Pope's first year maybe goes a round further if healthy, but they also showed lots of inconsistencies and games where they were just checked out. You do that for even a 4 or 8 minute TV stretch in the tournament, against a team like Tennessee who wants revenge for losing the last 2, and youre going home.
You know what team had more impacting injuries and very very likely snags at least 2 more wins (likely more), the Grady/Ty/Oscar year. Once Grady and Ty went down, we were cooked. Only had Wheeler and that wasnt going to work. They were considered one of the hottest teams about a week before the SECT. When healthy, they didnt lose much.
That loss really ramped up the calls to fire Cal. A 2-seed that only lost in the opening round because our wings went down..