Chuck Taylor

Be careful what you wish for. Losing the sellout streak in football would be huge. The inertia of ticket renewals is worth a lot of money, and much of that would end if the streak ends. People have held onto tickets for years, thinking they don't want to get shut out if the team rebounds later. It's not good having the fan base saying "show me something first." Leave that to other programs. As for basketball, the shiny new arena and FH are selling tickets now, but another crappy year is going to cut into season ticket sales. A lot of basketball tickets also have been sold on the idea that "I don't want to get shut out when the team becomes good," a carryover from football. Moos might be pushing his look in lowering expectations.

So we were swept by NW's worst team in years. OK.

OK, now that's a great stat! Thanks!

Yeah, it's easy to look at who's coming next year and think it's all going to be great, but they have to learn to play together, like this team did (or didn't). Coming into the season, we had a couple of JC all Americans, couple of good transfers and what looked like a good bunch of freshmen. There's no way the noncon should have been that bad just looking at talent level vs. most of our opponents. But you can't account for what it takes to come together when the roster has had massive turnover. That Cheatham comment about what appealed to him about NU stuck with me. He said, "11 roster openings," or something like that. Everybody comes in thinking they're playing major minutes, and the adjustment doesn't always go well.

I read the article and actually came away less hopeful. Young man has had a tough road and faces many, many more challenges. Fred doesn't have magic dust, Huggins and Marshall also knew there were warning flags and they had programs in place for him as well. So does Fehringer at Western, and there have continued to be bumps. I'm pulling for him to see his way through, more personally than for basketball. I know young people who are struggling with similar problems: mental health issues, substance abuse, children out of wedlock, interaction with the criminal justice system. If basketball coaches had the answer, they'd be in a lot more demand than they are for just coaching. Comparing this situation to Royce White and expecting a similar outcome is nothing more than wishful thinking. We simply don't know. And while I absolutely hate football analogies on this board, TO had failures beyond Lawrence Phillips among the players he tried to help. Mental health is sometimes impossibly complex.

I heard that Thursday and figured it was just my hearing going. Maybe I'll return the bottle of Geritol to the Rexall store.

As for the coaching, Woodard, Behrens and Chubick are all considered better coaches in the Metro, and all have coached very talented teams. Behrens in particular had teams with at least similar talent and his teams dominated and won. Cannon's very good at doing more with less, but he's currently doing less with more. That being said, talent shows up at state, so I'd still consider them the favorite.

FG % 54.7 3PT %39.0 FT %53.6

He's 67, probably isn't going to take a rebuild at this point. Either a top job or join ESBN's stable of experts.

It looks like we're the first to offer these high school freshmen. Gotta credit FH, he's trying everything with recruiting.

The BIG season has been disappointing, to say the least, but we had a complete roster rebuild and the league is unbelievably strong. it's the noncon that I still can't fathom. We lost three at home to really bad teams. Could see maybe one game like that, but not three. Oh, well.

FYI, Grant Simmons was drafted by the Bullets in 1966 and ended up playing for the ABA Denver Rockets. One of my early heroes.

I agree on Cronin at Cincy, while skeptical about him getting the job done at UCLA. His style is strictly hard-nosed, physical defense with a barely functional offense. Not sure he's going to get buy-in from the West Coast kids, although he'll definitely get better talent than at CIncy. Also don't think the Pac 12 officials will allow the bullyball style he's used to. Gregg Marshall is a terrific coach, but is he underrated? Matt Painter might not get enough credit. Is "Coach Fran" underrated if everybody thinks he sucks but he still makes the tournament? As for overrated, I'd vote for Jim Boeheim. He used to be an elite recruiter but now they don't get the same caliber of kids and his coaching isn't enough to keep them among the elite any more. He wallpapers over their deficiencies by scheduling nothing but home games in noncon, then relies on the ACC schedule to get him Q1 wins to get in the tourney. Lot of respect for what he did to build Syracuse into a major power, but just seems like he's on cruise control now.

Will be interesting to see how the last few weeks play out. Two or three of the top 12 BIG teams have weak Q1 records and a bad loss here and there, but the rest look like locks to make it.

The same amount as me!

The league has so many good teams that it made me wonder how the season would play out. Some teams wilt in the pressure of tough games night in, night out, plus dealing with injuries, bad shots, bad calls etc. At the beginning of BIG play, I wouldn't have picked Ohio State and Michigan as ones that wilted, and Iowa, Illinois and Rutgers as ones that could handle the heat. Then again, we're only halfway through, so who knows what happens in February. Maybe that's our turn to shine!

Not a knock on the BIG, it's just the media likes to hype up the bids, then do a 180 when the lower seeds don't advance. ("The Big Ten had THREE teams lose today!" Never mind that they had seven teams playing.) If we get 10+ bids, it will probably be because we have 3-4 10 seeds or lower.

Every BIG road game (except us and NW) is quad 1, along with about half of the home games. Bracketmatrix currently has 12 BIG teams in, and while it might not be how it ends up, there will be at least one picked with a losing conference record. (The exact opposite of two years ago.) The downside might be that the highest seed will be a 3 because of the conference bloodbath and there will be a lot of low seeds that lose in early rounds. Headline in early March: "Big Ten sends record number of teams to tournament" Headline in late March: "Big Ten teams flop in tournament"

I'd add that Banton's averages (in 15 minutes a game) were for a Western Kentucky team ranked 116th in KenPom, so the competition for playing time wasn't that great. Palmer's meager stats (11 minutes) were for a Miami team that was 15th. So yes, the best idea is to ignore the media and rely on our own "expertise."

Jeriah Horne had 21 last night as Tulsa whupped No. 20 Memphis. Avg 12.2 ppg and 4.9 rb.

I'm 100% with you on this. This macho BS about playing man gets to me. Changing defenses out of a timeout counters everything the opposing coach just got done telling his team. Changing defenses can flip the mindset of your own team. Changing defenses can unsettle an opponent that's getting too comfortable scoring. You don't have to sit in a 2-3, there are other zones that opponents aren't used to seeing. There's a zone press and half-court trap. But to just sit there and say "we play man" when you're getting torched is ridiculous.

The 3 noncon losses still blow my mind, but I'm encouraged by how we've played in conference. Our talent level's not there, but you can see what we're trying to do and we're competing.

Hadn't seen this before, but Cam's listed late-2nd round on nbadraft.net: https://www.nbadraft.net/nba-mock-drafts/

Yeah, this is the most chatterless postgame I can remember in a while.

I used this strategy during the dark days of last season and highly recommend it. For me, part of stress in watching the game is related to anticipating the negativity that follows a loss. As for a war movie, I highly recommend They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson's documentary restoration of WWI films. You've never seen anything like it. Check out the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcgceA64aAI I think it's currently on Amazon Prime.