Hubert Davis Catch-all

[Turd Ferguson]

Words like "consistent" have meanings, you know. They aren't just all-purpose signifiers to hurl at a computer screen.

You don't think those programs have had more consistency the past 5 years?

 

[superrific]

You don't think those programs have had more consistency the past 5 years?

Well, you said consistency the last couple of years. Consistency requires, by definition, more than two data points. Five is about the bare minimum required to define consistent and even that's pushing it.

 

[Calheel]

Well, you said consistency the last couple of years. Consistency requires, by definition, more than two data points. Five is about the bare minimum required to define consistent and even that's pushing it.

There are 40 data points every year. Five years would be 200 data points.

 

[Batt Boy]

I'd like to get rid of the ACCT (and it may happen soon, as conferences look to be doing away with football champ games). Other than for NCSU runs, the ACCT is counterproductive to team goals. Just make the regular season two games longer and let us play State 2x a year and all the other teams once (and a random one twice).

Of the many concerns I have with Hubert, the ACCT is the least of them. And I think it conflates the analysis to treat all post-regular season category in the same bucket. NCAAT winning percentage is what matters.

It's surely most important. And I don't think the ACC Tournament means what it used to.

NCAA wise,

HD is 8-3 in 4 years
JS is 8-3 in 3 years

The trend for HD is 5-1, miss, 2-1, 1-1
The trend for JS is 1-1, 3-1, 4-1

 

[Calheel]

It's surely most important. And I don't think the ACC Tournament means what it used to.

NCAA wise,

HD is 8-3 in 4 years
JS is 8-3 in 3 years

The trend for HD is 5-1, miss, 2-1, 1-1
The trend for JS is 1-1, 3-1, 4-1

And more importantly, there has only been 1 year in 4 that Hubert performed above expectations in the tournament. And soon that will be 1 in 5.

Scheyer hasn’t overperformed either, but that is hard when you are always a 1 seed.

 

[NYCBlueBlood]

You don't think those programs have had more consistency the past 5 years?

The schools/coaches who were paying players before it was legal/allowed have a big head start on everybody else. There is no doubt we are in catch up mode, and a bit slow at it because HD/UNC resisted the idea of paying players even when it was allowed, sticking to the outdated belief that players should come here for the honor of wearing the UNC jersey. We now have a good budget, and this year we will have a GM staff in place for the entire recruiting/transfer cycle. We need to do better this cycle.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I suspect there is an ongoing effort to get there.

Raising the NIL budget was step 1.
Hiring a GM was step 2 along with talent evaluation.

Those have been in place for one season. Things improved then Caleb got shelved.

Step 3 and the hardest step is the coaching staff.

That's the next piece to the puzzle. Hubert has a season to see if the current group is the piece that fits. Without 1 and 2 in place it's harder to evaluate.

Given who he is, his legacy and the turmoil in CBB I believe keeping him has been the right course but I also think with those pieces in place it's now or never time.

But the inconsistency was still there even when Caleb was healthy. The losses to SMU, Stanford and Cal. A couple of times when they came out flat and had to come back. A couple of times where they had big leads and they could have lost.

 

[rodoheel]

So by the new standard I guess you would agree that kintuckee, UCLA, and Kansas are no longer elite programs and sinking fast based upon the last 4 years.

This raises an interesting question. Perhaps the blueblood era is soon to be over with the almighty dook** the only remining blueblood ?

Is it too early to say we need to rename the elite group replacing the bluebloods ?

UCLA is absolutely no longer an elite program. They are a former blue blood and we should be worried about having the same decline they did. They are a cautionary tale for us to avoid.

Kentucky, like us, is going through a rough patch and their coach is on the hot seat as a result. But even then they have been more consistently successful than us the last few years (2, 6, 3, 3, 7 seeds the last five years) despite a lack of postseason success - and they basically pushed out a HOF coach because they stopped being a contender. If Pope doesn't have them back in the top 10 next year he will probably be fired.

