The Memphis player, McCadden, who didn’t release the final shot in time might have been better positioned if he hadn’t exasperatedly looked away after FAU made its final shot:
Didn’t watch the whole game but in the shoving match I saw he was clearly the aggressor.
Enjoy the off season champ.
Is this dude serious? Who is this guy?
I kind of like the fact that he doesn’t know much about Kelvin Sampson, if in fact he doesn’t.
You obviously better understand his X’s and O’s of course, but knowing anything about the guy personally shouldn’t matter at all.
Reading this thread after Purdue loss is perfect encapsulation of this board:
Anytime someone get excited about something there’s always a fan that feels the need to make sure it’s taken with a grain of salt (i.e. yes we’re not the only 1 seed to lose to a 16 seed but don’t get too excited because look at our recent tournament resume). Then insert fan who must list our recent accomplishments and claims lack of thankfulness.
Tale as old as time
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And THEN insert fan who recaps all this and says “Tale as old as time”, followed by fan (who shall remain anonymous) who suddenly gets the theme song from “Beauty and the Beast” stuck in his head.
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Unless Purdue wins a title next year I strongly disagree. Losing to a 16 seed is brutal and certainly not worth the two extra NCAA tournament victories
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There is a middle ground between @TobaccoRdHoo and @DavetheWave LOL
I like this tweet by @Cuts_from_The_Corner
I see so many tweets about how Tony is a fraud - asinine.
But I also see so many tweets trying to downplay what happened and like you’re a bad person if you even acknowledge our shortcomings. Like nah what happened was bad. Let’s just acknowledge that it was bad.
(I also see tweets talking about how we missed BVP. Like no the one thing going for us this game was Dunn and Shedricks’ helpside defense and the emergence of Kadin which wouldn’t have happened without BVP going down/we looked like an entirely different team with Kadin more confident. With BVP we lose by 20 cause our plan A would suck and then our plan B would also be nowhere near how the team has been playing recently).
https://twitter.com/Xavier_Venom/status/1636767317672566784
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And then insert Jerome who can’t stop singing Moana’s soundtrack because his 2 year old insists on watching it non stop all morning.
Wait — what were we talking about ?!
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And then insert the sopranos theme song
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Perfectly stated Cuts. Wouldn’t trade Tony for anyone but definitely time to look in the mirror with tourney results.
Think all of this will be moot though. 2022 class bout to change back the narrative
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We might need a post-mortem thread, I say knowing there’s a solid chance that making that thread will be another hot stove-touching moment and it will end up getting closed.
But until then, I think the conversations about “Why do we underperform our seed?” would benefit from more precision and clarity around how the reasons and theories for this apply specifically to the postseason and not to the regular season. Otherwise, we’re chasing noise and holding ourselves a little blind to the fact that a single basketball game (or even 4) can produce highly variable results. For example, take the pace conversation; if that is making us more prone to upsets, then is that also happening in the regular season? If not, and if one thinks it matters more in the postseason, then that needs to be spelled out specifically. That’s just one example, we could apply that to the other factors commonly discussed.
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I think that’s fair but it’s also a trend over many years.
There are programs that have had more consistent success so it’s not all just to chance. (of course Im sure you’re well aware of this and were just sparing the deeper dive due to your concerns of hot stoves LOL).
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A neutral, truth-seeking, “academic” inquiry into this would be interesting. We could statistically measure the degree to which random chance is explanatory, evaluate various hypotheses against the hurdle of “does this apply to the postseason and not the regular season,” look at the specific losses and see to what extent each hypothesis came into play in that particular game, see if the hypotheses held water with other teams that had the same traits… and then come out with a few hypotheses that are plausible.
But that’s not going to happen. Hot Stove. Stay Away.
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I’m rooting for Furman and Tennessee today, which means they’ll both lose (seriously they will probably both lose), and then the rest of the games I’ve got no particular rooting interest in. Except: go Houston, beat Auburn.
And then we end the day with Alabama-Maryland. Blegh. Somebody gross is going to win.
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Yep, not suggesting it’s all variance, and I am definitely up discussions that try to lay out the reasoning for what’s noise and what’s not in terms of explaining the postseason results.
Have we had the discussion about how the shortest team in D1 beat Purdue, the team of giants? I know a lot of people on here loving talking about how it would be great to have taller players and that would solve all of Virginia’s problems, but a team of short dudes just shocked the world. I’ll hang up and listen….
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Here’s what’s crazy.
I re-watched the last 5 minutes of all the games in the first round involving single digit seeds against double digit seeds that were one possession games inside 5 minutes.
- There was soooo much pressure on the higher seeded players. It was palpable, tangible, suffocating, crushing.
- Complete freedom for the lesser seeds knowing there were no outside expectations for them.
Here are those 7 teams listed that were under immense pressure. Then I will rank them according to how they did under pressure as far as staying calm and executing on both ends.
Arizona, Virginia, San Diego State, Xavier, Miami, Purdue, TCU
Tennessee was close but always had at least a 3 point lead with the ball.
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Miami - Down by 8 with 4:30 left and closed on a 16-1 run to end the game. 10/12 on FT’s and 6/8 on FT’s to take control as they kept driving the ball and forcing the defense to make decisions.
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Xavier - down 13 with 9 min left - just continued to hit singles and stay with it. Huge 3 pointer that gave them a 2 point lead with 1:44 left.
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TCU - down 8 with 4:35 left - same - hit singles but also threes were a big factor - hit 3 threes in the last 5:11
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San Diego State - Tie game with 3 min left and closed it 10-4. A big three to go up 5 but lots of drives resulting in a layup and 5 made FT’s.
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Virginia - Lost a 12 point lead because zone by Furman and our insistence (Kyle Guy tweet) of going under screens on their shooters. BUT, did not wilt and came back to take control of the game and get a 4 point lead with 20 seconds left. And basically had the game won. Throw-in with 12 seconds left and a 2 point lead and simply needed to be strong with the ball and accept the foul. In fact Pegues had already started fouling Clark before he threw the pass. The amount of poise by our guys after losing the lead to come back and take control of that game was encouraging and HUGE!
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Arizona - could not execute at all and only got the ball to their All American once in the last 5 minutes. Lots of contested jumpers.
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Purdue - could not execute at all and only got the ball to their All American once for a shot attempt in the last 12 minutes. No one could make a three - 5/26 for the game - to make them come out off Edey.
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Great point - I actually told my wife I was so proud of how we came back. When Furman took the lead I said “I’ve seen this movie before. We are going to wilt”…and then we didn’t.
Again, it takes Kihei calling a very simply time out and making ONE of two free throws and we’re a 50/50 shot at going to the S16. That would’ve been a successful season given our pieces. The line is that thin
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+100
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