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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. If we're being honest, Beard's 21-22 Texas team underperformed. I mean, look at this roster... just full of senior All-Conference players. We had guys with 50+ starts buried deep on the bench. Marcus Carr, Senior - 3rd Team Big 10 Courtney Ramey, Senior - 3rd Team Big 12 Andrew Jones, Senior - 2nd Team Big 12 Timmy Allen, Senior - 1st Team All Pac 10 Tre Mitchell, Junior - 1st Team All A-10 Christian Bishop, Senior - Big East 4th in rebounding, 1st in TS% Jase Febres, Senior - 61 starts at Texas Dylan Disu, Junior - 48 starts at Vanderbilt Devin Askew, Soph - 5-star transfer Jaylon Tyson, Freshman - National top-35 recruit (#20 draft pick in 2024) Brock Cunningham, Junior Avery Benson, Senior - Culture guy That roster should have been better than a 6 seed. Yes, we go screwed in a bad matchup with Purdue, but that wouldn't have happened if we took care of business during the season. We got swept by F'ing Texas Tech. We lost to KU in OT. Lost in the first round of the B12 tourney to TCU. Lost a few more close games on top of that. In the end, we lost 12 games, worse than Shaka's 8 losses the year before. And only got a single tourney win.
  2. That's fair. I just had on the burnt orange blinders. That team was really good though, probably one of the top 3 most talented and experienced team we have ever had. We had won 8 of the last 10, had two wins over KU (3-seed), beat WV (3-seed), won 2 of 3 against Okie State (4-seed), beat Tech (6-seed), beat UNC and Indiana out of conference. And 5 of our 7 losses were by a combined 10 points. We had TEN national top-100 players on the team (compared to 5 this year). Our guards and key players were all juniors and seniors. It was a recipe for a deep run. Oh well, Shaka gonna Shaka. Give Tom Izzo that team and he might win a title. Good riddance.
  3. Especially when he is an alumni. Beard was the most no-brainer hire we have ever made.
  4. Kaluma needs to stop with the hero ball
  5. Shaka’s team that lost to ACU was really good. That loss was especially painful because both of my sisters went to ACU. They still give me shit about it and will likely have eternal scoreboard on me. Fooook!!! I really think if we had won that game we might have made the Elite 8 or better. If we won, we play #45 KenPom UCLA. We win that game, then we play #23 KenPom BYU. That is also winnable. Boom Elite 8 game against Michigan (that only ended up beating UCLA by 2). Matt Coleman was really good that year. And then we had 3 NBA front court players in Kai Jones, Jericho Sims and Greg Brown. Plus Courtney Ramey and a healthy Andrew Jones. That is a boat load of athleticism. The previous year Shaka closed the year winning 5 of 6 before Covid ended the season. The year before that, Shaka won his last 5 in a row, winning the NIT. If he wins that game, we were making a run. And if that happens, he might still be our coach.
  6. My ranking of painful losses, all in the NCAA tourney: 2021 - ACU - Absolutely horrendous loss as a 3 seed. F this loss. F Shaka. Still pissed. 2011 - Arizona - We were a legit title contender and got absolutely robbed 2023 - Miami - FT margin of 32-15. Cost us a shot at a Final Four in Houston 2008 - Memphis - Blowout loss in the Elite 8 to #1 Memphis showed how far we were from being elite 2006 - LSU - Overtime loss in the Elite 8 as a 2-seed to 4-seed LSU cost us a Final Four 2022 - Purdue - They mauled us while the FT margin was 46-12. Holy hell. 2016 - Northern Iowa - Half court buzzer beater they showed over and over
  7. I hated the way we were built last year. Our two starting guards were 5'10, and neither was really a true point guard. We had to keep the ball in Abmas' hands which kept him from really using his strengths off the ball. And bigger guards would abuse them. Horton was a one-dimensional shoot first gunner, who actually wasn't even good at that. Bro shot 39% from the field. Oof. And he was also a horrible defender and bad FT shooter. Mitchell was a good defender and rebounder, but had zero offensive game outside of dunking in transition. And he was a terrible FT shooter. Brock Cunningham had no ability to score outside of spot-up 3s. And every other part of his game regressed. Dylan Disu is the focal point of the team, but was extremely soft and constantly drifted out to the perimeter. He was constantly in foul trouble Shedrick was hurt all year and also soft AF Weaver was a nice surprise, but his game is also pretty poor outside of his transition game. So bottom line, we were small and soft AF, and the team wasn't constructed in a way to make up for the deficiencies of our star players. If we had a big, defense first guard that would have helped all of Abmas issues. And if we would have had a rim protector / rebounder, that would have let Disu float around in and out of the paint, and not get into constant foul trouble. Imagine how easy it was to defend this lineup: Abmas + Hunter + Brock + Mitchell + Disu. This year, we have a team full of lengthy guards and forwards. In just about every lineup we use, we have multiple players who can create off the dribble. Six of our top-7 players shoot over 35% from 3. Tre Johnson, Kaluma, Pope and Mark can all score over 30 points. This SHOULD be a much better team defensively. And they should be much harder to stop when we have the ball.
  8. Most actual fans have seen the potential in this group all year. I have been saying for a year that this team looks better constructed than last year’s group. But when you have sub-par coaching you get this type of inconsistency. We could easily miss the tournament. And we could get a favorable matchup and hit 3s and make the Elite 8. That has been the case all year.
