Bitterwhiteguy

Their press defense is worse than their half-court defense, it currently ranks in the bottom 14% of D-I per Synergy. They're giving up 1 PPP in press vs 0.775 PPP overall, more pressing is unlikely to provide the result you desire.

It's still rated the best conference in KenPom - I think in large part because there are very few objectively bad teams most years who would drag down the conference - but the gap has narrowed over the last few years.

This is a good strategic breakdown of the matchup. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/texas-vs-georgetown-empire-classic-preview/id1485173328?i=1000457224648

Georgetown is a really good rebounding team on both ends of the floor (top-25 in Oreb%, top-50 in Dreb%) in no small part due to Yurtseven who grabs a ton of boards. Sims will have his hands full with that guy. Texas will need to hit shots because they're not going to get a lot of second chances.

No. They've been ranked in 4 of his seasons; the only one they were never ranked was the 11-win season. If memory serves, last season's #17 ranking after the UNC/MSU games was their highest under him.

Nope. He got the offer on his own merit, he made quite a splash in AAU summer games and had offers from OU, Gonzaga, and a few others. I've maintained from the jump that Brock's one of those players who makes an impact 3 years into his tenure, and I still think that's the case. He's got a very good basketball IQ, he has a nose for rebounds, and his shooting is better than he's displayed thus far. I think he'll be a valuable role player next year or the year after.

He wouldn't have started if Liddell was out of concussion protocol.

Synergy logs and analyzes film for D-I NCAA basketball as well. I can tell you that just over 46% of Chancellor Ellis' shots are considered spot up & nearly 87% of his half-court shots are threes; if I have that kind of data on a Prairie View A&M player, imagine how much data they have on major conference teams.

Purdue is talented, and I expect they'll be better in March than they are now as they're still adjusting to a post-Edwards existence. Painter's got things rolling up there. (Also, Cal Baptist being on probation has nothing to do with the WAC and everything to do with the four-year process of becoming a full D-I member.)

The reverse planks she has Ramey doing at the end look brutal.

This is an oversimplification, but it's sort of a rolling average based on the previous 8-9 seasons. As the current season progresses, the current season data takes on progressively more weight in the calculation; if memory serves, by about the halfway point in the season the preseason rankings are out of the equation entirely. This is an older discussion about how he does it, but I think it's largely the same now. https://kenpom.com/blog/2016-preseason-ratings/

Texas basketball posted a net profit last year, as it has the last few years. It's remarkably stable in that regard, which suggests even with the Drum half-empty they're still doing fine. The only financial aspect that drives this conversation is the remaining guaranteed money on Shaka's deal, and that gets more palatable to pay off each year if Texas so chooses. But again, it's significantly harder for CDC to fund a basketball pay-out than a football one. Giving Herman $10m to go away could happen in a night, but getting donors to pay a basketball coach $10m to go away is next to impossible here. The biggest money guys just don't care that much about basketball.

Yaklich places a huge emphasis on defensive rebounding as well, so that side of the ball may improve. I don't think offensive rebounding is likely to make much improvement as I think both Shaka and Yaklich value getting back and setup on defense more than going after offensive boards.

The skepticism is well-earned.

The home slate is maybe the worst I've seen in 20 years (the LSU game is the only saving grace) but the neutral/road games are solid. Purdue, Providence, Georgetown, and potentially Duke are all decent-to-good opponents.

I have heard a source who has visited practices around the conference describe Texas as a sweet sixteen level team. It's only one source so the normal caveat applies, but there's a buzz this year that I do not recall hearing the last couple of seasons. EDIT: Fuck, I almost went full Rothstein there. I am ashamed of myself, and will log off to contemplate my sins.

They're unlikely to take more than 2 due to scholarship limits unless somebody unexpected goes pro/transfers, and yes Greg Brown is the big fish. Right now Texas leads for him.

Cliff's Notes of the conference preview I'm posting in a couple weeks: Kansas is Final Four-level loaded this year; Baylor has a good chance at being 2nd; Tech may take a fall due to turnover (they lost to UTEP in a scrimmage a week ago, UTEP went 3-15 in CUSA last year); Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Texas, Kansas State, and West Virginia have high variability in outcomes; Oklahoma seems dependent on De'Vion Harmon to do much this year, and TCU is a mystery bag everybody is pegging to be last. Overall the conference will still probably send 7 teams to the dance.

Agreed on both counts. Virginia's pack-line defense is more about limiting penetration overall than it is about pushing everything to the outer thirds of the floor. It also has some tinges of a zone in that the four players not on the ball are playing gaps more than just their man. Tech's defense has some similarities but is more aggressive about help defense and swarming the ballhandler when they drive. EDIT: This is as good a time as any to recommend subscribing to Jordan Sperber's newsletter & Youtube channel (username hoopvision68), he's one of the best guys to follow for breaking down various college & pro teams.

Tech's defense involves denying the paint at all costs & forcing things baseline, then aggressively sending help defenders to swarm the ballhandler. They will often line up with their bodies nearly parallel to the sidelines to deny the middle of the floor. Yaklich's Michigan defense was much more of a straight-up man defense with relatively little switching and help defenders coming as late as humanly possible (if at all). There are significant differences between the two. Jordan Sperber did a solid primer on the differences between the two in his preview of their Sweet Sixteen game:

For context and to shed a bit of light on why I made the prediction: prior to the season, I heard from some close to the Jones family that they were expecting him to play significant minutes. There was an offhand mention of the coaches broaching the topic of him redshirting, but I only heard it mentioned once so I dismissed it as unlikely. That's where I made my error; if I had taken the redshirting talk more seriously then I would have adjusted my expectations. As for banking on freshman, this year will be the first since his first season where Texas won't be reliant on any freshmen for baseline competence. There's a decent chance there are zero freshmen in the starting lineup for portions of this season depending on how Baker/Jones integrate into things; a starting lineup of Coleman - Ramey - Jones/Febres - Hepa - Sims is pretty likely unless Liddell or Baker show out in the offseason.

Sure, I was only speaking relative to my preseason pick. Other than the NIT performance, the team as a whole underperformed. This was Shaka's worst season as a Texas coach in terms of the roster reaching its potential.

Yep, didn't happen once Shaka decided to stick around. To paraphrase the mighty IT insiders when they whiffed on Saban coming here: it's what I was hearing at the time, didn't pan out though. I try to put in caveats where appropriate, like this year when I noted my projection was based upon Jones playing more often than he actually did. If I had known they were going to hold him out to preserve a redshirt option I would have dialed things down a couple notches. Honestly, you can trace a big chunk of the last two years to the variance of Andrew Jones, first the year he missed 20+ games because of cancer and this year because of the redshirt option, both of those swung a handful of games from Ws to Ls. But yea, I've been wrong a lot; the blindspot I usually have is projecting freshmen, I'll try to watch some film but it's at best an educated guess. If I'm wrong about where the team lands, it's usually because I've overrated/underrated how the freshmen will perform.

It'll be Ramey, if it isn't already.

Neither Texas or CDC's history points to them hiring a head coach with no prior NCAA HC experience. Oops.