NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Thread

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Bigs23 said:
It’s not just UNC. They outpace everyone. UK was there with them for a time.

I’m thinking they have always paid better and because they get the best they have a long list of NBA stars to point to and the most popular brand.

The most impressive thing Roy Williams did was break even vs dook even with a distinct talent disadvantage for most of his time at UNC.
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Roy Williams was the best coach in CBB ‘03-‘17 no contest. But it does nothing for UNc now.
 
stankeylegjones said:
You are simply foolish to think that Cal only cares about winning. Or to think that Scheyer only cares about winning. And, by the way, you're also foolish to think that some players at UNC didn't stop going to classes in the spring semester of their final year.
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I said "a lot of players would stop going to class" -- that wasn't 100% clear but I was referring to a lot of players everywhere, in contrast to Duke's much more eager embrace of the idea from the outset. I don't think it matters whether I was or wasn't clear -- you have a history of exceedingly ungenerous and ungrounded "interpretations" of things I write. I don't know why you get so aggressive and impolite when talking about basketball.

I'm sure Cal and Scheyer care about other things. Like their bank accounts. Or their family. Or national politics. Usually when we say people "only care about winning," we don't mean it literally as to the exclusion of everything else in their lives.

I have no idea what Scheyer or Cal care about, but Duke and UK gave up the pretense of "student athlete" a long time ago, a lot longer ago than most schools. And as we are painfully aware from experience, that simply would not fly at UNC.
 
superrific said:
I said "a lot of players would stop going to class" -- that wasn't 100% clear but I was referring to a lot of players everywhere, in contrast to Duke's much more eager embrace of the idea from the outset. I don't think it matters whether I was or wasn't clear -- you have a history of exceedingly ungenerous and ungrounded "interpretations" of things I write. I don't know why you get so aggressive and impolite when talking about basketball.

I'm sure Cal and Scheyer care about other things. Like their bank accounts. Or their family. Or national politics. Usually when we say people "only care about winning," we don't mean it literally as to the exclusion of everything else in their lives.

I have no idea what Scheyer or Cal care about, but Duke and UK gave up the pretense of "student athlete" a long time ago, a lot longer ago than most schools. And as we are painfully aware from experience, that simply would not fly at UNC.
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I didn't mean to come across as aggressive or impolite. I was just trying to highlight that most schools at this level make it easier for their athletes, and academics is no longer an issue for them, regardless of where they go to school.

A student athlete at UNC is the same as a student athlete at Duke or UK. Period.

And I was saying that Cal and Scheyer definitely care about their players as people. Yes, they also care about winning. But, that is not a bad thing, imo. After all, we recently had a coach who, by all accounts, cared more about winning than anyone else.
 
stankeylegjones said:
Then what are you saying?
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1. Well, first, my post doesn't reference HD in any way. It's not responding to any post referencing HD either. In such circumstances, immediately jumping to a conclusion that I must be talking about HD seems incredibly foolish. The presumption should be, I would think, that a post not mentioning a person is probably not about that person in any way. You seem to be applying some opposite presumption, that I don't say what I mean and -- I mean, are you applying this to me? If ever there was a poster on this message board who says what they mean and mean what they say, isn't it me?

2. The post was in reference to your post about how K picked a really good replacement. That appears to be a judgment based on this year, because it sure wasn't based on their talent level versus results in the past couple of years. They were 3 seeds with a lineup of 1, 2 and 4 ranked HS players in the country. They had one of the leading contenders for NBA ROY this year, and they were still a 3 seed and didn't make waves in the tournament.

And the point was that judging a coach by how good his team is THIS YEAR with insane talent leads to severe distortions. And it's especially true when the team has an elite rim defender, like Clingan and a couple of Dukies this year (including Flagg). Rim protection, of course, is not really coachable. A little bit, but mostly not.

Now maybe the recruiting gravy train will never stop for Duke, and Scheyer can go on coaching with talent on par with bad NBA teams. I don't think that makes him a good coach, in an age where recruiting is more about writing checks than anything. It's just not that hard to win with Cooper Flagg.

We would have won it all last year, regardless of our coach, if we had Wemby. In fact, I don't think we would have lost a game with Wemby, unless Wemby was injured. Maybe one or two. I would say that most DI coaches would win a championship with Wemby, assuming decent talent around him -- decent being a key word. A team that would finish middle of the pack in the ACC without Wemby would be a national champion with him. Point is, talent matters. A lot.

