Texas Basketball 2023-24

[Hookem2147 21188]

Holding steady at #33 on KenPom. AdjO is 23rd and AdjD is 61th. Adjusted Tempo also shot up a good bit to 162nd. 

Remaining non-con: A&M Corpus (280th), UNC Greensboro (108th) and UT Arlington (166th).

[KingBobo81 534]

Can somebody explain to me the thought process behind our ridiculously shitty non conference schedule? The wins we have over all these garbage teams will do nothing in terms of tourney resume/seeding, and it puts an incredible amount of pressure in conference play to rack up quality wins (which we will have 0 of by the end of the calendar year).

[Rickylovesweed 14262]

5 minutes ago, KingBobo81 said:

Can somebody explain to me the thought process behind our ridiculously shitty non-conference schedule? The wins we have over all these garbage teams will do nothing in terms of tourney resume/seeding, and it puts an incredible amount of pressure in conference play to rack up quality wins (which we will have 0 of by the end of the calendar year).

Funny thing is, I actually think this is what we should start doing in non-conference. 

There was a long discussion about this on Twitter the other day  in reference to Houston. Go and look at their non-conference schedule. They've been beating the absolute shit out of really bad teams but they're #2 in NET. 

The key is beating the shit out of these really bad teams but NET seems to reward that. Houston has been rigging this system for a couple years now. 

 

[Hookem2147 21188]

2 minutes ago, KingBobo81 said:

Can somebody explain to me the thought process behind our ridiculously shitty non conference schedule? The wins we have over all these garbage teams will do nothing in terms of tourney resume/seeding, and it puts an incredible amount of pressure in conference play to rack up quality wins (which we will have 0 of by the end of the calendar year).

1) Pretty much any win in conference play is a quality win, so we will have 18 opportunities between January and March. 

2) The schedule feels more shitty because of all the real games (UConn, Marquette, LSU) all were away from Austin. In reality, this schedule ain't anymore shitty than the 2021-2022 one where we lost to Gonzaga on the road and a Seton Hall team on the road that turned out to be pretty bad and then played a bunch of garbage. Finished the year 10-8 in conference play (plus a home win vs Tennessee in late January) with a first round exit in the Big 12 tournament and still got a 6 seed. Our KenPom non-con SOS ranking that year was 343rd lol. This year it is currently at 284th. Last year was 183rd.

3) Considering the new players on the roster and the fact it became obvious by late summer that Disu was going to be out for a while, it didn't make much sense for this team to go through a meatgrinder in November and December. They will have plenty of tough games in conference play.

[shadow_operative 15932]

kenpom AdjD rankings since 2015:

 

2015-14th

2016-40th

2017-21st

2018)12th

2019)26th

2020)24th

2021)31st

2022)14th

2023)13th

2024)61st

 

i’m just gonna say what’s written on the wall: we dropped from top 5 in AdjD when beard was fired to 13th by season’s end, and this year we have our worst AdjD (by far) since Barnes’s worst teams. we are going to have to win games on the offensive end this year. 

[Rickylovesweed 14262]

5 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

1) Pretty much any win in conference play is a quality win, so we will have 18 opportunities between January and March. 

2) The schedule feels more shitty because of all the real games (UConn, Marquette, LSU) all were away from Austin. In reality, this schedule ain't anymore shitty than the 2021-2022 one where we lost to Gonzaga on the road and a Seton Hall team on the road that turned out to be pretty bad and then played a bunch of garbage. Finished the year 10-8 in conference play (plus a home win vs Tennessee in late January) with a first round exit in the Big 12 tournament and still got a 6 seed. Our KenPom non-con SOS ranking that year was 343rd lol. This year it is currently at 284th. Last year was 183rd.

3) Considering the new players on the roster and the fact it became obvious by late summer that Disu was going to be out for a while, it didn't make much sense for this team to go through a meatgrinder in November and December. They will have plenty of tough games in conference play.

It's also questionable if we should be scheduling tough non-conference games. 

NET really rewards beating the shit out of bad teams. UH wins prior today were ULM, A&M Corpus, Stetson, Towson, Utah, Dayton, Montana, Xavier, Rice, and Jackson State. They were #2 in NET. 

The key is just boat racing these type teams and NET rewards you. 

 

[Hookem2147 21188]

Just now, Rickylovesweed said:

It's also questionable if we should be scheduling tough non-conference games. 

NET really rewards beating the shit out of bad teams. UH wins prior today were ULM, A&M Corpus, Stetson, Towson, Utah, Dayton, Montana, Xavier, Rice, and Jackson State. They were #2 in NET. 

The key is just boat racing these type teams and NET rewards you. 

 

There are certainly ways to game the system. We see it in baseball every year with RPI.

I never worry about the strength of schedule argument because we are legitimately about to play 14 or 15 Q1 games out of 18 conference games.

[Rickylovesweed 14262]

9 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

There are certainly ways to game the system. We see it in baseball every year with RPI.

