Bitterwhiteguy

Damn wasn't Archie a bigtime 2018 recruit? Like their highest rated recruit in history. That was quick. If memory serves, yes.

TCU is in a really weird place right now, they have 3 guys transferring out mid-season (Archie, Alok, & McWilliam) and Fisher's knee isn't quite right and he's missing games intermittently. If they were at full strength they could challenge for a top 2-3 spot in the conference but their depth is minimal (they played 7 guys against Kansas) and Fisher's knee isn't going to get better as the season goes on. This seems to be a very up & down year for TCU.

Somebody wasn't around for the Weltlich years.

He's a borderline lottery pick; it's going to take more than flashing your skirt up at him to get him to turn down millions for limited financial upside, especially with Will Baker coming in next year. The dude calls every game day "bag day", he's looking to move up IMO.

He went to VT because he wanted to be there, he's spurned offers from others previously. He's taken the Hokies to the tourney twice in the last 2 years, before him they went once in the previous 21. He's doing just fine.

That's an emphatic no.

If there's anybody who Shaka has been honest in the reasons for benching, it's Snoop. He was honest about why Roach came off the bench earlier this season, was honest about why he missed the first game of the season, there's not really a valid reason for why he would lie about this game specifically.

Because he's at the school he wants to be at; much in the same way it will take a lot to pry Dixon out of TCU, Buzz left a good gig to go where he wanted to be. As an aside, this is a primary reason why Beard isn't as likely to come to Texas (or a lot of other programs) as many believe. He left Vegas for Lubbock and has deep roots there, that's a very specific kind of dude.

Last year's UT-A squad was full of productive seniors and included a guy who was drafted by the NBA. This year's UT-A squad.....does not have that. They're going to regret firing Cross.

It's the most he's ever disagreed with me on the show, which surprised me given all I was attempting to say was I wanted to wait to see the final version. If they make the Drum 2.0, then they fucked up.

That is not why he was benched, everybody knew he was a 1-year rental from the jump.

I readily admit I'm not a recruiting guru so I may be off on the conventional wisdom at the time, but if you were evenly divided between Young & Edwards (or another similar fringe top-100 shooting guard) there were off-court/political reasons to take Young over him. Young's father/family are influential in the Houston hoops scene, and bringing them into the fold could potentially pay dividends in other ways. If you think it's a coin toss between him and another guy of his ilk, Young is probably getting the call. The way it eventually went down probably did Shaka no favors, but that's the gamble you take with the mid/low 4-star-ish player. As for Coleman, I still really like him and when his head is on right he's absolutely the kind of guard I want, by which I mean a guy that's good enough to be an all-conference player but not so gifted he's gone to the NBA after a year. If I'm building a team that balances roster stability with high-end performance, Monte Morris is basically my goal for point guard. Coleman has some level of that within him, and while he's struggled this year his advanced stats in many areas are starting to resemble last year. Which is fine, though not where you want him ultimately. I still think that Coleman is the least of Texas' long-term problems, and he & Ramey could really be something if they gel next year. I'm not going to spend all night on this, but I think the way I would look at Shaka's recruiting is that the last 2 classes are much more of what I think will be successful than the first 2 classes. There's a mix of high-level talent with longer-term projects and/or high-upside guys, and I wish the Jones/Allen class was as plentiful as the two after it. The loss of Mack & Davis combined with the massive turnover of the seniors/Taylor really did a number on roster management and they're just now at a point where they can build depth rather than patch holes. Whether it's Shaka or somebody else here in 2 years, they will have a good talent base to work from.

I think it would be more accurate to say that Shaka knew he wasn't landing Fox in his first real recruiting class and hoped Jones & Roach would provide D-I average PG play in aggregate until Coleman arrived. Anything beyond that was said in public to try to give the two players some confidence; it's a fairly regular occurrence for Shaka to say something in a press conference where the intended recipient is in the locker room. This hope was clearly not met in reality, and was the primary reason for the 11-win season. Also - I may have said this on here before, but I don't recall - if he had managed to land Fox then Jones would've gone elsewhere which would've caused different issues that year and the year after. To that point, I've started viewing roster decisions from most programs less as a clear 'take/miss' thing than as a series of choices with different pros & cons. Sure, Fox would've made the 11-win season better (let's say 16-18 wins instead of 11) but then there's a hole in the roster the next year where Jones was for a half-season, and maybe Coleman goes to Duke instead of Texas. How they fill that 1-2 spots is its own quandary. Add in how players transfer/leave early these days, roster management is basically witchcraft if you don't have bag men of the highest order. As for Young, he was clearly a miss, but he was a miss that others were going after as well. He was lighting up AAU the year before his senior season, he was either the leading scorer on his circuit or not far off and he was draining threes from all over the court. His AAU tape looked like exactly what people want, some form of Millennial AJ Abrams. There's another reality where Baylor lands Young and in 2019 he's hitting 47% from three. I don't say any of this to negate your point about the issues of roster management, Shaka & his staff have had their ups & downs in that area for sure. It's an inexact science; look at Edwards. He had offers from Purdue....and Baylor, SMU, Vanderbilt, Houston. He wasn't a clear take in high school, or else his offer list would've included bigger names. K State and Tech offered him but didn't pursue him seriously, he was a backup plan for them. If anyone thought he would develop into a NPOY candidate, he would've been offered by UNC, Kansas, Duke, etc. Sometimes guys exceed the expectations of most schools, and good on Edwards for doing it. The guy is a baller and could easily ruin my Sunday.

