE season though, this team played better 3 point defense than nine other teams since 1999. If you want to compare regular seasons, without Big 12 tourney and without the NCAA tourney, that is fine. Just compare apples to apples across all the years.
  7. Look, it is very simple. If you use the end of tournament KenPom defense rankings for 1999-2023, you should also use the end of tournament ranking for 2024. This isn't complicated. And comparing an absolute defensive ranking from 2013 to one from 2024 is stupid. The game is different now. We shoot more 3s. We have 5th and 6th year players. We have players foregoing the NBA draft because of NIL. Comparing the national rank is a better measure of how we stack up in the given year. None of this has anything to do with RT. It is just basic logic.
  8. Hard to hate Barnes. He is the best coach in our program's history. I don't fault Patterson for forcing him to make staff changes. We were underachieving given the program's resources. But it speaks to Barnes' character that he left on his own terms, took personal responsibility and refused to fire his staff. I guess I'll pull for him to win the whole damn thing.
  9. Dillon Mitchell Larry Nance Jr. Nance had a better shooting stroke as a SO than Mitchell, but Mitchell has been better in most other categories. Better FG%, better rebounder, fewer fouls, fewer turnovers, against much better competition. Mitchell has already improved from 40% FT to 60% FT in the last year - and he was up to 69% in conference. With another full year in the gym, I can see him getting his free throws up over 75% this year. And honestly I don't want him settling for long range shots. He has the ability to get to the rim. I can't imagine wanting to move on from this kid. All the physical tools are there for him to be a great college player. He is a really good rebounder and is a very willing defender. He pretty well shut down Dalton Knecht (the SEC POY) last night and did it without fouling. He also seems to have a good attitude and is willing to do the dirty work, without getting a huge amount of shots. That is rare for a player with his HS recruiting pedigree.
  10. Also, we finished ranked #23 in KenPom, accounting for both offense AND defense. That puts it as the 3rd highest end of year ranking since 2012... behind only 2022 and 2023. Still not good enough. And I'm not sure RT will ever be consistently good enough. But given our recent history, it was a decent but often very frustrating year.
  11. I guess I’m in the minority regarding Hunter. I like him a lot. He is so close to being a tremendous player. I mean sometimes he literally looks like an All-American. And then he makes a boneheaded turnover at the worst time. But then he will take it to the rack when the rest of our team is too passive. And he was playing really great defense by the end of the year. If he can just cut out the turnovers, he can be an All SEC player IMO. I want to see the redemption story. I have come around on Shedrick. I want to see him back too. He played hard and has some low post skills. He is a good 15-20 min off the bench contributor. And I don’t trust that we can replace him well in the portal. Obviously I want to see Weaver back and continue his progression into Russell Westbrook 2.0. While Mitchell didn’t progress as much as we all wanted, he did improve. KenPom says one of his closest stat comps is Larry Nance. I can see it. Nance played 4 years at Wyoming before being drafted by the Lakers and looked similar to Mitchell as a Sophomore. He made a big jump as Junior. Maybe Mitchell will too. I hope he comes back. I think we can do better than Onyema, sorry to say. He is out of his league here. Best for him to move on. We need someone either more skilled or more aggressive. Or ideally both. Glad to see Chris Johnson is likely to be back. With more reps, maybe he will be good. He just looked out of control to me. The main portal adds I would like to see are a physically dominant big and a high scoring wing. An elite distributor at point guard would also be nice for a change.
  12. I love my new KenPom subscription so I can combat disingenuous shitposts.
  13. Looks to me like this year finished with a better defense than 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2021. Based on national rankings.
  14. Are you comparing our 2024 rank through the end of the regular season with the full year including tournament ranks from the other years? Seems like you are. And you call others disingenuous. Lololol.
  15. Yeah it is the whole season through yesterday. Just like all the other UT seasons it is compared against. In the end we had a good but not great offense, a good but not great defense, a good but not great roster, a good but not great coach… and unsurprisingly a good but not great year.
  16. If by “far better” you mean “exactly the same national rank according to KenPom” then I agree with you.
  17. Wat no wai. First anyone has mentioned it in this thread.
  18. That was just a terrible game by Texas. And also a terrible game by Tennessee, which is why we only lost by 4. If we played them 10 times, I think we only win 2-3 times. Really bad matchup. I thought Mitchell and Brock both played great defense on Knecht, holding him to 5-18 shooting. And for as bad as our 3 point defense has been all year, it was nice seeing bad brick after bad brick from Tennessee from 3. Ultimately the turnovers and second chance points killed us. And we still had a chance at the end. Ooof. Disappointing. I feel bad for Disu to go out like that after he had such an amazing Big12 tourney and first round last year.
  19. If he wins tonight, I would probably put this thread on ice for a while.
  20. I was responding to the fact that RT took over the #3 KenPom team and simply illustrating that it doesn't mean that team was guaranteed to make the Final Four. Obviously RT inherited a better team than Barnes did. But did he inherit a better situation? The team was in disarray for a month after Beard's arrest. The wheels could have easily fallen off. Rice... freaking RICE took us to OT the day it all went down. I give RT a ton of credit for righting the ship.
  21. It is so poetic that the game tonight is against Barnes. Tennessee has a much better team. They are ranked ahead of us in just about every single stat. If UT pulls this out, it is going to be funny AF.
  22. Counterpoint: Once Barnes had the #1 team in the country in mid-January and then lost 8 of 14 and was 1 and done in the tourney. That was a better team than we had last year. I dare say that 2010 would have had a better ending if Barnes had given the reigns to RT in mid January and took a sabbatical. He ground that team into the dirt. We have no way of knowing what would have happened with last year’s team if Beard had remained at the helm. He probably would have done as well or better than RT, but it isn’t a guarantee.
  23. That whole graphic is stupid AF.
  24. I think he is a player you want to keep and develop. He was a national top-50 player coming out of high school. If he sticks around, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a contributor next year.
  25. He is athletic and someone I thought might end up getting minutes by the end of his career. But really, we will be able to find better players through the portal. Best for everyone for him to move on to somewhere he can get minutes.
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