I never worry about the strength of schedule argument because we are legitimately about to play 14 or 15 Q1 games out of 18 conference games.

The women's team is a prime example.

They're #4 in NET but have only played 1 top 50ish team. Beating the shit out of bad teams works in non-conference. 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Rickylovesweed

[shadow_operative 15932]

i don’t really care about the SOS schedule for tourney purposes, i just grew up being accustomed to watching Texas play a bunch of marquee opponents in the non con and i miss that. 

[HtownHorn 14663]

We are 2-1 in neutral sites, and 0-1 in true road games. The Quad 1 games will be taken care of in the conference schedule. I doubt anything changes anytime soon with scheduling.

For this team to reach its ceiling, we need Hunter attacking like he did today. Just stop with the silly turnovers from over penetrating same with Abmas.

When Disu, Abmas, and Hunter score 58 points as they did today, the record will be fine heading into March.

Edited December 17, 2023 by HtownHorn

[closetohumping 17433]

11 hours ago, HtownHorn said:

over penetrating 

I over penetrated south Austin’s mom

[Hermanator 7032]

2 hours ago, closetohumping said:

I over penetrated south Austin’s mom

[closetohumping 17433]

11 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

[kevwun 15759]

With how deep the Big XII is in basketball, there’s not a real reason to have a bunch of tough games before league play.  The extra wins are helpful when it comes to tourney seeding also.

 

[realgreggym 835]

16 hours ago, Rickylovesweed said:

It's also questionable if we should be scheduling tough non-conference games. 

NET really rewards beating the shit out of bad teams. UH wins prior today were ULM, A&M Corpus, Stetson, Towson, Utah, Dayton, Montana, Xavier, Rice, and Jackson State. They were #2 in NET. 

The key is just boat racing these type teams and NET rewards you. 

 

Agree and that's why you don't focus on statistics.  

[realgreggym 835]

34 minutes ago, kevwun said:

With how deep the Big XII is in basketball, there’s not a real reason to have a bunch of tough games before league play.  The extra wins are helpful when it comes to tourney seeding also.

 

Correct but you need to play some good teams in order to prepare for the tough conference games. You don't want to play a lot of cupcakes and then head to Kansas. 

[kevwun 15759]

Yeah, and they have done that in UConn and Marquette.

Edited December 17, 2023 by kevwun

[shadow_operative 15932]

back in 2006 we played (final kenpom ranking) #16 WVU, #21 Iowa, #17 Tennessee, #2 Duke, #6 memphis, and #5 villanova in our non con schedule. that’s the type of scheduling i became accustomed to, and i miss it. playing cupcakes every week doesn’t do it for me, especially when Texas is good. i love it when the november and december games matter, and i especially love all of the memories i have of going to so many of these marquee matchups in person. frankly, if Texas is good and doesn’t need the wins just to try and get into the tourney, then i see no reason to not pack your schedule with tough and/or brand name teams. 

[HookEm 2463]

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. 

 

[hobbes2702 13029]

5 hours ago, HookEm said:

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. 

That lineup would be a disaster offensively. There is zero spacing. You could play a box and 1 and completely shut down that lineup.

[HookEm 2463]

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. 

[HtownHorn 14663]

Offensively, you have to have at least 2 of the 3 on the court at all times, Abmas, Hunter, and Cunningham. Hopefully, Weaver can work his way into that group because Cunningham still picks up a lot of silly fouls.

[Rickylovesweed 14262]

As referenced above, this is the problem with NET. Beating the shit out of bad teams might have more value than close wins against decent to good teams. 

 

[shadow_operative 15932]

this guy has us in an 8 vs 9 game with princeton in purdue’s bracket:

 

[shadow_operative 15932]

joe lunardi has us losing 70-50 in an 8 vs 9 game against northwestern.

 

[Blotto 23487]

I have to respect Joe Lunardi's game. Dude has fashioned a career and a decent income from just pulling shit out of his ass and smearing it on a bracket. Nobody holds him  accountable for his early predictions (and how could you), so he just keeps putting these out and going on TV to talk about it. Inevitably the real brackets are released only marginally resembling his last efforts, and in early April he begins the cycle again with a "way too early bracketology" for 20XX. For whatever reason, he has convinced people he is the king of bracketology. Solid hustle if you ask me. 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Blotto

[jimmyjazz 45881]

Is Lunardi claiming to predict what the committee will do or is he seeding his bracket how he thinks team strengths will fall out?

A 70-50 score in an 8/9 game means somebody screwed up.

[shadow_operative 15932]

[HookEm 2463]

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.

[shadow_operative 15932]

16 minutes ago, HookEm said:

I think we are going to look a lot better over the coming two weeks now that Disu is working into the lineup

we’re going to look a lot better over the next two weeks because our schedule is soft. i don’t think we’re underrated at all. this looks like a .500 conference team that gets a 7-10 seed, which is where most people have us.

