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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. Obviously there are a lot of ways to measure the success of a program. A team getting a Final Four or a Title in 1940-1970 isn't really that relevant as far as I'm concerned. The KenPom "program ratings" take into account tourney success and computer rankings since 1997, which is longer than any recruit has been alive. And longer than many of their parents have even been actively following the sport. Just going on the computer ranking, Texas falls to #14 and Florida, Ohio State, Louisville and Wisconsin jump ahead of us. That seems about right to me. All that said, if a talented young coach is on the market, I don't think there are more than 4-5 schools that are more attractive than UT as a destination. Kentucky, Kansas, UNC... maybe UCLA and Duke. I think that's it. That doesn't mean that we will be able to pry a good coach away from Arizona, UConn or Florida. But if we are all bidding for an unattached coach, I think we win.
  2. KenPom has us as the #10 ranked program since 1997, and that includes some pretty lean years. If we aren't in the upper tier, we are very close to it, and absolutely have the potential to reach it.
  3. I agree. But then you look at our efficiency and somehow it is pretty good despite taking what feels like bad shots.
  4. Another thing... It feels like this team has more guys who can score 30 points than most other teams we have had. Pope, Johnson, Kaluma, Mark, and Kent have all scored 30+ in their career. Shedrick has scored 27. But then they will also disappear and score 6 points in a game. There is no consistency. Everyone is playing "my turn / your turn" basketball.
  5. Those teams were all great shooting teams, and the top players were probably better shooters than the 2025 team. I'm not really going to argue that this team is better, but they are definitely in the conversation. As a TEAM goes, this is the most efficient shooting team we have had in the last 30 years. 2004-2005 - 0.388 3P%, 0.456 FG%, 0.697 FT%, 0.524 eFG%, 0.558 TS% 2005-2006 - 0.372 3P%, 0.455 FG%, 0.727 FT%, 0.524 eFG%, 0.559 TS% 2009-2010 - 0.345 3P%, 0.466 FG%, 0.633 FT%, 0.511 eFG%, 0.536 TS% 2010-2011 - 0.376 3P%, 0.455 FG%, 0.654 FT%, 0.502 eFG%, 0.534 TS% 2024-2025 - 0.373 3P%, 0.483 FG%, 0.748 FT%, 0.550 eFG%, 0.586 TS% Of course, the numbers will likely get worse as we move through conference. But for how ugly this team plays offense, somehow the efficiency is as good as we have ever had. And we turn the ball over less than any other UT team except the 2008 Elite Eight team. I struggle to understand why we aren't better. Our defense isn't bad. I think if we were an elite rebounding team, we would have 2-3 more wins. Seems like our opponent getting offensive rebounds is what dooms us.
  6. Counterpoint: I don’t want Shedrick to get the ball down there. Assuming he catches the pass, half the time it gets stripped and he takes sooooo long to make a move.
  7. If my maths are right, he currently has a kid in HS. He also talks a lot about fly fishing, which seems to be his main hobby. His wife went to Gonzaga and he has spent his entire career there even before being head coach. And he is from that part of the country. I’m revising my odds down to 1%.
  8. If we win those 6 games, we are in 100%. 8-10 easily gets you in from the SEC this year. 7-11 might get you in depending on the specific wins and losses.
  9. I personally think Mark Few would be a great hire. He just turned 62, which is on the older end. But as we have covered, that is a lot younger than Barnes, Izzo and Sampson. Younger than Bruce Pearl. Same age as Bill Self (they were born on the same day, lol). He could be a very good coach for a decade. Even in the NBA you got guys like Popovich, Thibodeau and Carlisle who are still great coaches well into their 60s. Over the last 10 years, Gonzaga has a runner up finish, +3 Elite 8s, +3 Sweet 16s. And that doesn't include possibly their best team which was 31-2 in the lost Covid year. You would be hard pressed to find a better program over that stretch. Moreover, they play an fun brand of basketball with an offense that is consistently ranked in the top-5. This would be a slam dunk. But I put the odds at 10%. Why would he leave? I'm pretty certain we would be in the top-10 right now with only 1-2 losses.
  10. Hot take here, but Larry is a better player than Weaver. Much better point guard and a better defender. When Weaver comes back, he will eat into Pope and Larry’s minutes and I don’t think that is a good thing. Also Pope and Larry are great FT shooters. Weaver… isn’t. I do love Weaver’s hustle and energy, and the way he hits the boards. But I don’t think we are going to win that much if he is getting 25 mpg. Hate to say it because he is probably my favorite player on the team.
