HookEm

Agree 100%. And SOMETIMES he is. When the switch flips and he goes into ultra competitive mode, the whole team feeds off that energy. Hunter definitely can have a "F you, I'm going to dunk on you" persona at times. And when he does, he is really awesome. His last three games are definitely trending in the right direction: If he is the alpha point guard, dishing out 5 assists, playing great defense, attacking the rim, and rebounding from the guard position - Abmas can then be freed up to do what he does best. Teams will have to guard Abmas all the way out to NBA range, which will free up a lot of the paint for our bigs. If Abmas is the main ball handler, it takes away his strength and stagnates everything.

I still believe this team has the talent to make a Final Four if everyone plays their best game and the shots are falling. It is also very possible that we miss the tourney. If you followed the team at all last year, I assume you know about Disu, Cunningham, Hunter and Mitchell. Disu is just getting back so it is hard to evaluate whether he is the same player he was in March. Cunningham hasn't really added anything new. Hunter can look like an All-American... and then he can look straight-up bad for multiple games in a row. Mitchell has taken a small leap. He has improved in almost every facet, especially his rebounding and defense. I expect that we will see him quite a bit at small forward in the coming months now that Disu is back. Our guards haven't been good enough on either end to make me want to go small very often. Abmas is good. He is just a highly efficient gunner. He takes a lot of shots you don't want to see... but then you look at the box score and see he averaged close to 50/40/90. I was hoping he was more of a floor general, but that just isn't him. The team seems to follow Hunter's lead more than Abmas. Shedrick is a transfer from Virginia. Sometimes he looks like an all-conference level big, and the missing piece to the puzzle. And at other times he disappears. Ithiel Horton is another transfer addition. He is an older player, but so far he has been a revolving door on defense - which is a huge disappointment given his size and maturity. And hasn't been a good enough shot maker to make you forget the poor defense. Overall, the chemistry just looks off with this team, which makes them all look like worse players than they actually are. Last year was kind of the opposite. The sum was greater than the parts. This year - at least so far - the sum looks inferior to the individual parts. Maybe that is to be expected when you lose most of your production. I have seen some signs of improvement. Right now though, I don't think any of us really know what we have yet.

I thought that this team might be better than last year’s team before the season. Abmas and Hunter should have been an awesome combo. And our Mitchell, Disu, and Shedrick should have been one of the best collection of forwards/bigs in the country. Plus I thought we would have GREAT depth. So far it hasn’t played out that way. But I still think the pieces are there.

I think we can all agree that the defense RIGHT NOW isn’t close to where it needs to be. I think that as Horton gets fewer minutes and with Disu back we will see some improvement. But right now it is a glaring weakness.

I think we can all agree that the defense RIGHT NOW isn’t close to where it needs to be. I think that as Horton gets fewer minutes and with Disu back we will see some improvement. But right now it is a glaring weakness.

It is interesting seeing the breadth of careers my ChemE classmates went into. Technology, Law, Medicine, Investment Banking, Consulting. Some still do classic chemical engineering, but not that many. Most seem to get into management and then move up the ranks in various ways.

Congrats to your son on his outstanding high school academics. His admission to engineering will depend on which specific major he wants to get into. Some are WAY more competitive than others. Back when I was in school, ChemE was probably the hardest to get into, mainly because a lot of premed / Biomed folks would go that route. Now Computer Science and Computer Engineering are the most competitive by far. Next would be Mechanical and Aerospace (thanks Tesla and SpaceX). Biomed is also competitive. Now that Biomed has been split off from Chemical Engineering, ChemE is actually one of the easier engineering majors to get into. The easiest is Petroleum. Funny enough, Petroleum and Chemical both make higher starting salaries than most of the other more competitive majors. Some of the engineering majors like Petroleum actually have a difficult time filling their spots. If a student SELECTS Petroleum engineering and they have a decent resume, they will get in over a better student that selects Computer Engineering and misses the cut. The departments want students who WANT to get a certain degree, not ones who are settling. So unless you have a student with insane credentials, I would advise them to pick one of the less popular engineering majors if they don't really have a preference. It may mean a difference between getting accepted or not. Plus, once you are admitted into Cockrell, it is MUCH easier to transfer between majors than trying to get in from a different College. FWIW, I'm on the ChemE external advisory board so I have had a lot of these conversations with the staff over the years.

I have no idea if those places are fancy or not. I assumed that since it will be NYE, there will be a shit ton of people around and most of the bars will be mainly standing. I don't expect 20 people to roll into a bar and get a single huge table or area unless plans had been made long in advance (and doubtful even then unless it is a private room).

FWIW - Massey has us favored in our next 7 games. All of those games are definitely winnable. The hardest ones will be Balor (at home) and at Cinci. It is possible we could be rolling into OU at 16-2 and on a 10 game winning streak. Not likely but possible. After that it gets rough.

Derka makes a lot of good points. I'm on board with firing RT right now. RIGHT F'ING NOW!!!!!

Good points all. Sounds like the better move would be to find a big venue and just declare that as a home base and post up there. People can come and go as they want. Any good suggestions for a place like that?

A friend sent these recs: - Carousel bar is fun. - The will and the way - Cane and table - Tiki tock - Latitude 29 for tiki drinks - Loa across canal for to go drinks to walk into French quarter - 21st amendment - Ryan’s Irish pub- not cocktails but fun dive.

Yeah I hear you. That is why I would like to just tell people we will be at these 3 places… in this order. Starting around 11 PM. Hope to see you there at some point.

