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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. I think it is as simple as this: If we make the tourney, he gets another year. To make the tourney we will have to win 3 of our next 6 to get to 7-11. That gets us a 50/50 shot. If we win 4 of 6, we are in.
  2. I will say... India has shit for NBA talent from a per capita perspective.
  3. Or you can take the all-time NBA player list and you get: Texas - 219 Vs. Indiana - 175 Illinois - 308 Ohio - 210 Kentucky - 121 Missouri - 77
  4. I don't think most people in Texas appreciate how much basketball talent there is in the basketball-loving parts of the country. And India is right in the middle of that part of the country. They love basketball around there. If we use the number of NBA players as a proxy for overall talent... Within 250 miles of Bloomington, you have 59 NBA players: Chicago (21) Indianapolis (8) St. Louis (6) Louisville (6) Columbus (3) Nashville (3) Others within the radius (12) Within 250 miles of Austin, you have 26 NBA players: Dallas (10) Houston (11) Other (5) It turns out WE are the ones who have to recruit nationally.
  5. Holy hell what a bad call. Pushoff much?
  6. Firing Terry midseason would be moronic. You don't do that unless you are backed into a corner due to off the court issues (see Beard). Even after the season, I wouldn't fire Terry unless we had someone that is a step change better guaranteed to take the job. I don't want someone who is going to take us from top-30 KenPom to top-20. Because we will be right back to replacing that person 5 years from now when we are trying to get to the top-10. There are a ton of coaches that are "better" than Terry, but there aren't too many who are a step-change better.
  7. Any word on Weaver? If he shut it down for the year, has he played too much to get a redshirt?
  8. I don't really frequent this board so I have no idea what any of these statements refer to. Lol. But if anyone has info to share, DM me. Or if they want more specifics, I can go into detail privately without doxing my nephew.
  9. My nephew is very good friends with Micah Hudson and remains close to him today. Micah has spent a good deal of time at my sister's house and she tells me that he is a great kid. His whole time at Tech and then the transfer and withdrawal from A&M has been bizarre. I'll just say that I'm pulling for the kid as he has been very kind to my nephew through some very difficult times.
  10. That was a bad shooting night. It happens. We missed so many wide open 3s. And we simply aren't good enough to still win when we play like that. Here is our updated probability distribution for conference play. That loss hurt quite a bit.
  11. Steph Curry moves better off the ball than just about any player in history. Derek Harper would have been run through about 10 screens before Curry got wide open 3s. Just like he does today.
  12. I don't see how you could watch the last Olympics and pick anyone except Steph. Jordan was by far the better all around player, but Steph edges him on the offensive end. What he does to space the floor is just incredible.
  13. I love Weaver. I'm far from giving up on him, I am just wary of re-integrating him at this late stage of the game... especially if his health isn't back to 100%. That said, given his unique attributes he should absolutely play in every game once he is healthy. He can completely change the complexion with his energy. I also don't really see Pryor eating into his minutes. Pryor should be getting all of his minutes at the expense of Kent and possibly Shedrick / Onyema when we go small ball (with Kaluma at the 5). For as bad as Kent has played, I still see some sparks. He had 3 offensive rebounds against Ole Miss. He also does some stuff that doesn't show up in the stat sheet like tip out rebounds that result in extra possessions. I agree with Derka that Pryor gives us some flexibility in a small ball situation. He also gives us a super long defensive lineup like: Larry + Mark/Tre + Pryor + Kaluma + Shedrick/Onyema
  14. I think people are reacting to the word "cupcake". The schedule is still brutal just by nature of being in the hardest conference in the last 20 years. For comparison, I picked 4 similar teams from the other power conferences... Texas (SEC) - Average NET of remaining opponents = 39.7 Baylor (B12) - Average NET of remaining opponents = 47.4 Ohio St (B10) - Average NET of remaining opponents = 49.3 St. Johns (Big East) - Average NET of remaining opponents = 67.4 Louisville (ACC) - Average NET of remaining opponents = 126.4 Maybe those other teams "look like top-25 teams" because they are constantly feasting on actual cupcakes. It is hard to look great when you are playing against Auburn and Tennessee.
  15. It is hardly a cupcake schedule. Seven of the eight remaining games are against Kenpom top-50 teams including #6 Alabama. Just about every game is against the equivalent of a tourney team. Most D1 teams don't face a stretch of games that hard all year. It just seems easy compared to the brutal early schedule. Net and KenPom are ranking us appropriately. We can beat anyone. We only lost by 5 to #1 Auburn and by 4 to #4 Tennessee. We should have beaten Ole Miss on the road. We can be frustrating AF, but will be a very hard out for whoever plays us. And we are getting better.
