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2018-19 NCAA Basketball Season

Goo Punch

By Goo Punch
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MNLonghornFUKM
MNLonghornFUKM

well...these games suck. pics of daughter?

Jhawk
Jhawk

We thought ESPN was bad with trey young... just wait until they make zion the most hated guy in the sport.

Underdog
Underdog

LMAO @ a Duke player getting into foul trouble. 

spystud13

spystud13 2371

Posted
Posted
Quote

With five losses on Saturday's schedule, the men's college basketball season went from bad to worse for the Pac-12, which is assured of the worst December by a major conference in the past 20 years.

Coming off a winless NCAA tournament last March, the Pac-12 will be the first of the Power 5 conferences plus the Big East to finish December with a win percentage below .600 in the past two decades.

Fresh off beating No. 1 Kansas last week, Arizona State -- the conference's only ranked team, at No. 17 -- fell at home to Princeton 67-66. Meanwhile, Utah was thrashed at home by No. 6 Nevada, UCLA's skid continued with a home loss to Liberty, Santa Clara beat Washington State in Spokane, and Cal fell to Seattle.

Oregon rallied to win at Boise State, and Oregon State routed Central Connecticut State to lift the Pac-12's record above .500 to 37-36 for the month, with Stanford still to host Long Beach State on Saturday and USC facing UC Davis on Sunday.

Saturday was the third time this season that the Pac-12 has had two days when its teams lost at least five nonconference games. In the previous 20 seasons, that happened only twice.

The previous worst performance by a major conference in the past 20 years came in 2003, when the Big Ten went 46-30 (.605). The Pac-12's previous worst was 38-24 (.613) in 2009, when it was still known as the Pac-10.

Princeton's win was the second by the Ivy League over a ranked team this month. Penn beat defending NCAA champion Villanova on Dec. 11, and Arizona State coach Bobby Hurley said the playing field is becoming more equitable.

"There is nothing good that can be taken from this," Hurley said after his team fell to 9-3. "We took a step back. There is a lot of parity in college basketball. If you're not ready to play, you're going to get beat."

UCLA (7-6) has lost four straight games to Belmont, Cincinnati, Ohio State and Liberty by an average margin of 15 points. The Bruins had not dropped four nonconference games in a row since the 2010-11 season.

"This might be one of the most disappointing games I've had," coach Steve Alford said after the Liberty loss. "Trying to reflect back throughout 28 years [as a coach], the word 'disappointment' of just our team and how we performed -- I don't know the last time I was this disappointed in a team. It did not look like us on any level."

Ouch. 

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

Posted
Posted
19 hours ago, UTDD said:

Wow.  Just horrible.  UCLA should be a perennial Top 10 program.  ASU too.  Pac-12 ugh...

Alford is done.  Guerrero is too much of a pussy to do a mid season firing, although it should happen tomorrow.  Word is two targets are Jamie Dixon and Eric Musselman.  But though Musselman wants the job, he isn’t expected to be able to pass even a cursory vetting process.  Which is why he’s at Nevada.

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Brian Fantana

Brian Fantana 6681

Posted
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20 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

Alford is done.  Guerrero is too much of a pussy to do a mid season firing, although it should happen tomorrow.  Word is two targets are Jamie Dixon and Eric Musselman.  But though Musselman wants the job, he isn’t expected to be able to pass even a cursory vetting process.  Which is why he’s at Nevada.

I know nothing about Musselman, what do you mean by this?

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1075

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Was just thinking... The coach that makes the most sense at UCLA until they can find the next up and comer is......... Slick Rick Pitino.  He's still got 5-6 years in him, he'll make the program a contender, and anyone else that UCLA would hire will likely get fired in the same amount of time Rick has left in coaching.  He would also probably start immediately if you wanted him to.

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1075

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

Other than the one season with Lonzo, UCLA never spent a week in the top 10 under Alford.  What an absolutely terrible hire.  I don’t trust Guerrero on the next one either.

Who would you go after?  Pitino is the right answer here.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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Word is UCLA donors are ready to step it up on the hire.  We shall see.  Names being bandied about- and yes some are pie-in-the-sky but we will at least inquire- Donovan, Bennett, Dixon, Hoiberg, Keatts at N.C. St, Cronin at Cincinnati.   Hire likely not until after the season.  But with Pauley renovated and the new Mo Ostin basketball facility, along with what appears to be fresh donor money (new blood apparently), this could be a bigger hire than people might guess.

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1075

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

No.  Way too much baggage and at 66, not long term enough or me.

1.  What is the dirt on Musselman and why not him?

2.  What coach out there can turn UCLA around?  I see 3 problems at UCLA that will make it hard to turn around; 1) Players, the players are entitled and don't care.  That means a coach needs a couple of years to change the culture. 2) School support, UCLA is notoriously cheap and no coach really wants to coach there and the AD is a douche. 3) Fan support won't come back until E8's are attainable each year.

No coach out there would be attracted to this situation and no fans will be attracted to blindly support the program until the it is turned around.  Without a strong coach the players will continue to be entitled idiots who don't care about the program.  Pitino is the only name that is ready to go right now that can command the respect of the players and school.  The fans will come around when you're in the final four in 3 years.