Kansas has been a little down the last couple years but nowhere close to as much as UNC, and of course they won the national title in 2022 and got a 1 seed again the following year before disappointing in the tourney. The 7 seed Self got last year is the only time in his entire coaching tenure he got lower than a 4 seed. They are definitely still a blue blood and while others have been better the last 5 years (especially in the B12, where the addition of Arizona and Houston along with the rise of ISU has challenged their hegemony) most would probably still consider them an elite program.

UNC's last 7 years have been missed tournament, 8 seed, 8 seed, missed tournament, 1 seed, 11 seed, 6 seed. If anyone thinks we will still be considered an elite program if the next 7 years look similar, you're crazy. We are in more danger than people realize of continuing to lose our national prestige at a precipitous rate. You can already see that our own fan base is starting to rationalize this level of performance, and before long we will be perfectly happy to just make the NCAAT most years.

 

[superrific]

There are 40 data points every year. Five years would be 200 data points.

A team with a record of 35-3 is consistent. More consistent than a team with a record of 24-11. When a team loses games it "shouldn't" that is because the team isn't that good.

If he wants to say that UNC hasn't been good, fine. But consistent here is being used disingenuously. Most of the conversation by now has devolved into irrelevant squabbles.

Here is the question to ask: would UNC be better off with a different coach? That's it. Full stop. The past is relevant only insofar as it informs the future. It actually doesn't matter much whether HD has lived up to the standards of excellence or however people want to describe our status. It only matters whether others can do better.

Of course, the point of a "standard of excellence" is that it affects the perception of what is possible, provided we account for changes to make those past standards easier or harder to maintain. If the university zeroed out the NIL funding, success to our previous standards would be impossible. By the same token, if we happened to get our hands on $500 million in unaccounted-for Venezuelan oil and put that into the NIL budget, the team better fucking win a championship.

The burden on the replacers is to not to show that we've been lousy. It's to show that we could do better. The burden on the loyalists is not to show that we've been good. It's to cast doubt that we would do better. Ideally, we would know the probability Y to get a new coach with a Z likelihood of exceeding our current performance by X. Then we simply risk-adjust X by Y and Z to determine our answer. Alas, determining the magnitude of variables like X, Y and Z is much more difficult than typing those letters, which is why I do not expect anyone to actually try that math explicitly. But that should be the mental model.

 

[Bigs23]

But the inconsistency was still there even when Caleb was healthy. The losses to SMU, Stanford and Cal. A couple of times when they came out flat and had to come back. A couple of times where they had big leads and they could have lost.

Okay, but they were playing better as the season went along which is really what you want.

 

[finesse]

The schools/coaches who were paying players before it was legal/allowed have a big head start on everybody else. There is no doubt we are in catch up mode, and a bit slow at it because HD/UNC resisted the idea of paying players even when it was allowed, sticking to the outdated belief that players should come here for the honor of wearing the UNC jersey. We now have a good budget, and this year we will have a GM staff in place for the entire recruiting/transfer cycle. We need to do better this cycle.

Yeah. we're at least eleven years behind Duke when it comes to recruiting in the modern style. They were one of the pioneers. That's assuming that there are no benefits accrued from being a private school. If you expect that a coaching hire is sufficient for us to match Duke's recruiting immediately, you're chasing a chimera. Using that as a standard for either Davis staying or hiring a new coach and expecting that from him is ridiculous. That will take time even in stable conditions.

 

[Calheel]

A team with a record of 35-3 is consistent. More consistent than a team with a record of 24-11. When a team loses games it "shouldn't" that is because the team isn't that good.

If he wants to say that UNC hasn't been good, fine. But consistent here is being used disingenuously. Most of the conversation by now has devolved into irrelevant squabbles.

Here is the question to ask: would UNC be better off with a different coach? That's it. Full stop. The past is relevant only insofar as it informs the future. It actually doesn't matter much whether HD has lived up to the standards of excellence or however people want to describe our status. It only matters whether others can do better.

Of course, the point of a "standard of excellence" is that it affects the perception of what is possible, provided we account for changes to make those past standards easier or harder to maintain. If the university zeroed out the NIL funding, success to our previous standards would be impossible. By the same token, if we happened to get our hands on $500 million in unaccounted-for Venezuelan oil and put that into the NIL budget, the team better fucking win a championship.

