Bitterwhiteguy

There are legitimate complaints to be made about his team performance, and considering I wrote an article calling for him to be let go last year I'm not exactly a sunshine pumper regarding him. My post wasn't so much a defense of his overall performance, rather it was specifically aimed to why his press conferences tend to sound like a big ball of euphemisms. As for the variability in team performance, I think the general trend for him is similar to most other coaches: the older the team, the less variability you see. This team is overall playing better than any since perhaps his first season, and it's not a coincidence it's led by experienced guards. I think in a non-COVID year, this team is probably more 16-4 than 14-6, and plays at a level closer to their pre-pause form the whole year. I think there are very few coaches who can consistently win with young teams - and even the ones who can have down years, like Calipari this year - and Shaka is not among their ranks. His Final Four squad was 46th in D-I experience, this one is 116th; the two worst years of his Texas tenure they were 342nd & 335th. It's not the only factor - we could get into the recruiting/hiring mistakes when he first got here, the struggle to develop a cohesive offensive plan - but experience matters a lot in the college game.

I think I've said this before on here, but I've been to coaching clinics where Shaka is a presenter and he's very detailed in his presentations. I've watched him diagram plays with Larry Brown and they're both on the same wavelength; the issue with Shaka is that he plays everything very close to the vest with reporters. He gives them coach-speak because he doesn't want any opponents to get any details - which is dumb because we all have access to Synergy and other analytics sites now, but whatever - so he talks in generalities in most of his press conferences. About the only time he doesn't do this is when they would have the sideline reporter catch him before halftime and ask him a very specific question ("Why is player X getting to the rim so much against you", etc) and he'll say something more specific, but it's not in his nature to talk in specifics to the general public. It hurts him for this exact reason, guys like you only see him speak in vague answers and so your opinion is formed by that. I've watched him coach the team and he gets on them about footwork angles, defensive stance, downing screens, etc., in very specific terms. I've watched him talk with other high-level coaches and be just as fluent as them. He's got it in him, and he would do well to show that to the general public more often. I think this is one of the reasons other coaches view him in a much more positive light than Texas fans, they see this and most of us don't.

For whatever it's worth - probably a grain of salt at best - I've talked to Bilas in person and he thinks very highly of Shaka. It's been a couple of years so he might have changed his mind in the interim, but in my limited experience talking with Bilas he says what he thinks and doesn't really sugarcoat things for the sake of broadcast.

I would imagine the conference is prioritizing a WVU/BU matchup over Texas/BU on account of WVU & Baylor having not played at all this year. If they cancel the tournament, then there's more room to make up lost games.

Zero; in Shaka's presser today he brought up that Greg's only going to be here one year while talking about his footwork. Even with Jarrett, Shaka was more cagey about it. He gone.

You need to watch him more closely, he's a real dick to opponents in games. Early on in the OU game he hit a floater over Manek who fell trying to get a charge, and as he landed he just stared straight at Manek. He talks a lot of shit at opponents, but rarely gets called because he's usually smiling as he says it. On TV it looks like he's happy, but he's calling the other dude's mother something terrible after knocking down a three in his face. Hell, one of my favorite plays of the year was when he literally shoved Royce into defensive position in transition. Hamm ended up 10 feet further down the court and ended up blocking the shot. Coleman is a lot of things, but he ain't soft.

On Sportscenter immediately following the Brown dunk, they showed a player in the Tennessee game dunk over somebody, stare him down, and flex...no tech. Same night, different games, one got a tech and another did not. Neither should have gotten a tech, the taunting rule is way too strict. Refs are thieves of joy. Baylor was in the middle of a 16-4 run when he did that dunk so the end was already approaching, but it hurt. Almost as much as going 0-3 from the free throw line later.

Fran is usually fine to me, but this year he's been recycling the same talking points over and over more than I can ever recall. I'm used to him bringing up 2-for-1 at the end of every half, but this year he says the same half-dozen things about Texas every time they get brought up (country club last year but not this year, etc.) Maybe not being able to travel around to watch teams practice is impacting his ability to provide insight. I'd still prefer him over Vitale, who Texas has tonight. I will be watching the game on mute.

Each conference has their own rules, and they vary. This was part of Shaka's diplomatic version of a complaint; Kentucky had "a positive" and paused for 48 hours, and it doesn't sound like the Big 12 has that same mechanism. In the Big 12 if you have 6 scholarship players available you have to play, though I don't know the consequences if they decline other than a forfeit.

The words out of his mouth are diplomatic & measured, the words out of his eyes are in all caps.