We have a big group going to the game. Between 10-20 people at any given time. Any thoughts on where to go from 10 PM to 1 AM? Would like to roam as a group and hit 2-3 different bars / venues. Thinking Sazerac and French 75 as bookends. Thoughts?

Just a small nit pick… if a team is an underdog in 10 games with a 40% chance to win each one, the odds are they will go 4-10, not 0-10. Using the odds from KenPom, we should win 6 of those games in the hell stretch, not 4. Still not great.

UConn didn't look like a top-5 team to me when we played them. I think if we were fully healthy we would beat that team 40%+ of the time.

I've been tracking this game pretty closely, benchmarking the prices and quantities since we were announced. The amount of tickets on the market has climbed a lot in the last week. Up to 14,700 for sale across SeatGeek, TickPick, TicketMaster and Stubhub. I'm sure there are some duplicates, but that is still double the quantity from what it was a week ago. And prices have dropped by close to 50%. I expect that will continue as people realize that they aren't going to move at these prices.

I'm starting to feel like we are a little underrated. Coaches - #22 with several 3-loss teams ahead of us AP - #19 Katz - #28 Athletic - Not in top-35 CBS - Not in the top-26 FoxSports - Not in the top-25 BracketMatrix - Consensus 8-9 seed We played top-5 UConn very tough without both of our big men in a virtual road game. And we lost on the road against a fringe top-5 Marquette team in a F-you game from Shaka Smart. Other than that we have taken care of business against admittedly a pretty weak schedule. This is a team that hasn't played a lot of minutes together - and we have been without our best player. I think we are going to look a lot better over the coming two weeks now that Disu is working into the lineup. We are a lot closer to a top-15 team than a 9 seed in my view.

I believe my friend still has his block of tickets. If you need 10+ together he might take $600 each at this point for the block of them. That would at least get you lower level. PM me if interested.

If you are just now making logistical plans to go to this game, then you are likely screwed. New Year's Eve would have been an expensive hotel room in a normal year, much less with the CFP going on the next day. And air travel into New Orleans from ANYWHERE has been gone for weeks. Totally gone. (Although I hear that Delta is about to open 3 more flights). All of the above is why I think prices are going to come down dramatically over the next couple of weeks. Anyone who already has the logistical side wrapped up probably already has tickets. So you have a lot of tickets that need a home (~8,000 from what I can tell), without people that can get there to use them. And there isn't going to be a lot of local demand. Just my humble opinion.

Not sure why you think that. Abmas, Brock, Disu (and to a degree Shedrick) can all shoot from outside. That is the kind of lineup Beard used to trot out at Tech. All forwards and maybe one guy to bring it up the court.

Finally caught up and watched the LSU game. Pretty good game overall. Disu is going to have a very positive trickle down effect. It isn't just that Disu is better than Shedrick (he is by a lot), it is that Shedrick is a TON better than Onyema. That gives us a lot more flexibility. You can start with Disu and bring Shedrick off the bench or you can start both of them. The bottom line is that Disu is going to virtually eliminate Onyema's minutes. It also means that Mitchell can get more minutes at the 3 and eat into Horton's minutes. As far as that goes, I would play him the bare minimum at this point. He brings nothing to the table that you can't also get from Cunningham. And Weaver has infinitely more upside, so you may as well get him some reps. I might also give Chris Johnson all of his reps since he will also play some defense (and doesn't just hoist up bad shots constantly). I would allocate the minutes something like this (with the orange as my starters / closers): And y'all may disagree, but I would also like to see a "big" lineup for a few minutes just to try it out. Something like: Abmas + Brock + Mitchell + Disu + Shedrick. We can run a motion offense so Brock won't have to handle the ball - and a lot of the positions are interchangeable. And Brock can guard 3-4 different positions effectively.

The difference is that with all the past additions, they have been accretive to the revenue pie. Adding teams made more money for the existing conference members. OU and Texas are better than average SEC teams and bring additional eyeballs. All the west coast teams brought the Big 10 eyes in some huge markets. There isn't a lot left. The ONLY team left for the SEC that wouldn't be dilutive would be Notre Dame or maybe UNC. They already have flagships in all the states with remaining decent programs. The Big 10 can add a bunch of schools like FSU, Virginia, etc. where they currently have no presence. I see us ending up with 3 major conferences: SEC, Big 10 and Big 12. The fact that there are still some good assets in the ACC will ironically seal its doom. FSU, UNC, Virginia and either Miami or Clemson will get divided up between the SEC and Big 10. The remaining good assets will get gobbled up by the Big 12 - and will fit perfectly. Virginia Tech, Pitt, Duke, either Clemson or Miami, maybe NC State, maybe Louisville. The rest will join has bens like Oregon State and Stanford and wind up in rag tag conferences that are regional. I think the 3 main conferences will contractually get a lions share of the playoff spots. SEC and Big 10 probably get 3 each. Big 12 gets 2. Leaving 4 at-large. Maybe one spot gets reserved for the pool of also-rans as long as they are in the top-25 or something (and a conference champ).

As a guard, Doj was such a terrible free throw shooter that I just couldn't like him. His defense was just fantastic though. Could use him on this team.

Given that Disu and Shedrick were't playing, we actually did pretty well against UCONN. That was a terrible matchup given our injuries and we were very much in it with a few minutes left to play. So this team is capable of playing with top-10 teams when they are healthy and clicking. Marquette was just so so bad. I was worried when Abmas came out and hit three straight 3s that we would settle for just jacking long shot. And we did. I still am hopeful that the team will improve as the competition improves. It is hard to take anything away from playing these terrible teams. LSU will be a good test. Hopefully we blow them out.