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shadow_operative

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Everything posted by shadow_operative

  1. i really had to fight the urge to draft morehead and longwood back to back.
  2. the kenpom data points to perimeter offense/defense as a major key in this one.
  3. rock is one of the more well liked coaches in all of cbb when it comes to his peers, especially those who’ve been around for awhile. i know there’s a lot of coaches and former coaches out there with titles shot rooting for rick to win one.
  4. tennessee is a terrible matchup for us, but i could totally see creighton beating them. that game would be a total toss up imo. that would be another case where barnes “underachieved” by losing to a really good team whose floor is the elite 8. of course he’ll probably just lose to csu and avoid that altogether. lol
  5. yeah i can’t root against Texas, but if we do lose to tennessee in the second round it will have the least amount of sting to any tourney loss we’ve ever had. at this point im just crossing my fingers that both teams actually make it to the round of 32, and otherwise trying not to think about it lol. if the matchup does happen i will have mixed emotions regardless of the ourcome.
  6. some really tough losses in there, particularly that OT loss to purdue when carsen edwards went nuts and hit a last second shot to send it to OT. there’s also some not-so-brutal losses in there that get characterized as bad losses because barnes builds a really good regular season team out of spare parts only to lose “early” in the tourney. for example: that team losing to hunter dickinson’s michigan team was considered a bad loss. tennessee fans were just about done with barnes after this one. then you look back at the roster and you go, “that team won 27 games and the SEC title? how?”. he’s simply a great regular season coach whose philosophy tends to lead to tourney disappointment. no shame in that. just lots of frustration.
  7. my bad, my blunder. had to revise mine too. here is my official picks:
  8. this is an oft repeated misconception. this famously happened with his 2010 team, and people have acted like this has been the case every single time his teams don’t play to their seed. in reality barnes usually has one of the most in-shape, highly tuned teams in the tourney. after all he has employed todd wright and TW’s protege garrett madenwald to be in charge of this stuff, and TW is the best to ever do it. it’s not about his teams being physically or mentally broken down, it’s about his roster composition/play style and the fact that winning in the tourney is hard. also, rick barnes will often have a typical conference run that most any good team has, only to have it be characterized as a breakdown by Texas fans with an axe to grind. his team will lose 6-7 games between january and early march (5 road games, a home loss to the best team in the league, and one wtf loss, aka a typical conference record for a top 15-20 team) and Texas fans will go, “see, his team is breaking down!” our fans love to come out of the woodwork to pound their chest and pat themselves on the back every year for calling rick barnes a choker, when in reality almost nobody here actually watches his teams or keeps up with what’s going on at Tennessee. plenty of people who otherwise never post or give their own takes or opinions suddenly show up to go, “oH MusT Be MArcH aGAin!!!”. they couldn’t name two tennessee players, but they’ll always have an opinion on barnes and the job he’s doing.
  9. barnes (and kelvin sampson, and some other coaches) build teams that are set up to win a lot in the regular season and then lose early in the gauntlet that is the ncaa tourney. their entire philosophy is defense-first (causing havoc, blocking shots, creating TO’s, being able to switch everything, etc), rebounding second (especially on the offensive end), and then offense/shooting third. when you watch a kelvin sampson team you usually see five guys on the court between 6’4” and 6’9”, they’re all wildly athletic, and they’re all trained to be tenacious defenders and rebounders. barnes will go for a more traditional lineup size-wise (zeigler and aidoo for example), but the basic principles and tenets of their philosophy remains the same. sampson likes to play a very thin roster all year long- 7 guys getting all of the minutes, with a pretty thin bench. barnes likes to go deep into his bench all year long, but come tourney time you’re really only going to play 6-7 guys a lot of minutes. so now it comes down to, “what can those 7 guys do?” and for sampson, can his team avoid injury and/or foul trouble. well, what those 7 guys can do is defend, and rebound, and be athletic, and go hard af for 40 minutes. what they usually can’t do is create their own shot, or even consistently knock down open looks. they depend on getting those offensive rebounds for a lot of their offense, and essentially by design they are going to have poor shooting days. on those days, pretty much any team that’s made the round of 32 can beat a rick barnes or a kelvin sampson team. another thing i’ll say is that if you look at a lot of barnes’ underachieving in the tourney he’s either lost really close games to teams that made the EE/FF, or he’s gotten screwed. the man has been star crossed, snake bit, whatever you want to call it- the guy has had some brutal luck in the tourney. with that said, when he’s had a dominant player leading the way he’s done well. when he’s had a TJ Ford, DJ Augustin, or LA + PJ he’s gone to the EE or FF. this year he has dalton knecht. maybe knecht will be the x factor this year and take barnes back to the FF. i know that’s what i’m rooting for.
  10. srr50 takes duquesne and colgate @Huckleberry
  11. mcneese state’s schedule is hilarious: i guess devry and le cordón bleu were booked.
  12. what do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?
  13. ok, for will wade, but what about every single other good coach in america? especially those good enough for texas. we’ve already talked about plenty of them. •dan hurley took over terrible programs at wagner and uri and immediately turned them around; then he got to uconn and won the national title and has them as the prohibitive favorite to repeat. •bill self won at oral roberts and tulsa before dominating at illinois and kansas •nate oats was awesome at buffalo. how bad has buffalo since he left? they were #22 in kenpom his last year there, they are #348 this year. •bruce pearl won at milwaukee, then tennessee, and now auburn •rick barnes won at providence, then clemson, then texas, and now tennessee we could keep going all night. good college basketball coaches win everywhere they go, and then they climb the ladder. it’s what they do. i’m sure there are outliers, but 9/10 good college basketball HC’s are good HC’s everywhere they go for their entire careers. they don’t spend a decade doing nothing of note as a HC only to take a downward move in year 27 of their d-1 coaching career.
  14. it was really cool of the selection committee to throw csu a totally hapless opponent to get them primed and ready to play us in the actual tournament two days from now.
  15. i made a joke about them not scoring nine more total points after they’d hit 14, and since that joke they are literally on pace to score 0 more points. it’s unbelievable.
  16. 2011 VCU was #84 in kenpom when they received an at-large bid. will forever be the worst at-large bid of all time. it is truly unbelievable to think about how much shaka smart owes to that selection committee. that’s like some “sell your soul to the devil” type shit right there. it defies all explanation and he owes his entire career to that one completely inexplicable decision by the tourney committee.
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