Jump to content

SL Xpress

Full Members
  • Posts

    3735
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. My overwhelming feeling after the ACU loss was similar to how I felt when Charlie Strong lost to Kansas. Relief. Finally it's over and we can get someone else. Surely the next person won't be able to kick my fandom nuts with their tenure any harder than Smart did over his 6 years. Surely.
  2. I love that this thread stays active. I follow sports for entertainment, and it's entertaining for me to root against every former coach from Texas. I will always hope and expect Shaka Smart to fail. The truth is there haven't been a bunch of coaches leave Texas and then go on to enjoy spectacular success. Richard Quick for women's swimming, and Mick Haley for volleyball. I can't recall any others in my lifetime. Rick Barnes has done well in the regular season, but unfortunately for him that's not how coaches are measured career wise. Mack Brown is having mixed results at North Carolina, but he's not doing poorly. In any case, I'd love to see Shaka Smart completely flame out at Marquette. I'm expecting it. And I'm never getting past it. Don't want to.
  3. Here's a pretty comprehensive deep dive into infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) and armored personnel carriers (APC) being utilized in the Ukraine war. It's an hour and eight minute narrated powerpoint basically, that talks a little about the history of these vehicles, the number each side ostensibly had at the beginning of the conflict, the number destroyed during the war (he admits it's not exact, but he still feels like extrapolations can be made from the data available), the importance of these vehicles, future supplies and where they'll come from. One of the things he leaves off, possibly because it's not that pertinent, is that prior to 2014 Ukraine was a decent sized producer of BMP-2s. The ties between the Russian and Ukrainian defense manufacturers were still very close after the fall of the USSR. However, they were almost exclusively for export only, so not many made it into service in the actual Ukrainian army, especially since Yanukovych was deliberately sabotaging the effectiveness/budget of the military in favor of the internal police. I feel like it's an outstanding overview. A lot of basic information many of you are already well aware of, but he does a great job of setting the stage for his later conclusions. Start at the timestamp 50:19 to bypass a lot of the background.
  4. I have always found it fascinating that the two biggest countries engaged in territorial conquest in WWII ostensibly chose peace afterwards, but shifted their predatory cultural tendencies into export driven economies.
  5. He's made two Elite Eights in a row after they've been wandering in a really dry desert for a long long time. Much longer than us. Before Musselman, the last time they made the Sweet 16 was in '96 (and that was as a #12 seed). That was 5 coaches ago. As Charlton Heston would say, we'll have to pry Musselman from their cold dead hands. I'm not ruling anything out, whether I'm surprised in a good way or a bad way. But it won't be because Arkansas fans suddenly become less enamored with their head coach. They know they've struck gold. I'll patiently wait until after the season. We're going to hear so many bullshit rumors until then, with no one knowing what the fuck is going on. Kirk Bohls' article being the latest. What a fucking tool.
  6. On the other hand, John Prine was pretty good. I mean, he's still alive, but not performing any more.
  7. There's talk of him shuffling his cabinet and putting a man in charge from one of the other ministries. A specific name was floated but I can't recall it right now. That's only one of the possibilities being floated. It's still a dumb policy.
  8. It doesn't matter. Players can move on. They're not going to stay because Terry was kept as an assistant, and it's not worth trying to create continuity if you're hiring the wrong coach to do it. Which Terry is. The right coach will get his players in quickly. Especially with the portal and the people committed to making NIL work. Edit - btw, the more staff that we keep on in Austin, the more staff that will be gutted once Beard gets another job, especially a decent one, which I think is going to happen extremely quickly after the charges are dropped. It's extraordinarily doubtful we're hiring anyone as charismatic as Beard, who support staff will stick around for even though Beard is the one who hired them. Unless the wage discrepancy is so high they simply don't see themselves being able to afford the move.
  9. The conference slate is heavily back loaded, too. I don't know. I don't see any way Terry does well enough to keep the job, but I'll have that fear until the season is over.
  10. He's not a recruiting witch. He's a good recruiter. Not a great recruiter. If things hadn't happened with Beard and Terry had left for somewhere else, the staff wouldn't have missed a beat. He's loyal, and he knows the ends and outs of the UT hierarchy and money guys. That's valuable, but it's not something that can't be learned by someone else. This idea that he's some kind of recruiting god gets parroted around here a lot. He's not, and he never has been. He's good, not great. I wouldn't mind seeing him stay on staff if that's what he and the new guy chooses, but I won't be shedding any tears if he and UT have to part ways. I'll be grateful for his time at Texas, and especially stepping in in an inadequate way under difficult circumstances.
  11. I can't speak to being "fancy enough." I don't think I care about fancy all that much, although I'm not sure what you mean by it here. But Rodney Terry didn't exactly just step on the 40 acres. He was a long time assistant under Barnes. I didn't have a great opinion of him then. I always liked the other assistants on staff more than him. Frank Haith. Rob Lanier. Russ Springmann. I didn't like his command of X's and O's. I thought he was a good recruiter, but not necessarily great. He was always extremely loyal to Barnes - EXTREMELY - and I'm assuming the same could be said for Beard. But I have no faith in him being a top 10 in the country type head coach. And his track record at Fresno State and UTEP dove tails with that. Frankly, when I watch the team play with him in charge post arrest, they're not as organized, the substitution patterns don't make as much sense, they're not as fundamentally sound on both ends of the floor - the team just isn't as good. It's a step down from Beard on virtually every level. I don't want to put up with multiple years of that. So I don't know if that means I'm automatically writing him off, but I'm definitely writing him off. Hey, he's got an extended job interview right now. He makes a deep run in the tournament, they're going to have to keep him. That's just how it is.
