Didn’t Jelavich play “pro ball”? My point is, the dudes on his first team were all very experienced college players, and many of them at a P4/5 level. These guys aren’t.
With Cal, UK was at least part of the story (recruiting/draft). Feels like we're starving now on all fronts.
- Thread starter Son_Of_Saul
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Would be happy with what? I think I laid out three pretty different scenarios.
I get it, but Kyle wheelchair has seen him play and Phil. He'll do good in the college game and he has a different style on different athleticism and jelly did.
Color me skeptical if McBride is supposed to be the starter over him. All that tells me is he’s nothing special. Not saying he sucks, but I doubt he’s the player even a healthy Carr was.
I would be happy if Pope succeeded. I don't hate Pope like some have stated. And I wasn't going against anything you said. I was agreeing with you.Would be happy with what? I think I laid out three pretty different scenarios.
I hope he feels a roster spot with one more good player at least. I agree with you you're last scenario is most likely.Would be happy with what? I think I laid out three pretty different scenarios.
Ohhhhh, I gotcha. I thought you were referring to one of the scenarios in particular. Yeah, I’m with you. Hell, I hope he succeeds too. I just don’t think he will. At least not to the level we all want. It was always my concern from day one of his hire. He’d be just good enough to keep his job, but not good enough to be truly successful on a consistent basis. IMHO, that’s the absolute worst case scenario. What I didn’t envision was his PR being so bad that his mediocre results might not be good enough to keep his job given how bad he is in the media. That combo might be his ultimate undoing.
And if we're being honest..well just my opinion I reckon. Pope actually isn't as bad as it has been made out to be. I think it's bad. But the PR like you said is terrible. The perception is terrible. That's makes his mediocre results seem way worse than it actually is.
When in reality BBN will never be pleased with being mediocre. We want to be the best or at least respected. He hasn't been awful like the perception. But perception is reality to an extent.
Cal was done for, why do you think he left, the man burnt all his bridges at UK with the big money donors, and face it Cal is not even in the top 100 as a top bench coach, yes he can recruit but can't do a damn thing with all that talent.
We are suffering from hype withdrawal.
Withdrawal symptoms hit hard when going cold turkey after over a decade on the offseason recruiting juice.
Admitting it was a problem is the first step on the road to recovery.
Damn auto correctionWho the hell is "Kyle Wheelchair"?
1&D was weak as hell even when Cal was executing it flawlessly – and that was before CBB was inundated with guys who'd otherwise be overseas, in the G-League, and even in the NBA.
There's a reason he's had however many dozen top five classes and has one championship to his name.
Freshmen are getting pummeled by experienced talent and then they leave after a year for a better bag and more playing time if they don't move on to the NBA.
Doesn't seem like a system that relies as heavily on HS recruiting as it once did, and seems like a system where experienced talent means a lot more.
Maybe the system is shifting more towards portal guys over HS recruiting but as this point Pope isn't really doing that either.
At the end of the day you need talent and Cal is still bringing it in to a degree, Pope not so much right now.
Come on man. Cal lost to freaking OAKLAND.
This is Barney and Pope's fault.
Keep your eye on the ball.
I'd rather have Cal than Pope. And that's with him disrespecting the fan base because Pope is heading into year three with the same snobby remarks towards us without the championship and final fours and elite eights and number one picks and NBA all stars. All them years we didn't win the championship but spent the whole seaon in the top 5 or 10 was better than this crap.
And I agree with you about what you said but I just had to say I'd take Cal over Pope any day. Like OP stated, we were always in the conversation. Even the oakland and Saint Peter's years we were a top team and talked about all season. Of course those losses sucked but imo they aren't as bad as Pope getting beat by 20 every other game on national television.
Maybe.But the person I replied to was touting Cal and his recruiting like he would be in the mix for national championships. I didn’t say a thing about Pope .
Cal had the 13th hardest sec schedule this year whereas we had the 2nd . He got to play the 11 seed ,the 15 seed, and the 4 seed that was coming off of a huge upset of Florida in the sec tournament.
In the ncaa tournament he got to play 13 seeded Hawaii and 12 seeded High Point before being boat raced by the first good team he played.
