Hate to be that guy- but football season is over- what’s up?

[Wulaw Horn 19126]

Have been doing a very cursory follow of hoops (excited by football- life obligations- shitty and uninteresting OOC schedule) and haven’t really locked in on hoops yet, what have I missed?  
I know Disu was out and recently back and his numbers look good in the box score. Is Max A all we thought?  Mitchell looks good in the box score how does he look on the court?  Been excited in what I’ve seen in very small bits from Cunningham about his assertiveness on offense and confidence in taking his shot. 
What kind of squad we have here folks?  Sweet 16 realistic?  Final 4 upside?  Bubble team?  Tell me what you got and fill in the other football first guys as well. 
thanks

 

[shadow_operative 15932]

we keep spending the first 30-32 minutes of the game letting the UTA’s of the world hang around before eventually pulling away. we’ve lost by double digits to both tourney teams we’ve faced. we beat a terrible louisville team (183 in kenpom with home losses to Chattanooga and arkansas state) on a max abmas fade away buzzer beater. we have no true point guard and it shows. defensively our lack of size and talent/discipline in the back court has been hurting us. we have especially struggled to defend the perimeter. up until two games ago this was the worst team we’ve had in terms of AdjD since 2014, and by a lot.

now the good: dylan disu is our best player and has a newly developed three point stroke. he was always capable of making threes- now it seems like a strength. just need him to get fully healthy.

dillon mitchell still can’t shoot but his effort is evident. he’s been flying around the court block shots, grabbing rebounds, and throwing down alley oops.

max abmas is shooting like 65% on catch and shoot threes. he still takes some bad shots, but he’s by far out best scorer, and when he is taking good shots they just all seem to fall in, one after another. 

as teams go, this one has a lot of work to do before thinking about making the second weekend. in fact we need to improve just to feel safe about finishing .500 in conference play. the team lacks any real identity, and goes through cold spells almost every game where the opponent cuts the lead from 12 to 2 or something similar. we don’t have a go-to player on offense, as again, abmas has been better at scoring off the ball than he has been creating his own shot. 

this league will be brutal, as it’s full of better teams with better players and better coaches. as of today, even assuming that we continue to jell and improve, this looks like a team that finishes .500 in the league, and gets a 7-10 seed depending on the big xii tournament. 

Edited January 2 by shadow_operative

[Herpa Derpa 6126]

there are pieces but the puzzle remains undone.

[BigOrange1 6442]

i haven't paid a lot of attention since marquette as its hard to watch for me to care too much about the games against the dog shit opponents that do nothing for our tourney resume.  thankfully, that part of the season is now over.  i actually like the way the begnning of the big 12 schedule sets up.  first four games are all winnable - vs. tech (#37 in kenpom), @ cincinnatti (#40), @ west virginia (#125), vs. ucf (#75) before a four game gauntlet that consists of vs. baylor (#15), @ oklahoma (#27), @ byu (#3), vs. houston (#1).  gotta win as many of those first four as is possible because the level of competition really steps up after that.  i'd be thrilled to be 5-3 in the conference after the first 8 games.

[Valmy77 13247]

The real season starts on the 6th on ESPN2 against Tech. Not super optimistic due to what people have said here but ready for the ride.

[closetohumping 17453]

Gloom.    And doom

[TommysTinyTowels 787]

56 minutes ago, closetohumping said:

Gloom.    And doom

Hunter missed the last game, but after being embarrassed going home to Wisconsin he has been far more aggressive and confident.
When Tyrese plays well the whole team looks better. I think he's our best all around player and if he stays assertive our ceiling is much higher.

 

[Gut Wagon 8083]

1 hour ago, TommysTinyTowels said:

Hunter missed the last game, but after being embarrassed going home to Wisconsin he has been far more aggressive and confident.
When Tyrese plays well the whole team looks better. I think he's our best all around player and if he stays assertive our ceiling is much higher.

