He’ll get there… also, I think we’ve the bottom for this team, we could hit the bottom again because they aren’t deep enough and RB and KC will wear down. But I think we know what the bottom looks like.
Let’s hope Kadin and Reece start to turn the corner a little bit on offense.
To be fair Oregon might not be great. Started the season ranked but lost by 32 to BYU.
Lol sometimes as a social media team you need to learn when not to post.
Like didn’t need a fancy graphic to say “it’s halftime and we’re getting our asses kicked”
Damn. UConn looks good. The Big East should be better.
Also is there a thread where we can talk about all the other games and teams?
Could start posting on this one again:
Exaxtly … It’s culture over glitter. Obviously in the eyes of TB Poindexter’s defense is more valuable than Tains’s or McCorkle’s offense at this time. I’m good with it.
@WFS_HOO , Thank you. You wrote down practically everything that I was thinking but I’m not able to communicate in that way. You would think we would be a little less critical after we played our best game of the season. I have my opinions just like everyone else but I believe I’ll just let Tony run the show
Fans are allowed to be fake coaches. That’s part of the fun.
Where would you be if you couldn’t be a fake coach? Hilarious
It’s just that simple. Some people try for talk all around this, but the fact is it’s either poor recruiting (ie misses) poor evaluation (on the staff) or poor player development (again on the staff).
It’s not being mean or critical or saying hey let’s fire CTB, it is what it is and not much more complicated than that. Playing Kody Papi and Walk ons as well as relying on 2 transfers for the majority of our offense is one two or all of the three points above. Hopefully the 22 and 23 classes will correct those.
Guys, I tried to make it clear I do not think you shouldn’t criticize. Thus the multiple “it’s fine” statements. It is our right as fans to grumble. I’m totally cool with it. And I too have been disappointed with many of the things you and others have cited.
My response was directed to some of the sentiment I see as boiling over a little beyond what I consider reasonable criticism. I won’t call anybody out. Hell my response is directed at myself and my own emotions as much as anybody else.
My view here is pretty simple. Carson and Taine aren’t ready. They aren’t being held back because tony is a dick or an idiot, and I personally object to posts that imply otherwise. Carson and Taine not being ready fits within the narrative that we’ve had disappointing recruiting etc. for which Tony should rightfully but respectfully be criticized.
I’m not trying to suppress free speech here guys. I just felt like I needed to stick up for my coach a little.
Happy thanksgiving to all!
Ready for what? I refuse to believe that Carson and Taine (and Igor) aren’t already better offensive options than Kody, Poindexter (and Kihei and Reese playing together). Or that anyone looked at Carson coming out of high school and saw a lock-down defender. Part of my frustration is that Tony always defaults to defense only at the first sign of trouble. So Poindexter, a walk-on, plays instead of Taine because he understands the packline better. He’s (at least right now) giving the vast majority of guard minutes to three guys who can’t shoot a decent jumper. What have Stattmann, Poindexter, Caffaro, etc. “earned” on offense? You could easily say they’re not “ready” if you think scoring points matters. It’s no surprise that our best teams were those where the offense was the equal of or better than the defense (and could shoot).
People said the same thing about Jabri last year, but he wouldn’t have helped us as he is just not good at this point in his career (which was obvious during the few minutes he got when he couldn’t hit a shot and was blown by by whoever he was guarding). As was said above, if it is true the three Ms aren’t ready to contribute yet, that is a knock against past recruiting, which is something to fairly criticize and which many of us have repeatedly, but you cannot say with certainty we’re a better team right now with them out there because we don’t know. It’s possible, and fair to say you think so, but it’s not a certainty and Tony gets some benefit of the doubt here I would say.
I am all about saying what I’d rather see and critiquing coaching decisions, and I would also rather see the three Ms take more of Stattmann’s minutes and replace Poindexter’s minutes. But I think that will happen as the season goes on. We are only in game 6 and two of the guys we want to see are internationals acclimating to the US who’ve only been with the team for a few months. Some things take a tiny bit of time. I understand being impatient about it because we don’t look like world beaters right now, but I don’t think there’s a need to be too pessimistic yet.
