I thought we were having a good discussion on this topic in the Transfer Portal topic, but while it was a tangent off of thinking of potential transfers, it really spiraled into its own topic, so here we go.
There are some good posts from that topic in the morning of March 14 (good = anything not written by me 
) for a good introā¦
Iāll move what I was going to say in the other thread to here to keep that one transfer focused!
I think thatās whatās made the years since the national title a little frustrating. Tony has achieved so much with rosters that were talented but not stocked with top recruits (although that 2016 class was great when they were recruited - Tony killed it on the trail that year). When we won a national title, I - maybe naively - thought our recruiting would instantly take a noticeable step up. I was excited to see what Tony could do when he had closer to his pick of the litter, so to speak, given what heād already achieved with guys slightly lower on the ranking totem pole (although obviously Tony was identifying NBA-level talent regardless - this just meant heād have even more to pick from). And while itās not that important, I assumed at least one 5-star-level talent would be a good fit and willing to join a champion. Happens at Villanova, so why not here?
But all of that didnāt immediately materialize. I guess Reece, Jabri, and Carson were a solid class immediately after the title, but weāve only got 1/3 contributing two years later. The 2021 class of Taine and Igor arenāt doing anything yet, and that class again felt like āweāre going to option C because we got none of our top targetsā. Obviously the 2022 class looks very good, but I guess things are just progressing a little slower than I imagined they would. And yeah, I know that with the way recruiting works, weāre only just starting with the classes where we made first contact post national title, but I guess I kind of thought weād be able to throw our weight around a little more immediately post title and bust into some recruitments we hadnāt been involved in early.
Anyway, a good deal of this might just be unreasonable expectations of how quickly a national title impacts recruiting. And with the 2022 class already looking very solid, we may have already righted the ship a little so to speak. But itās just felt really weird. Just thought weād be in a slightly different place.
A CTB-led team āmoving things along slower than expectedā shouldnāt be a surprise.
Agree. To extend this to the interminable discussion of the 3 Mās, the reason their lack of PT is more of a fly in the ointment than it would be in a vacuum is that it seems that their lack of PT either reflected Tony getting a bit overly conservative with PT, or it reflected yet another way that recruiting has gone sideways since the 2016 class.
The '22 class seems to represent a nice fluffy landing to all that, though, so hopefully this wonāt be a repeat discussion.
Disappointed in what was generally considered a developmental year that we didnāt get good developmental PT for our younger guys. I guess sacrificing roster development for short-term gains toward an NCAA berth would have been understandable, but we didnāt do that either.
So next year, weāll have this yearās 2 freshmen plus 4 or 5 incoming freshmen all thrown into the mixing bowl. In addition to getting some experience for Murray and Milicic, it would have been interesting to see how 6ā5" and 6ā10" shooters could have been integrated into the offense. We didnāt have that elsewhere on this yearās roster and itāll all be very new to the offense next year as well. I hope McCorkle can make strides too, but frankly we have better/more athletic players at that position and with more coming in, so not sure heāll get traction.
Interesting response in the tweet. 29 out of last 40 final 4 teams have ranked 200 or lower in bench minutes.
Tight rotations are the move. Just need those 6-8 guys to be ballers.
Disappointing year for sure, but Iāll never forget how incredible that first Duke game was.
A tight rotation only works when the rotation guys are miles better than the other guys.
I think ā21-ā22 was a continuation of two of the big trends of the last 3 seasons. Namely, we struggled to find complete contributions at the wing (2/3) positions and/or the athletic big wing. We offset those partially with stellar defense in ā19/ā20 and better shooting and overall talent in ā20/ā21, leading to top 25 results both years. This year we never found the offsets and were mediocre on both ends overall.
None of the recruits or veterans for those spots have panned out over the 3 years (the 3 Ms, Kody, JAR, Casey, McKoy). And our transfers in have all been solid, but all also with warts (Hauser, Murphy, Tomas, and Gardner all with defense and / or rebounding challenges, and Franklin with major distance shooting issues). The end result this year was another year of the Kihei and Reece show, poor long range shooting, and our worst season in a while. We got tougher and improved over the course of the year, but never had a chance to be a top 25 type team. We were just too flawed.