The burden on the replacers is to not to show that we've been lousy. It's to show that we could do better. The burden on the loyalists is not to show that we've been good. It's to cast doubt that we would do better. Ideally, we would know the probability Y to get a new coach with a Z likelihood of exceeding our current performance by X. Then we simply risk-adjust X by Y and Z to determine our answer. Alas, determining the magnitude of variables like X, Y and Z is much more difficult than typing those letters, which is why I do not expect anyone to actually try that math explicitly. But that should be the mental model.

That is a lot more mathematical and logical than most college coach decisions are made. Or professional for that matter.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

A team with a record of 35-3 is consistent. More consistent than a team with a record of 24-11. When a team loses games it "shouldn't" that is because the team isn't that good.

If he wants to say that UNC hasn't been good, fine. But consistent here is being used disingenuously. Most of the conversation by now has devolved into irrelevant squabbles.

Here is the question to ask: would UNC be better off with a different coach? That's it. Full stop. The past is relevant only insofar as it informs the future. It actually doesn't matter much whether HD has lived up to the standards of excellence or however people want to describe our status. It only matters whether others can do better.

Of course, the point of a "standard of excellence" is that it affects the perception of what is possible, provided we account for changes to make those past standards easier or harder to maintain. If the university zeroed out the NIL funding, success to our previous standards would be impossible. By the same token, if we happened to get our hands on $500 million in unaccounted-for Venezuelan oil and put that into the NIL budget, the team better fucking win a championship.

The burden on the replacers is to not to show that we've been lousy. It's to show that we could do better. The burden on the loyalists is not to show that we've been good. It's to cast doubt that we would do better. Ideally, we would know the probability Y to get a new coach with a Z likelihood of exceeding our current performance by X. Then we simply risk-adjust X by Y and Z to determine our answer. Alas, determining the magnitude of variables like X, Y and Z is much more difficult than typing those letters, which is why I do not expect anyone to actually try that math explicitly. But that should be the mental model.

How has it disingenuous? The program has not been consistent the past 7 years as it was just pointed out.

 

[superrific]

But the inconsistency was still there even when Caleb was healthy. The losses to SMU, Stanford and Cal. A couple of times when they came out flat and had to come back. A couple of times where they had big leads and they could have lost.

All teams are inconsistent. There have been games this year when Duke was either losing at halftime or basically tied. And in most of those games, they won the second half handily. You don't see the inconsistency because it doesn't matter much -- they are getting the W either way. That's what it means to be a good team. You have enough margin so that if you don't play your best, you still win.

Bad teams are bad because they don't have that margin. So their inconsistency is more glaring. If the team is supposed to be up 12 at halftime, and they are up 1, then they are underperforming their expectations by 11 points per half, or 22 a game. That's A LOT!. By the same token, if a team is supposed to be tied at half and they are down 11, that's the exact same inconsistency. It's just it feels bad because being down 11 is much worse than being tied.

UNC is worse this year, and has been worse in the past few years, than some other programs. Consistency is just a distraction.

 

[heelinhell]

UCLA is absolutely no longer an elite program. They are a former blue blood and we should be worried about having the same decline they did. They are a cautionary tale for us to avoid.

Kentucky, like us, is going through a rough patch and their coach is on the hot seat as a result. But even then they have been more consistently successful than us the last few years (2, 6, 3, 3, 7 seeds the last five years) despite a lack of postseason success - and they basically pushed out a HOF coach because they stopped being a contender. If Pope doesn't have them back in the top 10 next year he will probably be fired.

Kansas has been a little down the last couple years but nowhere close to as much as UNC, and of course they won the national title in 2022 and got a 1 seed again the following year before disappointing in the tourney. The 7 seed Self got last year is the only time in his entire coaching tenure he got lower than a 4 seed. They are definitely still a blue blood and while others have been better the last 5 years (especially in the B12, where the addition of Arizona and Houston along with the rise of ISU has challenged their hegemony) most would probably still consider them an elite program.