  12. That's not realistic. You can't recruit with a one year deal. And Texas is going to pay him a market rate for a head coach. It won't be $5m per year, but they're not going to cheapen the deal. Not to mention he's going to get 4 years regardless, unless he's Charlie Strong bad. Texas has had so few Elite Eight runs in its history - never mind Final Fours, of which it only has 1 in the 64 team era, and one more in the 40s when only 4 teams were invited. You have to give him the job at that point. I wouldn't be happy with it, because there is nothing Rodney Terry is going to do this year to make me a believer. But he'd certainly deserve it, regardless of my feelings about him as a coach. I guess you have to give him the job with a Sweet Sixteen run. Although man, I really struggle with that one. Rodney Terry is not a leader. Honestly, I'm just kind of dreading it. Which sucks. I really want to see who Texas can bring in. I'm hopeful we can make another really great hire.
  13. Oh, fuck off. I made a cheeky reply to someone talking about people taking the Beard fuck up hard. Everything since then has been replies to you. If you don't want to hear my bitching, quit trying to lecture me on how to approach things. If you'd just ignored me, you wouldn't have had to listen to me say shit.
  14. No. This team is not fun to watch for me, especially given their potential. They are winning, though, so that's good. But I preferred when there was a semblance of a plan and a vision. Hopefully next year. But I'm not going out of my way to bitch. That's the best I can do.
  15. I have no idea what that means. I'm waiting to see who the next coach is. I know who Terry is, and he ain't it. Maybe he gives everyone a magical season this year with a deep tourney run. Stranger things have happened.
  16. Guilty. My emotional investment in Beard as the coach at Texas for the remainder of my life turned out not to be a healthy approach. I feel like I've had the fandom virtually strangled right out of me.
  17. Or you could be wrong and you're measuring the wrong things. When you say "they don't have a track record of it" are you referring to the Texas athletic department in general? Or CDC specifically? CDC hasn't had the opportunity to strike lightning in a bottle twice really, because the people he inherited that are doing well, are still there, and the people who weren't doing well are now replaced by people who are, and he hasn't had to replace them. But if you want an example of getting hit by lightning multiple times in a row, you could always look at baseball. Gustafson, to Garrido, to Pierce. That's a pretty good trio, there. It hasn't happened in other sports really. Not consecutively like that. That's pretty rare in any case. But it has happened.
  18. Regardless of the rest of it, the idea that there's only one single coach who can be successful at a school like Texas is silly. True, there are way more out there that could fail than to succeed, but Calipari isn't the only one. I'd argue he isn't even one of them, but that's only my opinion. Whether a program is willing to do what it takes to succeed goes beyond whether they're willing to keep on a coach arrested for a felony domestic violence charge. I'd say it starts with admissions. Can talented players get into a school with minimum NCAA requirements? Check. Does Texas bend over backwards to accommodate transfers? Check. Used to not be the case a long time ago, but it's changed. Now about the only classes they won't accept from transfers are criminology courses. Just no equivalent at UT. Allegedly that was the issue with Bryson Williams being able to transfer in last year. A bummer, but it happens. Does Texas do whatever it can to support the players academically, including a lot of babysitting, mandatory study time with one on one tutoring, enrolling players in student athlete friendly course, to make sure they pass classes and stay eligible? Check. Does Texas pay outlandish amounts of money for recruiting visits, both for official and unofficial visits in an effort to get kids on campus as much as possible, involving third parties whenever necessary? Check. AAU coaches, trainers, hanger ons, they all get paid one way or another. Does Texas get involved in free agency, both out of high school and with transfers? Check and check. Does Texas pay a top 5 salary to their head coach in all of college basketball? Check. Does Texas pay an outrageous amount of money for a large support staff? Check. Does Texas have state of the art facilities, particularly when it comes to practice facilities and student athlete locker rooms? Check. These are the indices that indicate whether a program is willing to compete in the big time or not. Texas long ago gave up on the ideal of the true student athlete and entered the necessary gray area to win at a high level. They don't need Calipari. They do need someone in the top 10 in all of college basketball, and those guys are not easy to find. We had one, and he got arrested. Shit happens. Well, not that often, really. But it did happen. Now we need to find another one. I sure hope we do. But I don't even think Calipari is a top 10 guy right now. Let him go implode somewhere else, please.
  19. It doesn't just jeopardize their contracts with Germany. All countries have final say so's written into the contracts over where the hardware is sent from the purchasing country. The US especially. But not exclusively. They're as ubiquitous as conduct unbecoming clauses in basketball coach employment contracts. Those K2 tanks they're buying from Korea? Korea has final say so if Poland wants to send them somewhere else. And it doesn't just jeopardize new equipment purchases. It also jeopardizes existing supply chains to repair and maintain current hardware. From everyone. It's not feasible to broach that part of the contract. It sends a bad signal when you're willing to do that. That said, lots of countries are sending old Soviet stock to Ukraine without getting anyone's permission. It just depends on what kind of relationship you're wanting to maintain in the future.
  20. Wow. Straight for the jugular. Trigger warning next time, please.
  21. I would argue the entire Putin regime went full on sunk cost fallacy, and everyone else trying to gain power is simply following cues from their leader.
  22. Here's an interview with a chief sergeant who has been serving in Soledar with the 46th, but had to be pulled out due to hypothermia: https://wartranslated.com/interview-ukrainian-sergeant-soledar/ Probability of encirclement and quality of the enemy Reasons for the breakthrough of Soledar defense and the impact of its possible occupation on Bakhmut
  23. So here's the guy who has been given regular updates from Bakhmut, sans helmet this time. Also, he has his extremely hot sister with him to assist with today's report.
  24. I have the same concern. Of course, getting any kind of accurate casualty count is a fool's errand. Both Soledad and Bakhmut have some pretty valuable troops, too, in terms of experience and skill level.
×
×
  • Create New...