Addressing the term, if you can't think of a coach that has 75% or better odds to turn it all around in 3-5 years with all of the above going against him then you are just going to waste 5 years and a bunch of money.  Pitino will 100% have it turned around in that time and make it an attractive job going forward.  He might even outlast the AD which means you could have a better person to find his replacement.  If Pitino is a disaster and is out in 3-5 years then the AD is likely gone too.  There really isn't much downside there and the NCAA isn't going to do shit to Pitino unless his problems get too loud to ignore like they did at UL, but that took 16 years.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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The AD is gone in a year or 2 anyway, that’s the plan.  Entitled players are a fact and of the modern day 5 star.  But fan apathy is real.  But that is more a function of years of mediocrity.  The hire needs to be big.  

I’m not saying Putin’s wouldn’t turn it around.  I just think they won’t go near that.  And he will be so gun shy in recruiting that it will hurt him.  

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1075

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31 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

The AD is gone in a year or 2 anyway, that’s the plan.  Entitled players are a fact and of the modern day 5 star.  But fan apathy is real.  But that is more a function of years of mediocrity.  The hire needs to be big.  

I’m not saying Putin’s wouldn’t turn it around.  I just think they won’t go near that.  And he will be so gun shy in recruiting that it will hurt him.  

The entitled player problem is nothing in the midwest and east coast like it is out west.  The quality of basketball out there reflects 2 things in my opinion; 1) weak coaches and 2) players who really just think that playing ball at a major school will earn them a paycheck.  A strong coach kills both of those issues (obviously on #1).  Duke doesn't have the issues UCLA has. KU doesn't have them.  UK doesn't really have them though it is getting worse each year for them.  UNC is a weird program in that they don't really improve players but the highly touted recruits all play hard.  The difference between the UCLA 5*s and the other blue bloods is that a real blue blood coach doesn't take shit from the players.  On the west coast the players (and coaches) are more concerned with the player's ego than winning games or improving the program.  It is almost exclusively on the west coast where you consistently have 5 star guys that think they have already made it and aren't playing hard for the school, just hard enough to be satisfied with their own performances.

I just don't see another heavy hitter out there that will both get the big recruits and coach them instead of be owned by them (or their daddy).  Pitino is the only name that will get UCLA to where they want to be and do it in a way that is actually sustainable (direct jab to the Mayor right there as transfers and JUCO isn't sustainable).

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UTDD

UTDD 362

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

The AD is gone in a year or 2 anyway, that’s the plan.  Entitled players are a fact and of the modern day 5 star.  But fan apathy is real.  But that is more a function of years of mediocrity.  The hire needs to be big.  

I’m not saying Putin’s wouldn’t turn it around.  I just think they won’t go near that.  And he will be so gun shy in recruiting that it will hurt him.  

I can see some good coaches out there for sure to hire, but both "big" (I think we would both likely agree on most coaches that meet this criteria) and good is a much smaller list.  I am very curious what direction they go but I think they will step it up much like USC should but haven't yet in football.  

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1075

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who Would they step up and get? I don’t see anyone in the field that would be a dramatic hire. Mack? Cronin? I don’t see either of those guys being UCLA types. The are about the biggest guys that could even consider UCLA. You suggesting an nba guy?

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Jhawk

Jhawk 1075

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, Underdog said:

LMAO @ Cronin, might as well bring back Howland.  At least he can get out of the first weekend of the tournament unlike li’l Mick. 

That is kind of what I'm getting at.  If they are going to get back on the map there aren't coaches that have a name that would even consider UCLA.  Cronin is potentially the closest but he won't draw fans for years.  USC went with the dunk city guy, that wasn't a big hire and really was a meh hire.  I don't know any college basketball coach that would leave their current situation for UCLA.  Their best option would probably be to try and get Kelvin Sampson but I don't know if he would head west.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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Some updated names getting traction

Hoiberg- he's a Wasserman client, and Casey Wasserman will be intimately involved in the search.  I feel very indifferent about this.  He seems very Alford-esque to me.

Earl Watson- former Bruin with NBA coaching experience.  Again, I hope we shoot higher.

Pitino getting support, but I just don't see us pulling that trigger.

Shaka Smart getting thrown around.  No thanks.

 

Oh, and Bob Meyers, Warriors Pres of BBall ops and GM (and former Bruin) is also going to be intimately involved in the search.  That can't be a bad thing.

Edited by Sbbruin
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76Jayhawk

76Jayhawk 44

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On 12/31/2018 at 10:00 AM, Sbbruin said:

Word is UCLA donors are ready to step it up on the hire.  We shall see.  Names being bandied about- and yes some are pie-in-the-sky but we will at least inquire- Donovan, Bennett, Dixon, Hoiberg, Keatts at N.C. St, Cronin at Cincinnati.   Hire likely not until after the season.  But with Pauley renovated and the new Mo Ostin basketball facility, along with what appears to be fresh donor money (new blood apparently), this could be a bigger hire than people might guess.

Dixon is not likely to leave his alma mater. Hoiberg hated, absolutely hated the recruiting aspect of college ball. Donovan is, IMO, unlikely to return to the NCAA. Bennett has it made in Virginia/ Cronin I could see potentially leaving Cincy for UCLA, Keatts too though.

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21829

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The one thing UCLA is prepared to do is pay elite coaching money.  It's not likely Alford was on the cheap at $2.6 mil, but they are talking about going north of $4 mil, which for hoops is a shitload.  The program is pretty flush with the  UA money and new donor money.  But there are a lot of challenges that make the job unattractive.  I really think the Howland situation is going to hurt us though.  Here was a National COY who took the school to 3 straight FF and got canned for a bad-ish season... in which he won the conference.  And who is now taking a shitful MSU team and making them nationally relevant.  I was on record as saying his canning was a mistake.

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