He's not. One thing I will say for Snoop is that nobody is more aware he sucks right now than him. He may have done some immature things in the past, but he puts in the work and wants to be as good as he can be.

I talked to Tim after the VCU game and without trying to speak for him he hadn't given up on Shaka, but his questions/concerns are definitely mounting. As for me, I'm waiting until the season is over before saying much on the big picture stuff (there will probably be a BC post); at times like these I try to be deliberate with my posts and I don't want to overreact to a bad week in the same way many of my football brethren did after the Maryland loss this year. I will say that the Purdue game has taken on even more importance than it already had, and that Shaka's career arc at Texas could very well be determined by conference play this year.

If Texas beats Purdue - Texas is a significant favorite against the other 4 you mentioned - they're looking at a 12-1 noncon record which will help a lot come March.

Synergy categorized 43% of Texas' catch & shoot half-court shots as unguarded, which is a very good number; in the Big 12, only Iowa State and Baylor had a higher percentage of unguarded shots last year. The problem is that their points per possession on those shots were abysmal. They generated 0.92 PPP on the unguarded shots, nobody else in the conference generated less than 1.067. Extrapolate that out to the 200+ possessions each team had in this area and you start to see the difference between an 8-10 record and an 11-7 record for a team that went to as many OTs as Texas did. As a side note, this is part of what was so maddening about Eric Davis. He had 22 unguarded possessions and generated 6 points from them; that's a cool 0.273 PPP, one of the worst in the nation. However, on his 52 guarded possessions he generated 81 points for 1.558 PPP which was in the top 2% nationally. This is exactly the opposite of how it should be for most shooters and why I was making jokes about him needing the opponent's hand in his face to calculate how to hit the shot. Some day I'm going to write a book about his weird-ass statistics. So yes, the issue last year wasn't so much generating open looks as it was about converting those open looks.

Hayes won't be put out there at the same time as Sims very much, it would murder offensive spacing. Also, Hepa can shoot better than your statement seems to imply.

I went back and looked at Michigan's season last year and you're probably right, I think I remembered them starting to peak later than they actually did. That game was such a defensive rock fight that it colored how I viewed Michigan for most of the season. I tend to think Purdue will be safe from the bubble as long as Edwards plays to his ability, though I agree with you about Providence.

Michigan was #49 in Pomeroy when Texas played them last year, Purdue currently sits at 18. Providence (#49) is where Michigan was last year.

Baylor is likely going to be worse than you think this year. They lost a ton to graduation and their best player this year (Lindsey) is out for the season with a hip problem. They could pretty easily finish last in the conference.

There is zero medical reason to do this per his doctors.

Think of something closer to what Villanova runs; it's not light years different from what they did last year, but it simplifies the decision tree for everyone on the floor. The main differences from last year's offense - aside from the fact there will be much less catching the ball in the high post - is that the ball-handler won't be choosing from a number of options, they'll instead be making a predetermined move. For instance, when Sims comes up from the low post to set a screen for Coleman (or whoever has the ball), Coleman isn't picking from a series of options, he's attacking the paint immediately and either taking a shot or - if the help defender comes towards him - dishing out to the open man (usually the 4 sitting behind the arc) who the help defender just left to either take the shot or start the next action. The next action begins when one of the wings comes over to set another screen, which the 4 uses to attack the paint and either take the shot or dish to the open man on the other side of the court. That player then starts his action etc etc this general concept continues to cycle through for the duration of the possession. This may be a bit confusing without illustrations, but the larger point is that they're attempting to flatten the defense by repeatedly attacking the paint, and these are less individual plays than a continuous cycle that emphasizes quickly moving the ball back and forth across the court to get the defense out of position and opening up windows to shoot.

You should be heartened to know they're not running the random ball screen offense this year. This is one of the changes Berry has suggested and Shaka agreed to; it will be more of a continuity offense with an emphasis on 4-out sets.

The goal is triple, but it doesn't always work out.