 

Although he COULD be our best all-around player, watching him fail to utilize that talent for long stretches is frustrating. Disu carried us last March, but I fear we'll go only as far as Hunter's play takes us. 

[HookEm 2467]

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.

[Hookem2147 21343]

This team is going to be very matchup/style dependent. For instance, I actually see us matching up worse with a Baylor than a Houston in conference play. Teams who can play with tempo and have multiple threats from the perimeter are going to give us trouble all year. And while a team like Houston can defend like hell you can at least get in the ring with them if you have toughness, which this team seems to be gaining a little bit more of with Disu back and Hunter playing at a high level.

[Js1 85439]

17 minutes ago, HookEm said:

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.

Last year's group def had more chemistry with the Allen/Bishop/Disu/Brock/Carr group having 2 offseason together. 

I don't see a Timmy out there right now - who is the very vocal leader of this team? 

[Herpa Derpa 6126]

Quote

Disu, Cunningham, Hunter and Mitchell.

We go where they take us.

[shadow_operative 15932]

1 hour ago, Js1 said:

I don't see a Timmy out there right now - who is the very vocal leader of this team? 

i wish tyrese had become that guy for this team.

[HookEm 2467]

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.

[HookEm 2467]

I have more thoughts, but let's take them to the official season thread...

[HtownHorn 14741]

4 hours ago, Hookem2147 said:

This team is going to be very matchup/style dependent. For instance, I actually see us matching up worse with a Baylor than a Houston in conference play. Teams who can play with tempo and have multiple threats from the perimeter are going to give us trouble all year. And while a team like Houston can defend like hell you can at least get in the ring with them if you have toughness, which this team seems to be gaining a little bit more of with Disu back and Hunter playing at a high level.

Baylor can't play defense and UH will make our guards turn it over 15+ times. This couldn't be more wrong.

[shadow_operative 15932]

believe it or not i actually get where both of you are coming from, but im waiting until i see us play 4-5 league games before i can decide which one of you i agree with. on the one hand baylor’s offense and shooting could run us out of the gym. at the same time u of h’s defense  and efficiency on both ends could spell doom for us seeing as we have only put together two great halves once this year. it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Edited January 4 by shadow_operative

[ITHorn 801]

Agree with what most have said above. That being said, I think the jury is out on how good the Big 12 actually is outside of the top 3-4 teams. Lots of inflated records right now due to pretty mediocre OOC scheduling. As of this morning, we are looking at a conference SOS of 10 which is behind the Mountain West and A10. 

[shadow_operative 15932]

the league is gonna be it’s typically brutal self this year. maybe we only have two top ten teams in the league, but we’ll also probably end up with 8 teams in kenpom’s top 40. with the four new teams being. added and the schedule no longer being a league wide home and home series some teams could have it a bit easier this year, but it’ll still be a really tough game for most teams 4/5 times out.

[HookEm 2467]

Yeah the new format and new schools actually makes the league a good bit easier. 

Using Massey (because it is free and has good archives), last year the WORST school in the Big 12 was OU at #55.  The average was 26.6.   That meant that every road trip you were very likely to be the underdog.

This year, they added:  #1 Houston, #13 BYU, #52 Cinci, #83 UCF.  Average is 37.3, which is dilutive.  Then next year they add #5 Arizona, #26 Utah, #36 Colorado, #74 ASU (Average is 35.5), while losing #12 OU and #24 Texas (average is 18.0).  Again, further diluting the league.

The top is going to get strengthened, but a number of weak teams have been added which will make for "gimmie" home games and much easier road games.  

[HookEm 2467]

The SEC is going to be a lot more manageable than what we have been accustomed to.  There are 5 teams in the SEC that are worse than OU was last year.  And currently there is only one top-15 team in Tennessee.  The current Big 12 has FIVE top-15 teams. 

This year the SEC average is 52.1.  The median is 38.  A road game against middle of the pack #35 Miss State should be much easier than at #33 Tech or at #34 ISU.

[CurlyDumps 4476]

Check back in around this time next year?

[Wilcox Cummingtonite 3026]