He also had possibly the 2nd or 3 rd best college player he’s ever had.
A LOT of things fell Cals way last year and guess what…..he still didn’t make it past the sweet 16 .And he will never do it again.
That’s not good enough for us .
If Pope doesn’t have a very good season this year then we say thanks and move on .
We couldn’t have done that with Cal and his $35 million buyout.
So there’s no way in hell I’d trade Pope for Cal .
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Nope .
Neither are capable of winning enough to be our coach at this time .
But we can move on from Pope next year barring a miracle season.
We were stuck with Cal and his $35 mill buyout.
We got extremely lucky when Arky took him off our hands .
That’s the reason I’d rather have Pope right now than Cal .
Also , we were embarrassed plenty of times the last 5 years of Caliparis tenure…so has Arkansas the last two years.
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Agree 1000%. He needs a good year on the court and in the media. Like actually good, not "good" like year one. I think he's capable of it, but he needs to get a darned good player or two with the two remaining spots. If he doesn't...
Yeah I agree, man sucks just won 900 games, with 77% win percentage, 5 final fours, and national championship. Man does he suck.
Dude ….that Cal (along with WWW) is gone forever. Let it go .
The program was in a lot better shape under Cal but over his last 7 seasons here he had one regular season title, one conference title and tourney losses to Kansas State X2, Auburn, St. Peter's and Oakland.
That's not my idea of fun.
That's not my idea of fun.
? Let what Go? That championship will forever be there. Final fours will always be there. Anything that Cal did will forever be there.
I don't wish Cal was still here. I want a new coach that will have success. Not sure what you mean by your comment.
I feel like the 1st round exits are a pretty weak argument.
Upsets happen. **** happens. It's a one and done tournament. Those teams were actually pretty good and had good seasons.
And yeah I get it. It's a result based business here. You don't get anything for 2 and 3 seed type seasons.
But it also follows the same logic of:
If you want titles, get as many 1s and 2s as possible. Again it's a one and done tournament. There are other very good teams. The best chance at titles is consistency. Be good for as many seasons as possible.
I mean I don't have any issues to people wanting Cal gone. But it's just silly to suggest that going forward we are better with Mark Pope than we are with John Calipari. It's just not logical.
And if you want to say well I don't want either of them, that's fine too. That the hiring of Mark Pope was a fault but getting rid of Cal wasn't. But it's just the reality of the situation right now.
Man can still recruit and bring in talent. That's all this is about IMO. Either get someone capable of bringing in sinilar talent..........or getting rid of the guy that did is a major error.
And when it's time to get another coach, recruiting should be first and foremost. A great recruiter can hide a lot of coaching flaws. There is zero amount of coaching that is going to get a team that lacks talent to a title level. You have got to recruit.
Upsets happen. **** happens. It's a one and done tournament. Those teams were actually pretty good and had good seasons.
And yeah I get it. It's a result based business here. You don't get anything for 2 and 3 seed type seasons.
But it also follows the same logic of:
If you want titles, get as many 1s and 2s as possible. Again it's a one and done tournament. There are other very good teams. The best chance at titles is consistency. Be good for as many seasons as possible.
I mean I don't have any issues to people wanting Cal gone. But it's just silly to suggest that going forward we are better with Mark Pope than we are with John Calipari. It's just not logical.
And if you want to say well I don't want either of them, that's fine too. That the hiring of Mark Pope was a fault but getting rid of Cal wasn't. But it's just the reality of the situation right now.
Man can still recruit and bring in talent. That's all this is about IMO. Either get someone capable of bringing in sinilar talent..........or getting rid of the guy that did is a major error.
And when it's time to get another coach, recruiting should be first and foremost. A great recruiter can hide a lot of coaching flaws. There is zero amount of coaching that is going to get a team that lacks talent to a title level. You have got to recruit.
With the talent he had at every school he coached, yeah he should have won 900 games, plus if you ever noticed he did water down the out of conference schedule a bit, played a couple of top teams and a bunch of nobodies. Hell give me Cal's talent and I bet I could have won 900 games, but one championship with all that talent, hell the 2015 team proved the man can't coach, no way Wisconsin should have ever beat that team.
