Recent content by PhilipVU94

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    Hire the Vandy Coach

    The key point in all of this is that the "rules of the game," both literal and figurative, are still unsettled in the NIL / mass transfer era. Last decade, y'all were still one of 10-15 programs that offered a coach a realistic shot at winning a NC. That doesn't appear to be the case now, and I...
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    Comparison of Cignetti and Pope

    And seems to have landed another big win in football with Chesney, who's now off to UCLA. However Preston Spradlin seems to be struggling in his 2nd year there. I don't know if there are any nuances to explain why JMU mbb is bad this year.
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    Hiring a Final Four Coach

    Frank Martin (UMass, where he's struggling) Paul Hewitt (San Diego Clippers, G-League) John Belein (effectively retired, but I think he's in a non-coaching role for the Pistons?) Tony Bennett should be on the inactive/retired list, shouldn't he? I guess you could put Steve Fisher on that list...
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    Hire the Vandy Coach

    If I'm an AD, I'm valuing process and granular data of year-on-year improvement more than a small sample of a few tournament games. Kevin Keatts is a Final Four coach. So is Frank Martin (but in fairness, he actually improved programs too). Apparently Paul Hewitt is still coaching in the...
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    Hire the Vandy Coach

    This made me smile. I have no idea why the wheel of fortune has turned our way except that apparently NIL is a bigger equalizer than we realized. February 2024 you could have convinced me of any alternative to staying in the SEC -- ACC, CUSA, "Magnolia League", D3, go club-level. I get why...
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    Which would you rather see: AR get run out of the gym OR lose due to a horrible coaching job/decision by Cal?

    Erin's the one in the family that I respect. A tenured professor at Vanderbilt med school is nothing to sneeze at. Was she the one who said she didn't like basketball? That seems a little odd since she played at UMass but maybe it was the weight of familial expectation, y'all would know better...
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    South Carolina declined an NIT bid

    Because it's NIL compensation, not salary for playing games, technically neither the school nor the collective has much to be aggrieved about. (Ethically is a different matter.) The collective can't put them under contract to play the whole season right? I suppose the collective could accuse a...
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    South Carolina declined an NIT bid

    This isn't just basketball. College football programs that miss the CFP now have to worry that their players on the way out won't want to play in a bowl. Effectively every bowl except the playoff is now the NIT. College basketball isn't perfectly run but I'd much rather have this system than CFB.
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    South Carolina declined an NIT bid

    That's what happens when your statistical "luck" (per Ken Pomeroy) goes from 4th in the nation one year to 349th the next. They weren't bad at all this year, but a little snake-bit in close games. Of course Jerry Stackhouse won co-COTY so maybe that award isn't all that meaningful.
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    Does the NCAA hate Bruce Pearl?

    Historically they haven't really done much to protect the top seeds from this sort of thing. They give them the closest site [remaining], which for Auburn is Lexington, but they don't consider shipping the non-top-4 seeds who are even closer. I recall one year in the early 2000s Miss State was a...
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    Does the NCAA hate Bruce Pearl?

    Well, the presence of each of the football power four on the men's basketball committee every year is supposed to keep high-majors from getting screwed. Except, unfortunately for Auburn, the guy looking out for SEC teams' interests is... Alabama AD Greg Byrne. And Greg did a pretty good job of...
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    Matthew langhi 6ft5 small forward soph marshall co

    I still harbor great anger about the incompetent 2000 committee. (Vanderbilt was well above the bubble, like an 8- or 9-seed, in all reasonable projections. But the committee didn't plan for Arkansas to win the SECT and had already exchanged political favors to get a crappy at-large in from each...
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    I know this isn't earth shattering news but Duke will be in for a rude awakening come tournament time.

    True. Your team is really high-variance and seems to mirror the level of competition. If you're a 4 or 5, you could easily lose in the first round or make the last 8. For us quant geeks that's really interesting. KP has them 2 points/100 ahead of Auburn, which is a pretty solid margin. But...
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    I know this isn't earth shattering news but Duke will be in for a rude awakening come tournament time.

    Agreed. But we also don't know how any individual team will react to playing their toughest opponents in a while. Based on their Illinois game, probably won't be an issue for them. Of course 1-seeds have earned the privilege of playing sub-top-25 teams for two rounds anyway. And then who knows...
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    Saturday Feb 22 games on tv involving top 25 teams

    My theory/hope is that our roster just isn't where it needs to be yet -- that's pretty clear -- but we're getting good first halves through preparation and maybe surprising folks a bit. Then the other team regroups and adjusts, and we don't have the same number of tools to adjust. At least I...
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