NashvilleHoosier

Postseason Rick Barnes strikes again

Newton in full uniform tonight is interesting. Of course there is no chance he plays but maybe bought in enough to return?

May head down to the most miserable place in the world....downtown Nashville...tomorrow to catch some hoops. The candy-striped Dalton Knecht led Vols play the early game, followed by fighting Young Brucie's. May just sit by myself and openly weep.

That game was such a turning point for me this season. Up until then I kept some hope that some things would click and we'd end up sliding into the tournament as a fairly safe seed. Rutgers was so bad that night. Any competent team beats them by double digits that night, easy. Yet we somehow managed to be worse. What a miserable game of basketball to watch. That game killed my hope no matter how many opportunities were still ahead of us.

I think you circled around to answer of your own question. We're actually NOT statistically a team that should be in the field b/c no matter how many wins we have, we have very few, if any, impressive wins and a bunch of really bad blowout losses to all the good teams we played. Overall records haven't mattered for years. And we finished 6th, yes, but in a bad conference. We'll have to win 3 BTT tournament games to finally get what would be 1 single high level impressive win, even if it's our 21st win overall. We shot ourselves in the foot all season and it's now too little too late (unless we win our first ever BTT).

LET IT RIDE!!! I have faith in this group!

This is why I had a much larger issue with his “there shouldn’t be discussion about my job, I’ve done my job” comment than the true fan stuff. A collective statement that said something like “look, I get the frustration, I’m frustrated too. We aren’t where this program should be and we’re going to keep fighting like hell to get back to that point” would have gone a lot farther than defiantly claiming you’ve done your job when we haven’t even sniffed the goals he himself set.

Absolutely HAMMERING the under.

Interesting thing to focus in on in that entire post. But I'm not twisting anyone's words b/c I don't know who said he visited or didn't. I put it in question form, b/c I didn't think he visited, but I wasn't entirely sure. The point of me asking wasn't to call anyone out for saying he did or didn't, but to say if he didn't visit, he simply didn't want to play for Woodson and Indiana.

So to play out the Dalton Knecht example. How is that locker room working out? Vescovi has sacrificed playing time even though he committed to come back before Knecht committed. Jordan-James came back after Knecht committed. Someone was losing a spot. You've suggested that Knecht was promised a starting spot at UT, which would mean others were told they no longer had a starting spot. All that landed them was an outright SEC championship and competing for a #1 seed. Tough locker room situation.

I still don't understand how anybody can believe that Dalton Knecht looked at the situation at: UT: Ziegler, Vescovi returning, Gainey and Ledlum committed, and Jordan-James possibly returning (which he did) -or- IU: XJ and Galloway returning plus nothing but a huge, massive wide-open Dalton Knecht sized gap at the 3 (Mgbako was a month away from committing) and said, yeah well I'm not guaranteed a starting spot there and somehow guaranteed a starting spot at UT so I'll go there. He didn't even visit us, did he? I know you're going to say something like "you don't have to believe it but it's true." No, it's not. Dalton Knecht did not want to play for Indiana.

Yes, very much. I just saw the semifinals and finals are at Hinkle this year. If we get invited, accept and go win the damn thing.

I’m not up to speed on current NIL rules, or lack thereof, but this seems like a pretty clear violation of NIL not being allowed to be used for recruiting inducement or pay for play purposes. Maybe that’s changed….or…delete this please :-).

Very true. Lot's of things buried our chances.

Still so frustrating that these 3 home games buried us. Flip those and at 21-10, 13-7 in conference finishing 3rd, 2 games clear….we’re probably solidly on the right side of the bubble.

My opinion of his ability to lead the program hasn’t changed, and I thought it was odd for him to go there, but it didn’t turn me off. To be honest his and Leal’s comments, to me, kinda had me thinking…well, okay then, show some fight and go prove us wrong.

So if all other things stayed exactly the same, but we had closed out a W against Kansas, does that change anything? 5-7 Q1, 10 Q1+Q2 wins….metrics still too bad to put us on the right side?

I agree. But those senior speeches killed any last bit of hope that a change will be made this offseason. Just making a tongue in cheek comment about that.

I don’t believe I’ve ever started a thread…not quite sure though.

Welp, I think we can lock this thread up for a bit.

I remain strong in the belief that Scotty D has cause to move on without even mentioning on-court results from this season. The fact that he has not publicly acknowledged the reports from Wednesday gives him the opening. We have a certain expectation of how this program will be lead and managed and we won’t compromise on that. It’s a massive commitment and we expect a complete and total commitment to the job. It’s not like we have to worry about upsetting any incoming recruits. Actually kind of crazy that our best chance to bring in recruits (minus portal) is to fire our coach and hire one that has committed recruits that will follow.

Man…I’ve had a little of the elbow sauce myself today, but this is a positive take I’m not sure I could square right now. Believe in a 67 year old coach stuck on a system that is counter to what is successful in college hoops today who has completely fumbled the recruiting bag in part due to lack of effort b/c after 3 years he finally gets it and his competitive fire from over 40 years ago will finally start showing is…..something.

Who is the big time hire next year that isn't a big time hire now? If Dusty May is too big of a risk right now, "the guy" next season cannot be a mid-major coach who has a breakthrough season and goes on a big tournament run. So in theory it has to be a very successful power 5 coach? Is there a "guy" that is more available after next season than this season? A big part of the problem for me in bringing Woody back is that it's been under this premise of giving him one more year to see if he can get things moving in the right direction. If he's going to almost exclusively concentrate on the portal, it will virtually never be possible to know if that's happening. Since he goose-egged this class, he'll have no sophomores that have been in the system for a year ready to take a jump. We don't appear to be in anything resembling good shape with 2025s so there is a chance we have very little or nothing coming in as freshman again the following season. Even if he pulls a rabbit out of the hat and has a pretty good season next year, the chances we go into the offseason with a good idea of whether the program is headed in the right direction is even more slim b/c the likelihood we are looking at a lot of turnover again is pretty high. We'll need to see how the portal season plays out again to understand what we have, which is too late to make a coaching change. All while likely continuing to alienate relationships in the HS ranks. With the way he's managed and led this program, I can't see the positives coming anywhere close to outweighing the negatives of one more season with Woody leading the way.

This message needs to be delivered loud and clear….and the person who needs to hear it the loudest and the clearest is Mike Woodson.

I keep seeing that he wanted the job when Archie got it and felt snubbed. Imagine if we did hire him then. Does he put the same level of effort into recruiting? No portal to fall back on. Does he put in the work to land Romeo? TJD? With no portal I’m sure he recruits HS a bit harder but I can’t imagine he would have had the stomach to take on the full job only 4 years earlier. Only good thing that would have come from that is we’d already be done with him.