His first season was legitimately pretty good. The record is skewed by the most difficult schedule in school history by a good bit according the sports-reference metric. He also dealt with historic level injury issues. The SRS (performance vs schedule) was the sixth highest this century.
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You think a 38-1 season is proof he can't coach? That says a lot more about you than it does him. I'll agree we should have won the game and may well have had the rooferee not been involved. That was an outstanding Wisconsin team as well.
I think if you go back and watch that game it proves Cal can't coach, hell if Cal had just sat there and let them play without ever doing anything it would have been better than Cal trying to coach. Plus I believe it was an NBA scout who was quoted as saying Cal is stuck in a rut, will not change, and runs an antiquated offense that should have been scrapped years ago.
Again with that talent he should have multiple championships, not just at UK, but Umass and Memphis, but where are all those championships, plus how does a so called coaching genius you guys think he is lose to St. Peters in the first round of the NCAA, tell me that, Cal's last 5 years at UK that talent level was subpar and he proved my point.
Mark Pope's "good" always has to come with an explanation. He has to have a year that is truly good that doesn't come with a paragraph long attempt to explain why it was good. Anything short of that, he'll be gone.
After 38 consecutive wins on the heels of a title game appearance one loss proves he can't coach and was stuck in a rut? That NBA scout is a total dimwit if that was his take in April of 2015.
I will agree that he has hasn't done enough to satisfy the shallow thinkers. This much is pretty obvious.
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Players with no significant injury history do not retroactively become injury prone prospects because they end up getting hurt.
JQ sure. It was a gamble but one I thought worth taking eapecially since we had a couple of burger boys in Garrison and Moreno to hold things together fairly well so you take an upside swing on pure talent because a hit takes you to another level. If not, the floor is still there.
Nobody else until Big old Frank just now qualifies.
I don't see the need of being so all or nothing, no quarter given, no credit no matter how small can be given. It weakens your arguments substantially from a verisimilitude point of view in my book, he protest beyond all reason and makes it appear as if the tiniest bit of grace or acknowledgement will melt your whole case.
That is your take, I get it your a Cal butt kisser, but Cal was a horrible bench coach if you could not see that, you really don't know basketball.
We sure have some weird posters with some weird opinions here. You don't need to be a Cal supporter to point out how stupid that take was. You aren't talking about his final years here during his decline. You are talking about a season in which he had a 38 game win streak and trying to use the one loss as proof he can't coach and was in a rut. He was 22-4 84.6% in the tourney at UK to that point. The five seasons following that he went 140-39 for a 78.2% winning percentage with a Sweet 16 and two Elite Eight's in four tournaments. He was 31-8 79.5% at UK in the NCAA tournament to that point. It wasn't until after Covid hit that it really slipped below what was rightly considered highly successful.
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So now you resort to insults, I am sorry that your basketball knowledge is so limited, but anyone who played competitive basketball or coached it can watch Cal when the game is on the line and see his X & O ability is very limited, maybe it is because he as that pro scout said is to stubborn to change, but his offense is limited at best when there is even a resemblance of structured offense, Cal depends on his guards to just make plays, no real structure etc. example, against Wisconsin, Towns had his way with them down low, the last 8 minute go back and watch, we never passed Towns the ball again. You can point out his record, and I say again just about anybody on this board could have taken the talent UK had Cal's first 10 years and done just as good. His last 5 years proves that when the talent level is close to par he will lose.
You are whining about insults as if you did not call me a Cal butt kisser? Thinking random posters on a message board could be as successful as a hall of fame coach is so ridiculous that it is really not worth discussing anything more with you.
Why do people talk about this game as if Wisconsin wasn't a very good team as well lol.
That team has a historically good offense. It was far better than ours. Yeah we were better overall but there wasn't this gulf to where it was some major upset as some like to suggest here.
And also that's the point: if you were coach you'd not be grabbing the same guys Cal got. Recruiting is a big part of the job and he did that well.
And I don't think you'd win 900. It be far less than the games Cal won. He's not as bad of a coach as people make him out to be either.
Anyone that makes the argument he should have won more given the talent doesn't understand how one and done tournaments work.