[Pancho 44694]

I don’t think we’re underrated either. 

And Alabama is not winning the NC. This looks like a computer simulation and not Lunardi actually picking the games. 

[ClubWhatever 12120]

We go as Hunter goes, really.   Because you need two guards that can score from different places on the floor.

Edited December 20, 2023 by ClubWhatever

[shadow_operative 15932]

16 minutes ago, Pancho said:

I don’t think we’re underrated either. 

And Alabama is not winning the NC. This looks like a computer simulation and not Lunardi actually picking the games. 

bama is the baylor of the sec, neither of which is capable of winning six consecutive games in the tourney with their porous defenses. fun teams to watch though, particularly bama. 

Edited December 20, 2023 by shadow_operative

[Underdog 28545]

Bold move picking two SEC teams who've never been to a FF and they've been hooping it since the dinosaurs roamed Earth. 

[Blotto 23487]

2 hours ago, Underdog said:

Bold move picking two SEC teams who've never been to a FF and they've been hooping it since the dinosaurs roamed Earth. 

Plenty of bold moves with that bracket. Shaka to the reginal finals and Barnes to the final four. I'll laugh when we make further than both of them, and it will probably only take a trip to the S16 to achieve that, lulz. 

[shadow_operative 15932]

59 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Plenty of bold moves with that bracket. Shaka to the reginal finals and Barnes to the final four. I'll laugh when we make further than both of them, and it will probably only take a trip to the S16 to achieve that, lulz. 

of all the barnes teams to pick to go to the FF, this ain’t one of them. this team has first weekend exit written all over it.

[realgreggym 835]

6 hours ago, Underdog said:

Bold move picking two SEC teams who've never been to a FF and they've been hooping it since the dinosaurs roamed Earth. 

The problem with dinosaurs was that they had horrible hands and couldn't play defense. 

[ztejas 43411]

23 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

joe lunardi has us losing 70-50 in an 8 vs 9 game against northwestern.

 

He also has Alabama and Tennessee playing in the Final Four, which will happen shortly after the heat death of the universe.

@Underdog beat me to it 

Edited December 21, 2023 by ztejas

[jimmyjazz 45881]

22 hours ago, HookEm said:

We played top-5 UConn very tough without both of our big men in a virtual road game. 

That Top 5 UConn team just got their hats handed to them by Seton Hall, 75-60.  (Providence had the same margin over Marquette the night before.)

[HookEm 2463]

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.

[Js1 85270]

4 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

That Top 5 UConn team just got their hats handed to them by Seton Hall, 75-60.  (Providence had the same margin over Marquette the night before.)

I mean they were already getting beat but then Clingan went out with a foot injury 

[Pancho 44694]

12 minutes ago, HookEm said:

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.

When Jay Will called them the best team in the country last night I was like

[shadow_operative 15932]

nah, uconn is legit. they didn’t look like the best team in the country when we played them, but they’re legit. they’ve already got double digit wins over Texas, UNC, and Gonzaga. they’ve got a good mix of experience + young talent, they’re deep, and they’re super efficient on offense. uconn is going to have another great season/deep tourney run if they stay healthy.

[shadow_operative 15932]

we don’t have anyone who has a clue how to play the role of point guard. gaping hole on the roster.

[Biff Tannen 45663]

Someone explain to me how you get the pronunciation of “Ace-mas” out of Abmas. 

[KingBobo81 534]

Someone explain to me how you get the pronunciation of “Ace-mas” out of Abmas. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt]) or scharfes S (IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], "sharp S"), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German. The character's Unicode names in English are sharp s[1] and eszett.[1] The Eszett letter is used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph ⟨ss⟩, if the ß-character is unavailable. In the 20th century, the ß-character was replaced with ss in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.[2]

[shadow_operative 15932]

15 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Someone explain to me how you get the pronunciation of “Ace-mas” out of Abmas. 

the “B” is actually a german letter that’s pronounced like an “s”. 

that’s pronounced “kevin gross-kroyts”. hence max “ace-mas”.

[shadow_operative 15932]

in terms of shot selection, max abmas makes j’covan brown look like chris mihm. 

[Blotto 23487]

he's not afraid to pull the trigger. That being said, J'Covan was a career 39.8/35.0/86.7 shooter and Max's stats for the season heading into todays game were 47.1/41.1/94.1

Edited December 22, 2023 by Blotto

[shadow_operative 15932]

way, way too much of this this season:

 

 

can’t count how many times every single game that we miss wide open guys under the basket like this.

 

5 minutes ago, Blotto said:

he's not afraid to pull the trigger. That being said, J'Covan was a career 39.8/35.0/86.7 shooter and Max's stats for the season heading into todays game were 47.1/41.1/94.1

imagine what his slashes would be if he dialed it back a bit. 👀 

Edited December 22, 2023 by shadow_operative