Given that under Bruce Weber, Kansas State has spent more time in the bottom 100 of D-I free throw make % than the top 200, are we sure who was giving whom the pointers

I said before the season that Texas needed to be at least 5-2 in this 7-game conference stretch (Kentucky not included, obviously) if they wanted a shot at the conference title. They're 2-1 and have a solid shot of being 6-1; the Tech loss hurts, but Tech is much better with the return of McCullar and they're a fairly obvious tourney team with him playing like he did last night. The median for the rest of the season is 8-4 (8-5 if the Waco game gets tacked onto the end). Above that and Texas is probably 2nd with an outside shot at the title, below that and Texas is likely playing for 3rd-5th in the Big 12.

Because Sims was clearly the better player last night. Tech kept trying to get the big switched onto McClung and Sims handled it better than Kai, plus Santos-Silva was murdering everyone not named Sims with post position. If Tech's guards were better at feeding the post, Silva would have hung 20 on Texas with the way he was getting position. The only real knock on Sims last night was his free throws, but that's what you get with a guy who is a career ~60% free throw shooter.

Maybe my favorite J'Covan moment of the past 5 years was when he posted a somber Instagram photo from the Wailing Wall using his "murderseason_aaf" username. I laughed about that for like a week.

I understand that offensive rebounding is for the most part significantly deemphasized in college basketball the last several years as most coaches would rather get back and setup their defense, and so I don't have a theoretical issue with Texas being average in this regard. (My preference is that they prize ORs more on average as it's now been deemphasized to the point it's a pretty easy marginal gain, but on its own that's a preference rather than an 'issue'.) What has been biting them in the ass is that they weren't good enough at defensive rebounds as well; if you deemphasize ORs that means you're tacitly giving up second-chance points with the idea that you'll make it up with defensive stops, but if you're also not great at DRs then you're kneecapping your own designs. So it's great that they're better at grabbing ORs than normal, but it's even more important that they're snagging a higher percentage of DRs (relative to D-I) than most years. EDIT to add: the rebounding thing has been especially frustrating to me because rebounding is one of the primary things Shaka & his staff look at when evaluating talent, so they know these guys are good at it but they haven't been able to reliably do it at the D-I level.

Players get a 5th year if they stay with the same team, lose the 'free' year if they transfer. Also, teams will have to be back to 13 scholarship players in the '22-'23 season, so if someone other than a senior takes advantage of this free year it effectively removes an available scholarship from that class. So somebody like Febres (a senior) could take advantage without screwing with future available scholarships, but if, for example Gerald Liddell (or pick another non-senior) took it, then he's added a year to the end of his scholarship and it makes the '22 recruiting class 1 person smaller. I would personally love for Coleman to come back, if we're talking about wishes.

Yep. Next year will be there when the season is over, and moments like the Kansas win are far too fleeting to blow past while staring at the depth chart 10 months from now. It is entirely possible it will be another decade before Texas posts their third-ever win at the Phog, it's okay to revel in the moment for awhile.

Kinky

'Can'? Yes. 'Will'? Ehhh, maybe. If Texas can limit Baylor to below-average (for them) shooting from three in both volume and make percentage like they did to Villanova and limit offensive rebounds, Texas has a shot.

His rebounding percentages on KenPom are very good for a freshman, his defensive rebounding percentage is 24.9% which is 120th in D-I and only behind Sims on the team. His OR% is 7.0% which is 3rd on the team behind Brock and Jericho and just ahead of Kai. He has issues to sort out, but rebounding is doing fine.

It'll be on LHN, they just haven't announced it because - like everything else in this sport right now - the TV schedules aren't finalized due to COVID chaos. None of the conference games have a TV channel listed last time I checked, even though they're almost all going to be on one of the ESPNs.

^^Make that 26 games, they just announced Texas State.

Downgrade that to whatever the 25-game equivalent is (16-9? 17-8?) because everybody's non-con is basically cut in half this year.

If there's one team that's prepared to play in front of 2,000 fans no matter the location, it's Texas.

A reason why I have a small amount of hope about the game in Lawrence: it's during break so the students aren't around and Kansas emailed their season ticket holders that capacity is likely capped around 1,500 this year. (There's a tweet from a Kansas beat writer talking about this I retweeted last night, but I don't have it in front of me.) So they're going to The Phog, but it won't exactly be The Phog. Texas will be the underdog, and given the Longhorns' record in Lawrence it's entirely reasonable to believe a win when you'll see it and not a moment before. This just might not be quite the normal circumstances.