NCAA Tournament Thread
- Thread starter Jack Williams
- Start date
These last six seasons has Sampson and Izzo in a battle for best tournament coach.
looking at sweet 16, et. al., has convinced me that my future brackets will no longer carry any Cinderellas. NIL effect is very strong as the rich will get richer and there will be no Prince Charming for Cinderella--one of the fun things about the tournament in prior years.
Ooo that looks awkward and scary for Broome
This is how I see it:
The three primary pieces of "coaching" are recruiting, management, and actual coaching (game strategy and tactics).
To be successful at recruiting, you need resources, a brand, a personality, things along those lines. If you get the job at (say) UNC,. Duke, or most SEC schools you have a big leg up in the talent acquisition department.
After that, you have to be able to manage your team. We have seen a couple of coaches at SJU where that was an issue.
The third piece - and the one that makes the difference in high level games - is being good at the actual craft of coaching.
So IMO the measurement is not simply wins and losses. Guys like Hubert Davis and Shaka Smart win plenty because they are good.at 2/3 of the job and mediocre at the third. Shaheen Holloway is great at 2/3 of the job but without the first part he can't win.
You look at Florida v TTU and you see the team with inferior talent be better organized, more disciplined, and take advantage of their strengths against Florida. And you see Florida fail to adjust to getting bullied inside (tho very late in the game they finally sent help in a big spot) and turn a 5 point lead into an 8 point deficit without calling a time out to get organized or changing anything to adjust to what TTU was doing. And when they did call a time out they somehow came out of it without a play to run.
And in the end - Florida won because it has outstanding talent (probably second only to Duke) and players made plays off script.
By contrast, you look at Duke vs Tennessee and not only did Duke have an excellent strategy to space the floor and beat Tennessee's excellent defense on cuts to the hoop, they executed it perfectly. Exceptional player talent sure helped, but it was a professionally designed and implemented offense. Not to mention what they did defensively to possibly the best offense in the country, a product of both design and implementation and talent. Good job by Scheyer, bad job by Golden, both won.
Is Golden a better coach than McCasland? Is Scheyer better than Barnes? Reasonable minds can differ. I guess it depends on what you're talking about when you talk about "coaching."
The three primary pieces of "coaching" are recruiting, management, and actual coaching (game strategy and tactics).
To be successful at recruiting, you need resources, a brand, a personality, things along those lines. If you get the job at (say) UNC,. Duke, or most SEC schools you have a big leg up in the talent acquisition department.
After that, you have to be able to manage your team. We have seen a couple of coaches at SJU where that was an issue.
The third piece - and the one that makes the difference in high level games - is being good at the actual craft of coaching.
So IMO the measurement is not simply wins and losses. Guys like Hubert Davis and Shaka Smart win plenty because they are good.at 2/3 of the job and mediocre at the third. Shaheen Holloway is great at 2/3 of the job but without the first part he can't win.
You look at Florida v TTU and you see the team with inferior talent be better organized, more disciplined, and take advantage of their strengths against Florida. And you see Florida fail to adjust to getting bullied inside (tho very late in the game they finally sent help in a big spot) and turn a 5 point lead into an 8 point deficit without calling a time out to get organized or changing anything to adjust to what TTU was doing. And when they did call a time out they somehow came out of it without a play to run.
And in the end - Florida won because it has outstanding talent (probably second only to Duke) and players made plays off script.
By contrast, you look at Duke vs Tennessee and not only did Duke have an excellent strategy to space the floor and beat Tennessee's excellent defense on cuts to the hoop, they executed it perfectly. Exceptional player talent sure helped, but it was a professionally designed and implemented offense. Not to mention what they did defensively to possibly the best offense in the country, a product of both design and implementation and talent. Good job by Scheyer, bad job by Golden, both won.
Is Golden a better coach than McCasland? Is Scheyer better than Barnes? Reasonable minds can differ. I guess it depends on what you're talking about when you talk about "coaching."
Yes. Hopefully he's ok.
Most is a terrible poster . He hasn’t been right yet .
More is better ..
The best though is They . They know a lot
And there he is with the Willis Reed moment. Ankles are always scary but not always serious
The right elbow looked nasty
And he already had a sleeve on it so must have been already hurt.
Screwing the pooch. NCAA seems to have done the impossible: taking the greatest sport tournament in creation and destroying its unpredictability and excitement. It’s only the first year with completely unfettered free agency and unregulated NIL so time will tell but it certainly looks like they killed a great thing.
Mich State is playing poorly . Some of that is Auburn . Bigger , faster , stronger , deeper bench .
State has no one who will take or , make a 3 .
At least , when it mattered earlier .
Keep driving to the hoop and missing .
State has no one who will take or , make a 3 .
At least , when it mattered earlier .
Keep driving to the hoop and missing .
Still favoring it
Spocky Ramone
Well-known member
SEC got 14 teams in the tournament, 2 made the final four, one guaranteed to be in the championship game. Clearly the best conference in college basketball. 2 teams in the FF for a conference has happened a few times. Did any conference ever get more than 2 in? I don’t see how that could happen if you can’t do it with 14 teams. Anyway, asking for a friend - jk, I have no friends!
The Big East with 3 when we made it. Us, Georgetown and Nova.
Talented Final Four, but I think the Cinderella upsets in future NCAA Ts may occur but not as frequently, as mid majors get poached routinely. I always thought that was the charm of the Dance, something players would remember all their lives. Oh well.
Spocky Ramone
Well-known member
Who are those guys?
All one seeds in the Final Four. Only time other than 2008 since the tournament expanded in 1985. By seed difference Arkansas over St. Johns was the largest upset. SEC only with two remaining and one in final. Big East keeps the record for at least another year. Now that I lost on all my brackets, I am all in on Houston.