Of course we also played a rotation that implied we were a good team, and that tight PT frustrated most of us. Were I Tony, I would have provided 5-10 minutes/game to Taine and Igor at minimum. But there is a cultural method to his madness, and Iām not too worked up about it. If those guys were ready to really help us, they would have played.
Next year presents some great recruits and possible additional development from the returnees. Iām highly optimistic we will be better. But we really do need those 2 big holes to close much further next year without opening new holes. And while I think we will be top 20 next year, itās no sure thing.
Folks who think that the narrative of the season is that it was sunk in the noncon, and that we are playing more like a 5-seed or so (or at least an 8-seed) since a certain point should run some searches on barttorvik.com and see what they find. I just ran since March 1 and since Feb 15, and I canāt get us into the top 50ā¦ Trying to avoid the Transfer Portal thread because I think Iāve annoyed folks by talking about things that are only tangentially related to transfers.
@AnonymooseHoo @WFS_HOO @Wahooblue @Hoos9412 And @tlgoudy usually likes this stuff, tooā¦
For example, here is since Feb 15:
For me all I had to do was watch some of the madness teams and then watch our games in the NITā¦. Size and athleticism was Varsity vs JV
Right : eye test metric says the top 6 are small, unathletic, and canāt shoot. Torvik says we havenāt been a top 50 team down the stretch. Iām just wondering what the belief that we are now more like a top 7 or so seed is based on.
and shooting. teams in NCAA tourney have guys drilling 3s.
There was a point when we were playing at that level though, so maybe thatās where it comes from. If you go back to Feb. 1 through now, we are 33rd in ranking and 37th in Wins Above Bubble.
If you go Feb. 1 through the start of the ACC Tournament (March 7), we are 17th in ranking and 35th in WAB. The games in the ACC Tournament really put a damper on the argument that we are playing like an NCAA team down the stretch.
But that is the difficulty with being able to pick and choose which games matter and which ones donāt, you can make us look really good, or really bad (we are 103rd in ranking since March 7th)
Agree, good stuff. If we are going to gerrymander, I think we have looked like a top 10 team for our 4 Duke/Miami games and like a team that wonāt play in the postseason for our other games.
Those wins against Miami and Duke were not flukes. We played well. In fact, since February, with the exception of North Carolina, we were in position to win every game in the final minutes ā we just couldnāt close the deal.
In other words, we were good enough to play like a top team, but not good enough to maintain that level. The margin for error was too slim. Small lapses killed us. Thatās clearly a reflection on the very real flaws in the team, but it also suggests that thereās talent there and that we werenāt that far off. We will have a strong returning core next year, and one of the top recruiting classes. I think thereās reason to be optimistic.
Wish I saw this thread before further detailing the transfer thread
Right!
If you want to, you can even go down to the individual game level and with a little digging can figure out what we played like during each game, if I understand the Game Score correctly.
Starting with the Miami game at home:
Miami - Torvikās Game Score 97 - would rank just behind Gonzaga, 2nd
@ Duke - 97 - 2nd
GT - 91 - 16th
VT - 81 - 52nd
@ Miami - 90 - 18th
Duke - 87 - 25th
FSU - 68 - 104th
@ Louisville - 94 - 8th
Louisville (ACC) - 61 - 126th
UNC (ACC) - 8 - 351st lol
Miss. St. (NIT) - 89 - 21st
@ NT (NIT) - 90 - 18th
I donāt think any of them are flukes. Collectively, they are who we are. The 4 Miami/Duke games were not flukes, and the 3 NC state school beatdowns were not flukes. Crushing Providence wasnāt a fluke and letting a non-tourney FSU team close the gap on us to win wasnāt a fluke. Gotta take the good with the bad and the bad with the good.
Agree 100% The Hoos are exactly who you thought they are. When it clicks and everyone reaches their potential they can beat Duke at Camron sweep Miami and go to the wire at home with Duke. When one or more player is off on offense or the defense is out of sync via a bad matchup, then you get the Carolina beatdowns, and then thereās the first Clemson and NC State game, where the team just doesnāt show up.
Thatās what a roster of this build does, not enough talent to out perform a system break down, not enough system to cover the flaws of the talent.