The mark of a good coach is what happens when the talent level sags a bit. UNC was improbably good in 06, after we lost more or less our whole championship team. That was Roy's best coaching job, in my opinion. He did less well in 2010, after we lost our 2009 team and the next season was something of a mess (to put it mildly).
 
stankeylegjones said:
A student athlete at UNC is the same as a student athlete at Duke or UK. Period.
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Rasheed Sulaimon and PJ Hairston say hi.

The idea that student athletes at every school are "the same" seems absurd given our ample experience with teams who cheat. if Zion got $100K to attend Duke, then he wasn't the same, was he? If he never had to go to class, he wasn't the same.

My brother was at Duke same time as Chris Duhon. He said that Duhon was a known drunk who was aggressive at parties and other social events. Saw Duhon clock one of his friends for no real reason.

Contrast that to a slightly different experience I had, when I was staying with a friend in a Carrboro apartment for a few days. One night the people next door were throwing a party and it was loud. I opened the front door to ask them to keep it down, and VC and 'Tawn and I think Oku were standing right there. I said, "hey, I'm trying to study. Can you keep it down a bit." Guess what? They went inside the other apartment and kept it down for a few minutes, before everyone left.

I guess a single anecdote of people not being dickheads doesn't prove much, but I still believe that Dean and Gut and then Roy required a certain level of decorum and responsibility from their players that K simply did not -- at least as long as the players are good.
 
stankeylegjones said:
I didn't mean to come across as aggressive or impolite. I was just trying to highlight that most schools at this level make it easier for their athletes, and academics is no longer an issue for them, regardless of where they go to school.

A student athlete at UNC is the same as a student athlete at Duke or UK. Period.

And I was saying that Cal and Scheyer definitely care about their players as people. Yes, they also care about winning. But, that is not a bad thing, imo. After all, we recently had a coach who, by all accounts, cared more about winning than anyone else.
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So you’re saying HD doesn’t care about his players as people?

See what I did there?
 
What is the deal with his NCAA tournament? Clemson had 13 at the half. Georgia was down 27-3 halfway through the first half. Now Tenn has 8 points in over 15 minutes.
 
superrific said:
1. Well, first, my post doesn't reference HD in any way. It's not responding to any post referencing HD either. In such circumstances, immediately jumping to a conclusion that I must be talking about HD seems incredibly foolish. The presumption should be, I would think, that a post not mentioning a person is probably not about that person in any way. You seem to be applying some opposite presumption, that I don't say what I mean and -- I mean, are you applying this to me? If ever there was a poster on this message board who says what they mean and mean what they say, isn't it me?

2. The post was in reference to your post about how K picked a really good replacement. That appears to be a judgment based on this year, because it sure wasn't based on their talent level versus results in the past couple of years. They were 3 seeds with a lineup of 1, 2 and 4 ranked HS players in the country. They had one of the leading contenders for NBA ROY this year, and they were still a 3 seed and didn't make waves in the tournament.

And the point was that judging a coach by how good his team is THIS YEAR with insane talent leads to severe distortions. And it's especially true when the team has an elite rim defender, like Clingan and a couple of Dukies this year (including Flagg). Rim protection, of course, is not really coachable. A little bit, but mostly not.

Now maybe the recruiting gravy train will never stop for Duke, and Scheyer can go on coaching with talent on par with bad NBA teams. I don't think that makes him a good coach, in an age where recruiting is more about writing checks than anything. It's just not that hard to win with Cooper Flagg.

We would have won it all last year, regardless of our coach, if we had Wemby. In fact, I don't think we would have lost a game with Wemby, unless Wemby was injured. Maybe one or two. I would say that most DI coaches would win a championship with Wemby, assuming decent talent around him -- decent being a key word. A team that would finish middle of the pack in the ACC without Wemby would be a national champion with him. Point is, talent matters. A lot.

The mark of a good coach is what happens when the talent level sags a bit. UNC was improbably good in 06, after we lost more or less our whole championship team. That was Roy's best coaching job, in my opinion. He did less well in 2010, after we lost our 2009 team and the next season was something of a mess (to put it mildly).
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You're right, I do compare coaches to HD and programs to UNC. This is based on my fandom. But, maybe I shouldn't, idk.

I was basing it off of the entire time Scheyer has been at Duke, 3 years - in which they've never finished outside of the top 3, have been to the elite 8 in two of those three years, now going to the final four, and the clear favorite to win it all, and they seem to be headed to continue to perform at that level in the future.