  9. I have no idea what is going on in this thread now.
  10. HookEm

    Tre Johnson

    Tre’s draft profile, measurables, and stats aren’t that different from Klay Thompson coming out of college. If he can get drafted by someone who will develop him as a defender, it will help his all around game. He is a very aggressive competitor, but it needs to be channeled.
  11. Updated conference probability distribution based on KenPom single game odds: If we assume that 7-11 gives us a 50% shot to get in the tournament, then our tourney odds are about 80%. And we have better odds of going 10-8 in conference, which would probably be a 6-7 seed, than we do missing the tourney altogether.
  12. I have to give it to RT credit for the substitutions. I can’t believe we didn’t have Pope in as he’s probably our 3rd best player. But that lineup with him out kept clawing back into into it, and kept getting defensive stops. The formula seemed to be to get our best defenders on the court and let Tre Johnson take over on offense. It worked!
  13. Just getting around to watching this. About 10 episodes in. Enjoying it. Seems about on the level of Sons of Anarchy. The production values are ok, but a clear step down from something like Game of Thrones. It would have been amazing on HBO.
  14. Tommy Lloyd would crush it at Texas
  15. Obviously there are a lot of ways to measure the success of a program. A team getting a Final Four or a Title in 1940-1970 isn't really that relevant as far as I'm concerned. The KenPom "program ratings" take into account tourney success and computer rankings since 1997, which is longer than any recruit has been alive. And longer than many of their parents have even been actively following the sport. Just going on the computer ranking, Texas falls to #14 and Florida, Ohio State, Louisville and Wisconsin jump ahead of us. That seems about right to me. All that said, if a talented young coach is on the market, I don't think there are more than 4-5 schools that are more attractive than UT as a destination. Kentucky, Kansas, UNC... maybe UCLA and Duke. I think that's it. That doesn't mean that we will be able to pry a good coach away from Arizona, UConn or Florida. But if we are all bidding for an unattached coach, I think we win.
  16. KenPom has us as the #10 ranked program since 1997, and that includes some pretty lean years. If we aren't in the upper tier, we are very close to it, and absolutely have the potential to reach it.
  17. I agree. But then you look at our efficiency and somehow it is pretty good despite taking what feels like bad shots.
  18. Another thing... It feels like this team has more guys who can score 30 points than most other teams we have had. Pope, Johnson, Kaluma, Mark, and Kent have all scored 30+ in their career. Shedrick has scored 27. But then they will also disappear and score 6 points in a game. There is no consistency. Everyone is playing "my turn / your turn" basketball.
  19. Those teams were all great shooting teams, and the top players were probably better shooters than the 2025 team. I'm not really going to argue that this team is better, but they are definitely in the conversation. As a TEAM goes, this is the most efficient shooting team we have had in the last 30 years. 2004-2005 - 0.388 3P%, 0.456 FG%, 0.697 FT%, 0.524 eFG%, 0.558 TS% 2005-2006 - 0.372 3P%, 0.455 FG%, 0.727 FT%, 0.524 eFG%, 0.559 TS% 2009-2010 - 0.345 3P%, 0.466 FG%, 0.633 FT%, 0.511 eFG%, 0.536 TS% 2010-2011 - 0.376 3P%, 0.455 FG%, 0.654 FT%, 0.502 eFG%, 0.534 TS% 2024-2025 - 0.373 3P%, 0.483 FG%, 0.748 FT%, 0.550 eFG%, 0.586 TS% Of course, the numbers will likely get worse as we move through conference. But for how ugly this team plays offense, somehow the efficiency is as good as we have ever had. And we turn the ball over less than any other UT team except the 2008 Elite Eight team. I struggle to understand why we aren't better. Our defense isn't bad. I think if we were an elite rebounding team, we would have 2-3 more wins. Seems like our opponent getting offensive rebounds is what dooms us.
  20. Counterpoint: I don’t want Shedrick to get the ball down there. Assuming he catches the pass, half the time it gets stripped and he takes sooooo long to make a move.
  21. If my maths are right, he currently has a kid in HS. He also talks a lot about fly fishing, which seems to be his main hobby. His wife went to Gonzaga and he has spent his entire career there even before being head coach. And he is from that part of the country. I’m revising my odds down to 1%.
  22. If we win those 6 games, we are in 100%. 8-10 easily gets you in from the SEC this year. 7-11 might get you in depending on the specific wins and losses.
  23. I personally think Mark Few would be a great hire. He just turned 62, which is on the older end. But as we have covered, that is a lot younger than Barnes, Izzo and Sampson. Younger than Bruce Pearl. Same age as Bill Self (they were born on the same day, lol). He could be a very good coach for a decade. Even in the NBA you got guys like Popovich, Thibodeau and Carlisle who are still great coaches well into their 60s. Over the last 10 years, Gonzaga has a runner up finish, +3 Elite 8s, +3 Sweet 16s. And that doesn't include possibly their best team which was 31-2 in the lost Covid year. You would be hard pressed to find a better program over that stretch. Moreover, they play an fun brand of basketball with an offense that is consistently ranked in the top-5. This would be a slam dunk. But I put the odds at 10%. Why would he leave? I'm pretty certain we would be in the top-10 right now with only 1-2 losses.
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