LamarCheeks

Chris Weber is friggin' obnoxious.

How the hell can FCTC be in Georgia for less than a year and land the nation's No. 1 recruit, yet while he's running our squad, let a sure-fire sniper about 50 miles up the road get away to Virginia.

Why is it that every time I see Matt Haarms, I want to punch him in the face????

What a fine representation for the NCAA in these first two games: 1. A team/school that looks the other way when its athletes commit sexual assault and when its team doctor molests young girls 2. A team whose head coach is suspended for allegedly admitting on tape that he offered a player money 3. A team whose coach is still under (I believe) a show-cause penalty and was fired from his previous job for rules violations, and lost two assistants in a pay scandal 4. A program whose athletes committed massive academic fraud. Well done!

Don't know if anybody posted this (if so, my apologies for the repetition), but here is Clifton's farewell:

That $20.4 million is just the remainder of his contract. We signed him for seven years. To buy him out, we pay 100 percent of his remaining contract. I believe at $3.2 million a year, that would be between $16-17 million now (the $20.4M figure was as of 2018). After March of 2022, we pay him 50 percent of his total remaining contract. ... Not saying I want to buy him out, those are just the figures I've seen.

From all I read here, we should be a serious candidate to land Brunk when/if he leaves Butler. And I'm sure he'd be a welcome addition. He originally committed to Holtmann at BU, yet unless I missed it, I haven't seen OSU mentioned as a potential landing spot. Anybody with any inside info know if that's a possibility, or does he want to stay in-state or closer to home?

ESPN reporting that Cal is in negotiations with Mark Fox. ... Hmmm, Berkeley, Calif., or Athens, Ga.? ... Looks like he might have made out better in the long run.

Christian just needs to tell Trendon if he doesn't go to IU, he'll give him the biggest noogie he's ever received. Then he'll follow with the biggest wedgie Trendon has ever gotten.

Don't know why everybody is so high on Beard. Dude was head coach at UNLV and didn't win a game.

Not sure I understand why Cline took the ball out there. He's the hottest shooter, and if they wanted to get the ball back to him -- 2.7 seconds wasn't enough to do that.

Edwards absolutely killing the PUs. ... What made him think he could go coast-to-coast on that?

Edwards is killing the PUs. Missing 3s all over the place, then misses a box out and his man dunks for the lead.

Javy Baez on pace for 324 HRs and 810 RBIs this season. ... I think both would be MLB records.

Interesting story about the confluence of events that led Chris Beard to the top job at Texas Tech. I had forgotten that just a couple weeks earlier, he took the UNLV job. After surprisingly losing Tubby Smith to Memphis, the Texas Tech AD (Kirby Hocutt) called the Vegas AD (Tina Kunzer-Murphy) ... “No, you do not have my permission to talk to Chris,” Hocutt remembers Kunzer-Murphy angrily telling him. “Are you kidding me? We just hired him.” Undaunted, Hocutt responded, "With all due respect, I was just giving you a courtesy call. I’m going to ask Chris to meet with us. It will be his decision if he wants to take the time or not.” https://www.yahoo.com/sports/how-texas-tech-poached-chris-beard-from-unlv-setting-two-programs-on-divergent-paths-015036321.html

We would need to resurrect Sam Gilbert to make this happen.

I wasn't a Celtics or Larry Bird fan back in the 80s, but I have a HUGE appreciation for them now. One of my favorite moments was when the Lakers beat the snot out of the Celts in Game 3 of the 1984 NBA Finals. After the game, Bird said Boston played like sissies and added, "We've got some great players on this team, but we don't have the players with the heart sometimes that we need. Today, when you see Magic slappin' high fives and guys going behind their backs and shooting layups on us all day long, it seems like somebody would put a stop to it. Until we get our hearts where they belong, we're in trouble." Boston won the next game -- and the series. When we were getting our butts kicked in Lafayette and at home against Michigan and Nebraska and at Minnesota, I wanted someone to step up and say, "THIS HAS TO STOP! ... RIGHT NOW!" ... But either nobody did, or if someone said that, nobody listened. We need a player who can take that kind of leadership role on. And players who get pissed when we perform like we did at Minnesota. Watching these guys during some of the times we were getting absolutely humiliated -- some of them seemed as if they just didn't care. If we don't get that kind of leadership and want-to from the the players themselves, we will continue to get whipped by Purdue and by Nebraska and by Michigan and by Minnesota.