  16. Lower is better. Lol. Pryor has been a huge lift. I was looking at Hollinger's "Game Score" (a kind of simplified PER). Pryor had a GmSc of 10.1 last game which was better than Kaluma and better than any game Kent has had all year. In fact, Kent has had a negative GmSc in 6 of his last 9 games. He is a better player than he is showing on the court, but for whatever reason he isn't fitting in well at all on this squad. Pryor on the other hand has the athleticism to contribute right now in a big way. He reminds me a little of Dillon Mitchell flying around on defense and attacking the glass. Except Pryor can actually shoot the ball. Kudos to Terry for getting him more playing time. Some coaches are stubborn about sticking with a rotation, but RT has shown that he will adjust. At this point, I want to see him getting 20+ mpg spread between the 3 and the 4. Also Shedrick had a nice game. He isn't my favorite player, but when we play teams without dominant big men he can be an asset.
  17. Also of note, this year we are following a similar pattern to last year in that we bottomed out in early January and then seemed to get better as the year went on and the team learned to play together. Last year our worst KenPom ranking was Jan 20th when we were ranked #48. We then steadily improved all the way up to finishing at #24. At this exact point, we were #36. This year, our worst KenPom ranking was on Jan 7 when we were ranked #43. We have been gradually improving and are up to #29, which is higher than last year.
  18. Here is the updated probability distribution based on KenPom game odds. Things are definitely looking up. 44% chance that we finish at 10-8 or better. That probably gets us a 6-seed. We are playing a lot better, and our schedule finishes a LOT easier than it started. We will be favored in at least 6 of our last 9 games, and the games where we aren't favored are toss-ups. It is the opposite for a lot of teams that are currently higher than us in the SEC standings. Vandy will likely finish 7-11. Kentucky and Miss. St could end up 8-10. We could finish as high as 6th or 7th, which might get us all the way up to a 4-5 seed.
  19. Disagree. I think most coaches would consider UTEP to be a step up. Since Fresno joined D1 (1970), they have only made the NCAA tourney 6 times (1 vacated). UTEP in that same timeframe has gone 13 times including a sweet 16. And this isn’t even including UTEP’s national title in 1966. It isn’t a big step up, but it is a step up. And for RT it should have been a great move to get him back to his recruiting base. We are going to eventually whack RT. It will be interesting to see where he winds up.
  20. RT did a pretty solid job at Fresno. He took them to the tourney for the first time in 15 years (longer than that if you consider Tark put them on probation to get there). And he was steadily improving their recruiting and final KenPom ranking. He finished his time there averaging 22 wins in his last 3 years, which was good enough to get a better gig at UTEP. I’m sure an elite coach like Self, Izzo, Beard, etc would have done even better, but it wasn’t a failure by any stretch of the imagination.
  21. I can see people supporting RT if the bar for success is Texas' previous history. He has already done better than Shaka. He is trending better than Tom Penders. He is doing better than Barnes last four years. He won the same number of tourney games in his first true year as Chris Beard did (and took Beard's team to the Elite 8). In UT's history, there is really only a period of about nine years with Rick Barnes that are better than what Terry is delivering. None of that is good enough. We have the money (if the right coach extracts it). We have the arena. We have the practice facilities. We have a prime regional recruiting base as well as national appeal. We have a slew of NBA players to leverage. We are in one of the best cities in the world. UT basketball should be an absolute winning machine similar to most of our other sports. Terry will never get us to that level.
  22. Beard is a 10/10 promoter. Literally the best that there is in college basketball. If he would have been here for 5 years, a UT hoops ticket would be the hottest seat in town. He would have packed the Erwin Center. Having a brand new Moody was icing on the cake.
  23. On second thought, that game should be higher up on my list of painful games. Sooooo frustrating.
  24. I will give Beard credit for completely and totally changing the culture with the fans though. He is an amazing promoter and there was an energy around the program. He also got guys like Ramey playing great defense.
  25. Are you saying that a 6-seed met expectations with that group? Not for me. 1st team All-conference in the Pac-10 isn't a 2nd tier player. Neither is 2nd team all-conference in the Big 12. You would also expect 2nd and 3rd team All-Conference players to improve the following year, as they get better and other players leave. Beard got nothing out of Tyson. He got nothing out of Askew. He got nothing out of Tre Mitchell. They all under-performed, and some of that falls on Beard. If they sucked that bad he shouldn't have recruited them. C'mon, not even close. He inherited three senior guard starters off an NCAA 3-seed team, of which Andrew Jones and Courtney Ramey were both All-Conference. Cunningham also returned and was a 15 mpg contributor. Those are great building blocks.
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