Also, saying Tony always reverts to defense isn’t necessarily true, although he clearly prioritizes it. In his tenure, I struggle to think of any guys that were offensively gifted that he didn’t give early playing time. Kyle and Ty played tons their first year despite not being ready defensively and us having guys in the system who knew the defense better (e.g. Shayok and Thomopson). Harris, Brogdon, Anderson, Gill, and Hauser all played as soon as they were eligible, despite the latter two, in particular, struggling to figure out the packline for a while. The only player I can think of where folks argued he should get more minutes earlier due to offense was Huff, and I simply see Huff as much more limited player than a lot of folks do, so that never stood out to me as much. So where is this track record of Tony repeatedly locking up offensively gifted players?
And to be clear, I share some of the the broad disappointment/frustration with where we are as a program three seasons after a national championship (especially when I watch a team like Baylor just reload), but while we stumbled for a bit, reinforcements are coming in 2022 and likely 2023. Plus, I personally enjoy watching this team get better and think we have some legitimately good pieces on it. If one of the three Ms emerges as a dangerous second shooter, this team could make a little noise late in the year despite having a notable ceiling as you said.
Poindexters warm up shooting was the best on the team both nights. Really.
So my question to players not being ready is- why didn’t we fill out our roster? Originally it was to give those guys a shot, but now we are not giving them much of a shot AND we have a small roster. I would have loved to fill out our roster with just tough nosed players, rebounders, shot blockers aka defenders-who maybe can’t score either because atleast they would be playing because they’re tough/athletic and our defense would be stout.
Either way that is a Tony miscalculation… but honestly I’m okay with this being a learning year for the team AND Tony, to re-strategize.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too! 
I mean, Tony has made public statements about this. He is rolling with a smaller roster so all the guys will be asked to contribute at some point and to maintain team cohesion. He wants to keep guys invested and avoid the number of transfers we saw last year. Yes, some of the guys haven’t played a ton yet, but we are six games in. As soon as we have a twisted ankle or stomach flu, a guy not playing at all right now might be playing 15 minutes a night. Guys will probably also improve in practice and just take time to come along, as we’ve seen before.
Taking a bunch more low-skilled guys to fill out the bench doesn’t feel like what’s needed, especially if taking new plan C recruits would have messed with what we were assembling in the 2022 class, which is very well may have. Basically we’ve patched together a roster to compete this year and develop guys for the next several years, and its size means everyone of the guys should stay invested and improve. The small roster also means we were able to land the 2022 class we did.
I think there’s a plan to all this. Who knows if it’s perfect, and if we run into a bunch of injuries, we might be screwed, but there’s a logic to it. I don’t know that just getting guys to get guys who aren’t ever going to be stars was in the best long-term interests of the team. We spent four years just filling scholarships with our 3rd options and it didn’t do us a ton of good.
I hear you but there were many players on the transfer market that were better than papi.
Anyway, season is early like you said – the next few games will tell us a lot about the 3Ms and their PT.
Yeah, that is fair. I think the question is, would we feel comfortable bringing in a one-year transfer big and did we feel they’d get up to speed quickly enough? Because we wouldn’t want a guy who’d stick around much longer, as that starts to mess with recruiting.
Also, we can like whoever we like, those guys have to want to come here too. If I’m a semi-decent big and Tony is honest with me and says Shedrick is our starter, plus I just saw Jayden commit here… I don’t know that I’m going to UVA. But who knows.
Guys that rebound, block shots, are athletic, play defense are *not unskilled guys- especially in out defense first system. Right now we have a few guys that cannot score OR play defense so getting guys that can atleast play D out of the gate would be a step up.
With regards to ruining our 2022 class- If we have all defenders on our roster then anybody who has offensive talent would be salivating (Isaac squared and Dunn as an example) as they would see our limitations.
I think for several years now we’ve been wanting another Mamadi, Akil Mitchell, Darion Atkins clone. All of those guys were 3-4 star recruits- super athletic and developed here. We currently only have Kadin Shedrick as that type of player so it would be nice to have someone who could do that along the 3-4-5 scale especially since Trey left. As a matter of fact we could have used an available player Last year due to Kadin being out and sick.
Regarding Tony’s public statements outside of games is one thing. During the games it seems like he wished several of those players could do what he asked, but are not otherwise they would be playing. So right now we are playing 7? Guys consistently and sprinkle in a few others. We will be fine- hopefully but it’s still putting your eggs in one basket and a bit of experiment.
But honestly- this isn’t my life and we will just have to see how things go 