8bucks

The good news is that at the halfway point now and our start has been very good. Going 7-2 down the stretch will be very impressive. This should help identify who we are.

Some will always want him gone. Can't control that and won't try. It is not all or nothing. We have enough talent and experience to do more than just make the tournament. That is your standard for keep Crean. I think he needs to do much more than just make the tourney. We made it last year - yay.

A senior McD pg A couple of veteran/junior wings A second year 4* off guard A couple of fifth year seniors that are in the rotation A McD big that has had a very strong BT start A couple more solid freshman to provide depth We have a team loaded with talent and experience. We have youth in the right positions. All that and it would take missing the tourney for you to think we should make a change.

After we won a few games after the Duke game and the BT season neared many people looked at our first 9 games and thought we should win them all. Sure teams don't always win all the games you are supposed to but when we looked at the early part of the schedule there was some comfort. Should we discount the early start because we played the bottom of the BT, no. Yet for many of us the uneasiness comes because we don't know if we are a team that can compete with the best teams in the BT and the country. Schedule does matter. We have a historically weak schedule this year and have yet to play the hard part of the weak schedule. If we finish the season in the top 3 of the BT then we can feel pretty good. You also said we had short memories. No, the problem is we have long memories. Two thirty point blow outs against teams that are not going to compete for a national championship don't overcome the regular late season swoons under Crean. That is the elephant in the room. We have not won against anyone to give us confidence to match our record. That is the source of the uneasiness. We have a chance to do that down the stretch. That will be the elixir to calm the uneasiness not blowouts against Northwestern at home.

Where is our 2016 class ranked?

Remember when the students used to cheer "stand up old people". Old folks may have sat but they were there. You can be louder sitting and cheering than by not being there.

Yeah, completely fine. We lost a lot of games down the stretch that year. Not sure it means much to be better than that team though.

Ok so you agree the "last years team would have lost this game" is a faulty argument

Why does this argument keep popping up? "Last years team would have lost." Last years team did not lose to a winless BT team at home. We lost to Iowa at home late in the year but Iowa was not bad like Minnesota. We lost some preseason games but those were early in the year. No, last years team did not lose to bottom tier teams at home.

Probably. But we will have to adjust. If we run less weave and look for opportunities for TB down low or if Yogi can find s midrange jumper the pressure up high may decrease. IF

Not sure if you guys remember the OSU game when DD kept pointing out that OSU was laying way off our perimeter guys letting us easily set up the offense. Wisconsin and Minnesota both applied pressure on our guards and disrupted our preferred flow of the offense. Not major pressure but just enough that we could not easily set up the offense

Keep in mind also that Troy and the team do not decide to do this on their own. While he is frustrating initiating the offense my frustration is directed at another when he keeps doing that.

I agree but during our winning streak we saw very little of Troy initiating the offense from top of the key. Our last two games we have seen this come back. I like Troy from the baseline or the wing but not the top.

I think we can all agree that our turnover has been too high since the Warford/Hulls senior class graduated. Call it creaming or call it whatever, we have not retained enough kids to have had sustained success. You are going to have some early NBA entry kids but I am referencing the other kids who have left I would love to see that transfer rate drop much lower. If you recruit a kid and he gives effort in practice then work with him so that he can contribute later in his career.

When we have Troy at the top of the offense try to initiate by dribbling past a defender or two it typically leads to a turnover. During our recent run he has not done this much at all in leu of Yogi operating almost exclusively as the dribble drive guy. Against Wisconsin we reverted back for some reason. Troy can be great from the baseline and occasionally from the elbows when a lane opens but when he is on the very top dribbling and looking for how to juke the first defender he is just playing into the hands of the other defenders who see this developing and wait for the opportunity

He should have drawn the foul. DD would have gushed about him being a savvy senior but instead he did not really even get off s shot. I had been begging all game for him to shoot more than he did as I don't think they could guard him unless he drove. I did not want anyone else to shoot but whoever that quote comes from is spot on. We barely ever even get off what you would call a reasonable shot.

I agree. It was good to have a chance to win but there is enough talent and experience on this team to do great things. You will have some struggles on the way to great things but you need to have more upward momentum than downward. So the loss to Wisconsin is not a big deal if replaced by victories in the other big games

The margin of error is small. I think Crean is a good coach but seems to be on the short end of that margin a lot. He is either unlucky or not the guy to get us over the hump. Either way, he needs to have a year where we are on the winning side of that small margin frequently this year and against good and bad teams

Good point. Once Nigel starting getting calls there is nothing we could have done differently. A double team to force him to give up the ball would not have worked. The only thing we could do was just take it.

If he was the guy you could hear on TV before each free throw that is embarrassing. How Crean or any other coach on that staff would let that happen is beyond me.

Why do you think Crean had TB guard Happ 15 feet from the basket. Happ had no outside shot and yet guarding him away from the basket allowed Happ to blow by TB. Why not double team Nigel?

You are an idiot and probably a Kentucky fan. Hmm, I do feel a little better. Idiot.

Wisconsin coaches and teaches their kids to draw fouls. When they played out our place they shot 16/23 free throws to our 10/10.

Probably the refs fault too.

Seems odd. He was actually smiling and talking with a lot of Wisconsin players after the game. Did not seem agitated then and we have seen him mad after games before