Rayl

I'd guess it's just a way of letting them know that you can host because the building isn't booked for something else and you can get the staff ready in time. Anyway, NIT games are not typical home games. The host school doesn't get all the tickets. Season ticket holders who want to attend will typically have their seats changed. Fewer students can attend. And, there is the spring break issue already mentioned. Compared to other home games, it is a fairly dead atmosphere. But, hosting brings in some money for the school, so it is worth it.

All three of the appreciate it. ;)

The class has potential, but they have a lot of work to do to reach it. A lot of work. Here's hoping somebody on the team steps up and leads then into Cook Hall.

  Everyone projects Noah to be a lottery pick this year. He leaves because he is better off development wise playing NBA post players than going head to head with HMP and Peter Jurkin in practice.

Welp, so much for alternate jerseys being a magical key to victory.   OK. Turnovers and bad shots might have had more to do with losing.

I'm not going to say you are wrong per se. Overall, I would say he flatlined. He didn't really improve overall, but he didn't get worse either. The big issue for me was that at some point as a sophomore he seemingly forgot that he had other moves in the post besides putting his shoulder down and trying to go through the defender's chest. But, that doesn't really add anything to the discussion about whether he made the right decision to stay or not.It obviously worked out well for him to stay in school another year.

  The NCAA has ruled that Baylor cannot wear the tournament jerseys that Adidas provided.

Sorry, but no.   Areas of improvement: OR% DR% BLK% FTRate FT%   Areas of Regression: ORtg eFG% TS% TOrate FG%   His overall offensive efficiency (ORtg) dropped from 126.8 as a freshman to 119.4 as a sophomore. We can account for some of the drop due to an increase in usage rate, but not all of it.   Note: These are Pomeroy numbers. Basketball reference has different efficiency numbers, but they also show a drop overall from 132.1 as a freshman to 124.5 as a sophomore.

  I think if we can get past Illinois, then we have a shot to get to Sunday. The first game will tell me a lot. Illinois is one of the best in the nation at creating turnovers, and we, well, let's just say we aren't good at taking care of the ball.   If we win, it most likely means that we did a great job at not turning the ball over. I think that would be a great sign for how we are progressing late in the season.

I'm just on mobile. I like it better than the app. Not that the app is bad. It's just that on the mobile browser I can get the fullsite and switch between websites without having to leave the browser app. Personal preference.

Just a note for the admins: when I attempt to open this thread on Android, it won't work. It says there are too many reload loops to process. I have no idea what that means.

  I doubt you are going to find any contemporary odds for Iowa that year. That was the 2001 tournament. Most sites don't have records that far back. They probably would have had similar odds to us this year, maybe a bit more. Iowa was the 6th seed that season.   It's certainly possible that we can win out. 2% isn't much of a chance, but it's a chance.

I'll just leave this here: http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/entry/a_treatise_on_plus_minus  

Pomeroy finally released his odds. He gives us a slightly better chance of winning. Slightly. http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/entry/big_ten_log51

Was in the 70s here today. It just felt like it was too soon for that. 50s or 60s would have been much nicer.

Oh great. They're not only racist (white boys hanging with white boys) but they also engage in more class prejudice than British aristocrats. #we're_doomed #FireCrean #ThinkoftheChildren

I fart in the general direction of this thread.

Craft's teammate Shannon Scott. He's the better defender.

A lot of people have called our coach a two year old? OK. Guess there are a lot of morons in the world.

Oy. You complain about not attacking the basket and the weave. That's really pretty silly considering the weave is designed to create favorable matchups and positioning to attack the basket with. We aren't playing 5 Michael Jordans out there who can just beat their man and get to the rim at will.   The weave, when it works, creates the opportunity to attack the basket. It hasn't worked very well this season. If you've been watching, you should have noticed that we've been running it less and less.

You kind of lose all credibility when you say that we don't run an offense. We very clearly do. That should be obvious to anyone who actually watches the game. Even the much-loathed weave is designed to do something very specific on offense. Unfortunately, it has its counters and that's why it is often ineffective. Although, it does work sometimes.   Argue all you want that our offense doesn't work or work as well as you think it should, but we definitely have one that we run. I realize that it is a very complex offense, so if you are used to watching seventh graders, it might be a bit over your head to figure out what is going on.

It will be interesting to see if Miles can sustain his team's success next season. They ended up with a very favorable conference schedule this season. The only conference game they won that was surprising was beating MSU in East Lansing. They have wins against Wisconsin and Ohio State, but those games were in Lincoln so Nebraska winning isn't a big upset. Other than that, Nebraska's best win is at Assembly Hall, but when Northwestern and Penn State win there it's not saying much that Nebraska won too.   I like what Miles has done. The guy can coach, but a lot of Nebraska's success this year is thanks to the schedulers in the conference office.

The pure motion offense lost its effectiveness when defenses got bigger and stronger. The game became rougher and officials stopped calling fouls on as much contact. It's hard to be great at running the motion when the defense can knock you off your routes. It's also a very difficult system to learn. It takes a year or two for players to really grasp it to the point where they know all of the rules intuitively. With the best players leaving school early coaches need a system that younger players can pick up and run well. Even Coach K has had to adapt his offense from a pure motion system to include more quick hitters and two-man game sets.   As for Mo, it's great that he is having success again this year. I don't think it would have happened at IU. From what I have seen in the games I've watched, Mo doesn't move very well. I don't know that he could have kept up with Crean's pace of play.

I'd argue that we don't really struggle against teams that slow the game down. That's just the result of a bigger issue. We struggle against teams that are effective at defending dribble penetration. It slows us down because we don't get what we want early in the shot clock. The big issue to me is that we don't have a good backup plan when we can't use the dribble to penetrate. Crean doesn't seem to have any other way to break down the defense in the playbook, or at least he hasn't been effective at teaching it to his players.

So you're saying the Cavs would pick Marcus Smart?