  11. This was a good win. Overall much better defense. I thought Terry did a good job with the rotation. Liked the minutes with Pope and Larry on the floor. Larry seems to be our best point guard and doesn’t need to score. And he was great in defense. I like him getting the extra minutes at the expense of Mark. Mark is a better player, but the team seems to play better with Larry out there. And Pope is probably our best shooter and plays better off the ball. I liked bringing in Pryor for a few minutes. He brought some energy. Same with Onyema.
  12. Tre Johnson knows he can take Grill every time. Shot just hasn’t been falling.
  13. I think Larry has been really good defensively tonight
  14. lol and as I type that he gets a steal and jump ball
  15. The player we really need, and could have gotten, is JT Toppin. Then Shedrick could come off the bench and give us 15 mpg.
  16. When Rodney took over, the program was in a state of chaos. RICE took us to overtime the day Beard got arrested. We barely beat a bad Stanford team, and only beat OU by 1. Then K-State beat us. It was ugly and most fans felt like the season was lost. It is easy to dismiss the year as Rodney winning with "Beard's team", but that team could have easily fallen off a cliff and missed the tournament completely. We closed the year winning 7 of our last 8 (and it could have easily been 11 out of 12 with close losses at Baylor and TCU. We hadn't been past the first weekend in 15 years, and Rodney got us to the Elite 8 (and some bad calls from making the Final Four). We also had two one and done NBA caliber recruits expected to sign. 100 out of 100 Athletic Directors would have given Rodney the job. He went out and earned it. That said, just about everyone I know expected his tenure to play out exactly as it has. We gave him a shot and with his tourney win last year, he delivered more than Shaka did in his six years with the program. But he is never going to be an elite coach. We will grind and struggle to make the tournament every year and occasionally put together a run. But we aren't a program that will be feared. We aren't ever going to be a top 5 team consistently. So for that, he has to go. The days of settling for mediocrity are over.
  17. Vinson played well at the start of the season. That’s another big. But if it was me I wouldn’t start any of them and go small with Kent and Kaluma. If this isn’t the best shooting team we have had, what is?
  18. The thing is, this looks like a poorly constructed roster because of how badly they have been coached. But it is actually a very solidly constructed roster. This might be the best shooting team ever at Texas. And we have great length on the perimeter. We have decent size down low. We have guys who CAN play defense, but they don’t. We have energy guys in Weaver and Kent. We have 3 guys who can score 30+ in Pope, Johnson and Kaluma. Mark probably can as well. But the sum is less than the parts. They don’t play team defense. Or really any defense at all. They are boring ISO ball on offense. They don’t know how to close out games. It is an injustice to have this much talent and be this shitty.
  19. Somebody up thread mentioned that we don’t have a point guard and referenced our poor assist numbers. Consider that both of our point guards are averaging well under their historical assists per game. Jordan Pope - 2024: 3.4, 2025: 1.8 Julian Larry - 2024: 4.8, 2025: 3.8 Our offensive system is garbage. I blame Frank Haith as much as Rodney. What a terrible hire that turned out to be.
  20. It is crazy, because we should have an elite perimeter defensive team. Tramon Mark was a key contributor in Houston's Final Four team and is supposed to be a lock down defender Tre Johnson was supposed to be a plus defender and definitely has the length and aggressiveness to do the job Julian Larry was 2x All-Defense at Indiana State Jayson Kent was All-Defense at Indiana State Weaver and Pope could also be good defenders as they have the necessary size and athleticism to lock people down It seems like the staff has not put a priority on holding this group accountable. A hard ass, hard nosed coach would have this group humming on the defensive side. They are constantly out of position and the defensive fundamentals as a whole seem to be missing. That is pure coaching as defensive lapses have to be checked immediately and consistently or the players, no matter how good they are, will not give their best effort on the defensive end.
  21. No. Something like a 33% chance.
  22. I don't mind the lack of rim protection nearly as much as the turnstile approach to perimeter defense that let's the opponent into the lane with ease.
  23. Updated conference probability distribution based on KenPom game odds: Only 25% chance we finish 6-12 or worse. If we assume a 7-11 record gives us a 50% chance of a tourney bid, and an 8-10 record is 100% a tourney bid, then our tourney chances right now are about 65%.
  24. Found this pic of Kadin Shedrick training in the offseason. Kind of sums it up.
  25. Arthur Kaluma Dillon Mitchell In the end it looks like we made the right call letting Dillon Mitchell go, as it probably helped us get Arthur Kaluma. Kaluma is better in just about every way.
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