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HookEm

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Posts posted by HookEm

  1. It is a terrible terrible loss. One that will follow me for a long time courtesy of my ACU sister and BIL.

    That said, I knew this was going to be a dogfight as soon as I saw Tech only beat them by 7. And Arkansas didn’t blow them out either. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they beat UCLA. They are so scrappy.

  2. I'm not saying Shaka is the guy.  But I'm saying Barnes isn't the guy.  

    Every year his teams jump out to a good start. Every year I find myself thinking, "maybe we should'a just kept him". Then every year I get a fun reminder like this.

  3. I haven’t had much of a problem with Shaka’s rotations this year. For the most part, the games in the Big 12 have been very close. A few extra minutes for Hepa or Liddell could mean the difference between winning and losing.

    At least with Hepa, he seems to have a great attitude through it all. He is always on the bench cheering for guys and encouraging. And when he actually got minutes against K-State he responded with 15 pts on good efficiency.

    I think we disagree on Shaka’s development of players. Sims, Coleman, Ramey have shown steady improvement in their time here. Kai Jones has improved. Even Andrew Jones has developed well if you factor in his health issues.

    I’m expecting some good growth from Brock and Hepa.

    Anyway there will be plenty of time to discuss it all a month from now.

  4. Derka, what you posted is pretty much a worst case scenario for Texas next year and it is still vastly better than the 2017 squad with Tevin Mack and Shaq Cleare as the upper class “leaders”. Losing Taylor and Barnett killed that year.

    I can’t really disagree regarding Andrew Jones on whether he should come back. But I think he will. And as I’ve said before, I also think Febres will come back and would have redshirted this year if it was necessary.

    Losing Will Baker hurts a little, but he would have been a liability on this year’s squad. Let’s not forget he shot 27% last year. As a 7 footer. And the only way to keep him happy would have been to take away minutes from Sims, K Jones or G Brown. Also not sure who I would want Liddell taking minutes from this year either, but I absolutely wouldn’t want him getting the 18 mpg he got as a soph (while shooting 40% FG and 48% FT).

    I think Hepa will surprise some people next year. He isn’t getting many minutes this year but his efficiency is much better and his per 40 stats are all up a lot. He will get a lot of time next year and another year of maturation will do him some good. Maybe we will see a Jason Klotz / Clint Chapman type senior year out of him.

    I would love to see Royce Hamm back for another year. It seems unlikely, but he would help the team so much. Of course he is averaging 11+ fouls per 4 min, so even if he came back I’m not sure we could count on him for more than 15 mph.

  5. I think we can all agree that if he improves on the success this year with an even better year next year, that will be a major accomplishment.

    Once again, I’m much more optimistic about next year than Derka. We will very likely be starting 3 senior guards, plus 3 more juniors getting big minutes. That is a ton of returning experience for college hoops. We have had good success getting value out of young bigs, so maybe that will continue.

    Who knows what we will pick up from the transfer portal or who decides to take advantage of the free 5th year.

  6. Came across an interesting trend today. In each of Shaka’s last 5 years, we improved on the win percent from the previous year.

    2017 - 33.3%
    2018 - 55.9%
    2019 - 56.8%
    2020 - 61.3%
    2021 - 73.1%

    Maybe this just reflects the maturation of this group of upper classmen. Or overall better roster management as we finally get some upper class depth at the guard positions and a balanced spread between classes.

  7. The good free throw shooting by our perimeter players is a huge advantage over previous years. Coleman, Ramey, A Jones, Febres and Williams all shoot well over 80%. Kai Jones and Greg Brown are around 70%. That is huge.

    Coaches get grief when players suck at free throws, so I’m going to give them a lot of credit for where we are with this squad. Ramey was a 58% FT shooter as a freshman. The others were mid 70s. They have been putting in WORK to get to this point. We would have lost last night in previous years for this reason.

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