I'm more cautious than you about declaring team X would have won it all if they had player Y, but I do agree that UNC would be the clear favorite if you add Wembanyama to the roster last year.

Roy was definitely a great coach, imo too. And I do agree also that a mark of a good/great coach is if they can modify their approach, change their offensive philosophy, improve development, etc., to match their players - basically maximize the teams potential. Roy did this, for the most part. Other marks of a great coach is to be humble enough to seek out help from those folks who've demonstrated being good/great coaches, utilizing technology to improve your coaching/teaching, listening to others who are good/great at identifying talent that fits your style, and so on. Scheyer has done this, even with all the built-in advantages that folks point to when discussing Duke - the recruiting of HS and portal players. Hurley has done this too. Most of the other coaches who we label as good/great do this. Which begets the question, does HD do this?
 
superrific said:
Rasheed Sulaimon and PJ Hairston say hi.

The idea that student athletes at every school are "the same" seems absurd given our ample experience with teams who cheat. if Zion got $100K to attend Duke, then he wasn't the same, was he? If he never had to go to class, he wasn't the same.

My brother was at Duke same time as Chris Duhon. He said that Duhon was a known drunk who was aggressive at parties and other social events. Saw Duhon clock one of his friends for no real reason.

Contrast that to a slightly different experience I had, when I was staying with a friend in a Carrboro apartment for a few days. One night the people next door were throwing a party and it was loud. I opened the front door to ask them to keep it down, and VC and 'Tawn and I think Oku were standing right there. I said, "hey, I'm trying to study. Can you keep it down a bit." Guess what? They went inside the other apartment and kept it down for a few minutes, before everyone left.

I guess a single anecdote of people not being dickheads doesn't prove much, but I still believe that Dean and Gut and then Roy required a certain level of decorum and responsibility from their players that K simply did not -- at least as long as the players are good.
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? You switched it from academics to character flaws. We were talking about attending classes and coursework expected of student athletes.

(Not sure why you are lumping PJ in with Rasheed. PJ was never accused of sexual assault, Rasheed was twice.)
 
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stankeylegjones said:
? You switched it from academics to character flaws. We were talking about attending classes and coursework expected of student athletes.

(Not sure why you are lumping PJ in with Rasheed. PJ was never accused of sexual assault, Rasheed was twice.)
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If one school allows a player to get away with sexual assault until the quality of his play declined, what makes you think they wouldn't have different standards for academics as well?

I know PJ wasn't accused of sexual assault. That's the point. He was suspended over offenses that would be considered minor compared to sexual assault. And yet Roy brought down the disciplinary hammer more quickly and definitively than K did for the rapist.
 
stankeylegjones said:
You're right, I do compare coaches to HD and programs to UNC. This is based on my fandom. But, maybe I shouldn't, idk.

I was basing it off of the entire time Scheyer has been at Duke, 3 years - in which they've never finished outside of the top 3, have been to the elite 8 in two of those three years, now going to the final four, and the clear favorite to win it all, and they seem to be headed to continue to perform at that level in the future.
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You can think anything you want. You can compare a soup can to HD if you think it's helpful or titillating. Don't project that onto other people, who think differently and are not obsessed with making everything about HD.

Scheyer has been at Duke for 3 years, during which time he has arguably underperformed his talent twice and this year he basically can't overperform it. Nothing about his coaching tenure to date suggests an ability to do more than collect top recruits. In today's world, "recruiting" just isn't part of the job the way it used to be.
 
Bigs23 said:
Pretty much any coach can m the country could and should win big with dook’s talent. It’s pretty much always the best.
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True, but that's half the equation.

We need that level of talent to see if our staff is in line with theirs.
 
Meanwhile… Tennessee laid an egg in the first half. It will be difficult to climb their way out of that double digit hole against an elite defense like Houston’s. The lid was on that basket. Perhaps the lid remains on that basket for Houston in the 2nd half and Tenn can claw their way back into the game.
 
superrific said:
Hey remember when Dan Hurley was the most amazing coach in history because he stampeded through the tournament with multiple lottery picks?

And it's not simply that Duke has multiple lottery picks. Among them is a generational talent, the most talented college player since Durant.

Remember, Jerry Tarkanian (nobody's idea of a brilliant coach) also stampeded through an NCAA tournament when he had Larry Johnson.
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With NIL they probably win that second year also.
 
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