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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. I love my new KenPom subscription so I can combat disingenuous shitposts.
  6. Looks to me like this year finished with a better defense than 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2021. Based on national rankings.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. If by “far better” you mean “exactly the same national rank according to KenPom” then I agree with you.
  10. Wat no wai. First anyone has mentioned it in this thread.
  11. 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.
  12. If he wins tonight, I would probably put this thread on ice for a while.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. That whole graphic is stupid AF.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. I have zero doubt we would have lost last night with Shaka coaching.
  20. I think of Avery Benson.
  21. Yes, I agree. I think Westbrook is his best comp. He is going to be unstoppable if he can add 10-15 pounds of muscle, gets more confident with his 3-ball and gets his free throws up into the mid 80s.
  22. This is exactly why he is coming off the bench. Would you rather have a second lineup with Horton, Brock and Shedrick? That group is slow footed AF. Weaver provides a great spark to the second unit, and it isn't really needed on the first unit with Dillon Mitchell out there. He still doubled Horton's minutes and was in the closing group. I can't understand why people can't see that the composition of the different lineups matters tremendously, and Weaver is better in the 2nd unit (also going against the other team's second unit).
  23. Man this dude balled out yesterday. Has me wondering about his maximum upside. At 6-3, he has NBA point guard size. And he definitely has enough athleticism to play at that level. Most of his efficiency stats are up this year, despite playing better competition. Last year he was a 40% shooter from 3 on reasonable volume. In conference last year, he shot 45% from 3 on 2.7 attempts per game. I think the game will slow down for him over the next year and he is going to be really, really good.
  24. Let me just repeat that CSU was ranked higher than us on KenPom prior to the game. And CSU just beat the ever loving shit out of Virginia. I mean, beat them so bad that it may actually set their program back by a few years. And Virginia was the 3rd ranked team in... wait for it... the ACC. NC State finished 10th in the ACC for reference. The Virginia game was in hand for the entire 2nd half. If CSU wasn't rested, that is on them. They could have pulled their starters with 15 minutes to go in that game.
  25. Part of Disu's frustration was caused by the fact that their bigs were lowering their shoulders and offensive fouling constantly. Then he gets called for ticky tack fouls and is sent to the bench. He could never get in a rhythm either inside or from the perimeter. We won, so nobody it talking about it much, but I thought the game was called in a way that favored CSU bigtime. The ending foul disparity didn't look so bad because of all the intentional fouls at the end. Tennessee is going to be an even more physical matchup, unfortunately.
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