UNC's last 7 years have been missed tournament, 8 seed, 8 seed, missed tournament, 1 seed, 11 seed, 6 seed. If anyone thinks we will still be considered an elite program if the next 7 years look similar, you're crazy. We are in more danger than people realize of continuing to lose our national prestige at a precipitous rate. You can already see that our own fan base is starting to rationalize this level of performance, and before long we will be perfectly happy to just make the NCAAT most years.

Kansas over the last 4 seasons:
2022- beat us in the national championship game
2023- 24-8 2nd round NCAAT
2024 - 23-11 2nd round NCAAT
2025 - 21-13 1st round NCAAT

kintuckie over last 4 years:

2022 26-8 1st round NCAAT
22-12 2nd round NCAAT
23-10 1st round NCAAT
24-12 sweet 16

Has kintuckee been more successful ?
Has Kansas been down the last couple of years but" nowhere close" to us ?

It doesn't look like it in terms of record and performance in the NCAAT.

 

[rodoheel]

Here is the question to ask: would UNC be better off with a different coach? That's it. Full stop. The past is relevant only insofar as it informs the future. It actually doesn't matter much whether HD has lived up to the standards of excellence or however people want to describe our status. It only matters whether others can do better.

Of course, the point of a "standard of excellence" is that it affects the perception of what is possible, provided we account for changes to make those past standards easier or harder to maintain. If the university zeroed out the NIL funding, success to our previous standards would be impossible. By the same token, if we happened to get our hands on $500 million in unaccounted-for Venezuelan oil and put that into the NIL budget, the team better fucking win a championship.

The burden on the replacers is to not to show that we've been lousy. It's to show that we could do better. The burden on the loyalists is not to show that we've been good. It's to cast doubt that we would do better. Ideally, we would know the probability Y to get a new coach with a Z likelihood of exceeding our current performance by X. Then we simply risk-adjust X by Y and Z to determine our answer. Alas, determining the magnitude of variables like X, Y and Z is much more difficult than typing those letters, which is why I do not expect anyone to actually try that math explicitly. But that should be the mental model.

I actually fundamentally disagree with this premise. the question "would UNC be better off with a different coach?" is fundamentally impossible to answer. No one knows how much better or worse UNC will be with another coach, and we will never know that. So if you are waiting for a certain clear answer to address that question, you could be waiting forever, because short of HD suddenly going 8-20 you are never going to approach certainty. That approach is what would lead you to hang on to a mediocre coach for too long. Asking those who want to replace Hubert to "prove" that another coach would be better is stacking the deck against the people with that opinion, and fundamentally structuring the debate so that there's always a finger on the scale in favor of keeping Hubert.

Instead, the questions should be "What is the standard that UNC is aiming for in college basketball?" and "Are we confident the current coach is meeting, and can meet, that standard?" The standard doesn't have to be, and may not be, the standard that Dean or Roy set. But framing the discussion that way at least allows for dialogue about what the standard actually is - what our goals as a program are. Whereas if you frame the question "would UNC be better off with a different coach" you are bypassing the setting of any institutional standard in the first place, which I don't think is the right way to run any sort of enterprise.

 

[superrific]

That is a lot more mathematical and logical than most college coach decisions are made. Or professional for that matter.

Well, it's not really more mathematical. Just because I write down a formula with numbers that nobody knows doesn't mean I'm doing math. I mean, I could write out a Schrodinger equation using the loop integral over time of Bosco biorhythms as the Hamiltonian. That's not math, that's just a waste of time.

If what I wrote is more logical, then maybe we should aspire to do better than those coach decisions. I don't think it's controversial at all to focus on the actual question.

 

[superrific]

How has it disingenuous? The program has not been consistent the past 7 years as it was just pointed out.

Which is it, dude? First you said 2 years. Then 5. Now 7. It does seem as though someone has a problem with consistency. Maybe not who you think, though.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Which is it, dude? First you said 2 years. Then 5. Now 7. It does seem as though someone has a problem with consistency. Maybe not who you think, though.

Hubert has been there 5. Roy's last 2 years weren't good, either. So really it's 7. As it has been pointed out based on their record and seedings in the tournament, the results have been inconsistent.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Maybe it's just arguing over semantics. But the results have not been good enough for Carolina based on the history of the program and compared to other programs the past 5 years.