I don't always put a whole lot of stock in what Dakich has to say. He seems to have a beef with IU -- or goes out of his way to be critical. Maybe because he wasn't considered for the job after Sampson was fired? Somebody posted a podcast somewhere on this site with an interview of a recruiting/college hoops guru who said we had three realistic candidates for the job after Crean was fired: Archie, Holtmann and Chris Mack. From what this guy said, Holtmann wanted no part of the fishbowl that is IU basketball. He said if all coaches are considered equal, Mack was the best choice for us -- because he has a bigger personality than Archie. But I also saw somewhere on this site someone (who seems to have pretty good knowledge of the inner workings of the program) write that we contacted Mack and apparently, he wasn't interested. So that pretty much left us with Archie. I will say this: I kinda agree with your last statement. It seems like these days, players want to have a relationship with their coach and on the surface, Archie seems to be a hard guy to to get to know. Obviously, I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but it does seem like Archie's gonna be more Tom Landry (very little relationship w/players) than say, Coach K.

Interesting dilemma for the Hokies here -- on many levels. Even though they've beaten Duke before, I don't think they will Friday night -- and it would only get tougher without Outlaw. I'm sorta of the opinion that having marijuana isn't a huge deal, but rules are rules (depending on what Tech's are). Buzz Williams is most likely on his way to Texas A&M a few days after the season anyway, so does he suspend the kid or say, "I'm leaving anyway, let's go for broke..."

I have no doubt Justin could be a good perimeter player. He's very athletic and he's a pretty good ball-handler. But when you play on the perimeter, a big part of your game has to be hitting perimeter shots. Those two kinda go hand in hand. And he just couldn't. He'd have a game every now and then when he'd hit a few (MSU for one), but that was it. For the most part, when he was on the perimeter, he was absolutely no threat to score. He'd have the ball just outside the top of the key and nobody would guard him -- because they knew he couldn't shoot. Wanna be a perimeter player? Make outside shots!

I will be very interested to see what happens with Forrester, Moore and Anderson. They had 22, 20 and 14 games, respectively, in which they never left the bench. And when they did play, they pretty much looked lost. Moore was a Crean recruit, but the other two are Archie's guys. With only 13 scholarship players -- essentially 11 this year because of how limited Race was and how Hunter didn't play at all -- you've absolutely got to get more from your bench. I'm guessing by season's end, our 7-8 main guys were just worn down. I guess for those three there are three options: Work your a$$ off to get better, transfer or be happy riding the bench. Wonder what it'll be???

This is women's coaching carousel news, but it's somewhat interesting. MaChelle Joseph fired at Georgia Tech. She says it's because she called out the administration for Title IX violations, Georgia Tech says it's because of player mistreatment. Joseph is from Indiana, is a former Indiana All-Star and went to Purdue ... https://www.ajc.com/sports/college/machelle-joseph-fired-georgia-tech/hH8W6QvPduR8ItGgzXvQ4N/

Fitzner had been contributing some quality minutes lately and we couldn't shoot for sh-t tonight, so I was really puzzled as to why he didn't play one second. Throw him out there for 5-6 minutes and see what he can do. If he's the Fitzner of the middle point of the season, sit him back down. If he's the Fitzner of late, give him some run. That made no sense to me.

Absolutely love what JuMo did for us this year, but whether it's high school, college or NBA ball -- it's all about 3-point shooting these days. Our only effective offense this season was pounding the ball down low to a 6-8 forward. That CANNOT be all you have. You have to hit 10-15 from distance in a game to be successful -- and we just couldn't do that. Most games, we'd struggle just to hit 5 or 6. Simple math tells you that when you're getting 2s and the other team is getting 3s, you're gonna lose. And these guys might not be good shooters, but I think they can be. ... Victor Oladipo couldn't throw the ball into the ocean his first two years and that summer between his sophomore and junior seasons, he worked his a$$ off and became a very good shooter. It can be done. We won't have any more success next season if we cannot hit from the outside. It's that simple.

We're (5-13, 38.5 percent) actually shooting a better percentage from distance than they are (11-29, 37.9). But they've hit more and hit them when it matters.