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Larry was an improvement over Boylen, but that wasn’t exactly a hard act to follow. He had reasonable success early on but I think he became disheartened when teams like ASU paid players to play, I think Markannen(spc?} switching to ASU in the last minute put him over the top. He seemed to become quite bitter towards college BB after that. He lost…[Read more]

I can’t wait for there to be a new governance model for college sports. It’s the wild west right now.

Yeah, I think that’s correct. With NIL system and the transfer portal, it’s essentially unlimited free agency every year without contracts. So you almost need to think about it that way and manage it as a business. Which is another place I think Craig went wrong, you have to treat the players like adults at a minimum, if not outright…[Read more]

The team is what it is. They’ve definitely over performed and that reflects well, but they are very flawed. The free throw thing is inexcusable.

Nothing will change this season. The hope is that the new coach will put the team on the right trajectory.

Parenthetical, I’ll add, I wonder if CBB teams will consider what North Carolina is doing in…[Read more]

Did we really expect things to change? We still have the caliber of players that we were willing to pay for last offseason.

KD finally unleashed.

Wow I didn’t know that. RED FLAG.

Rick, none of what you posted proves that Larry was a better coach or even as good a coach as Smith. All you really did is copy and paste stats. Now, if you’d have thrown some analytics in there, then maybe we could have a conversation. I for sure completely believe that Larry was a better recruiter but a much crappier Xs and Os guy than Smith.…[Read more]

I just got back into the country and restarted a news feed. I can’t believe we have a chance to upgrade our Men’s BB program to Alex Jensen. That and even the possibility that Andre Miller would help out would be almost like having Rick come back. I hope Utah has financial resources to make this all happen.

I don’t know, and neither does anyone else until we see the results of the move (the subsequent hire, and that person’s success as HC).

I’m not one that wants to die on that hill. All I’ll say is that from my perspective, I thought Larry was a shitty X’s & O’s coach. Too many times we just looked lost on end of play situations, in-game adjustments were minimal, and rarely did we get good looks off of inbound plays. From what I’ve seen, it seemed like Smith did a better job in…[Read more]

I dare say that parts of my anatomy respond favorably to that idea…

I know this is a basketball discussion, but I also miss Frank Dolce. I really enjoyed his color commentary and still look forward to listening to his takes when he’s a guest on the radio shows each fall.

I am getting really sick and tired of folks on here constantly saying that Larry was a better recruiter and Smith was a better coach. I’m sorry but the numbers just simply do not support that absurd theory. Here are some real numbers:

Larry had 5 20+ win seasons in 10 years, 50%.
Smith had 1 20+ win season in 4 years, 25%
Larry’s overall win…[Read more]

That’s unbelievable to me. I would have reached out to Andre if I was Smith. My sympathy for Smith is fading fast.

Jim,
He didn’t even return Miller’s calls offering his services. Smith had an assistant finally return the call after Andre had called a few times over several weeks.

to be fair to Ludwig he ran Barnes and Johnson out together in the Baylor game and was obviously trying to set up what you are talking about. Then he tried the same thing against SC with Jackson and Vaki.

And I would be the mid-manager pulling you aside after the meeting and saying “we all know John is a fucking idiot, just nod along and we’ll get together later and talk about what we actually need to do”