College Basketball 2024-2025

[Tryptamine]

Unconn has now lost their 4th game. Came we please drop them out of the horsefeathers top 10 for a while?

[Tryptamine]

2 hours ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

That was something, and the scary part is that Illinois didn't even shoot well from three.  This team is absolutely a national title contender.

If they can get Will Riley's shot straightened out, I'd put them up there with any team in the nation. 

[cwood218]

1 hour ago, Tryptamine said:

Unconn has now lost their 4th game. Came we please drop them out of the horsefeathers top 10 for a while?

If I remember correctly I believe those three previous losses were at one of those stupid early season weekend tournaments and they were missing a key player due to injury. Looking at some of the games they played and won after that I could see an argument for people discounting those losses somewhat and still viewing them as a top 10 or so team. At least up until this last loss.

[gflore34]

7 hours ago, Tryptamine said:

If they can get Will Riley's shot straightened out, I'd put them up there with any team in the nation. 

I thought he played pretty well, didn't force anything, made some good passes.  It was great to see that 3 go in for him late in the game.  I believe it's an adjustment period for him and he'll get it going soon.

Also, the flop by Baldwin, he basically took himself out of the game, don't how smart of a play that was, turned out good for the Illini.

Edited January 9, 2025 by gflore34

[mul21]

5 hours ago, cwood218 said:

If I remember correctly I believe those three previous losses were at one of those stupid early season weekend tournaments and they were missing a key player due to injury. Looking at some of the games they played and won after that I could see an argument for people discounting those losses somewhat and still viewing them as a top 10 or so team. At least up until this last loss.

horsefeathers Dan Hurley and his whiney bitch ass.  I really don't like that guy at all in spite of how impressive the last 2 runs to the national championship were.

[Bobson Dugnutt]

5 hours ago, cwood218 said:

If I remember correctly I believe those three previous losses were at one of those stupid early season weekend tournaments and they were missing a key player due to injury. Looking at some of the games they played and won after that I could see an argument for people discounting those losses somewhat and still viewing them as a top 10 or so team. At least up until this last loss.

I don’t think they were missing anyone. Karaban got hurt late in the third of the three consecutive losses but otherwise scanning through box scores they seemed to be at full strength.

[javy knows my name]

1 hour ago, Bobson Dugnutt said:

I don’t think they were missing anyone. Karaban got hurt late in the third of the three consecutive losses but otherwise scanning through box scores they seemed to be at full strength.

Yeah they're just down this year, which is really bad news for the Big East, as they're still going to beat up on each other at home like always. UConn also barely squeaked by Providence at home and they are really bad this year

Edited January 9, 2025 by javy knows my name

[javy knows my name]

And yes, horsefeathers Dan Hurley lots

[Bobson Dugnutt]

Piss poor showing from the Illini today. Assuming no late comeback, this is an atrocious loss.

[gflore34]

A terrible loss to a lesser team than Penn State, 7-31 from three is what doomed them.  Next is the toughest road trip of season @Indiana, @MSU, hopefully, they'll regress to the mean with the three ball in those games.

Edited January 11, 2025 by gflore34

[Bobson Dugnutt]

I didn’t like the quality of their 3 pt looks today. Ball movement was not good. Their most successful stretch was when they were driving and creating contact.

[Irrelevant Dude]

That was a typical Brad Underwood loss.  Even his best teams seem to have these occasional inexplicable no effort losses.  They weren't ready to play today.

[gflore34]

9 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

That was a typical Brad Underwood loss.  Even his best teams seem to have these occasional inexplicable no effort losses.  They weren't ready to play today.

Every year, no matter how good his teams are, they'll have bad losses to garbage teams like USC.

[mul21]

On 1/11/2025 at 1:13 PM, gflore34 said:

A terrible loss to a lesser team than Penn State, 7-31 from three is what doomed them.  Next is the toughest road trip of season @Indiana, @MSU, hopefully, they'll regress to the mean with the three ball in those games.

Nah, piss poor defensive effort was what killed them today.  47 points allowed in the second half.  It's no coincidence they went on a run the last 6 minutes of the first half when they amped up the defense.  They just never got back to that the rest of the game, especially after the tie at 57-57.

[sneakypower]

what had looked like a nice quality win for Michigan might ultimately be effectively wiped out by Mick Cronin's ongoing series of public meltdowns sending UCLA into freefall

[soccer10k]

For those that pay attention closer, is this year just a fluke year with the SEC being really good and the ACC being down and the Big 10 not being that great? Looking at the rankings and the SEC has 5 of the top 8 plus 11 and 15. Meanwhile the only ACC team in the top 25 is Duke and the highest ranked Big 10 team is MSU at 12. Normally there’s like 1 or 2 good SEC teams and that’s it.

[mul21]

55 minutes ago, soccer10k said:

For those that pay attention closer, is this year just a fluke year with the SEC being really good and the ACC being down and the Big 10 not being that great? Looking at the rankings and the SEC has 5 of the top 8 plus 11 and 15. Meanwhile the only ACC team in the top 25 is Duke and the highest ranked Big 10 team is MSU at 12. Normally there’s like 1 or 2 good SEC teams and that’s it.

I think the ACC schools are trailing in figuring out the NIL game (football and basketball).  Once that happens, they'll be back in the mix.  It may go this way for a couple years but I don't see it as a long term thing.  I think the B1G is probably underrated at the top and will round into form by the end of the year. 

[UMFan83]

2 hours ago, soccer10k said:

For those that pay attention closer, is this year just a fluke year with the SEC being really good and the ACC being down and the Big 10 not being that great? Looking at the rankings and the SEC has 5 of the top 8 plus 11 and 15. Meanwhile the only ACC team in the top 25 is Duke and the highest ranked Big 10 team is MSU at 12. Normally there’s like 1 or 2 good SEC teams and that’s it.

Hasn't the SEC been really solid the last few years?  Had 8 teams in the tourney last year.  I do remember thinking several years ago that the conference was Kentucky, Florida and maybe occasionally Tennessee but they've done a good job.  It is definitely a little jarring when you see teams like Georgia being ranked.

 

[soccer10k]

1 hour ago, UMFan83 said:

Hasn't the SEC been really solid the last few years?  Had 8 teams in the tourney last year.  I do remember thinking several years ago that the conference was Kentucky, Florida and maybe occasionally Tennessee but they've done a good job.  It is definitely a little jarring when you see teams like Georgia being ranked.

 

I was just looking at the final AP poll, which probably wasn’t the best thing to use. KenPom they have 4 of the top 8 this year, last year was 4 and 5 and then Alabama at 14. Looking through the year, the SEC has never had more than 2 teams in the top 10 of the final KenPom rankings, though even that is arbitrary because in 2019 Auburn was 11 and in 2022 they were 12.

[jb10194]

3 hours ago, soccer10k said:

For those that pay attention closer, is this year just a fluke year with the SEC being really good and the ACC being down and the Big 10 not being that great? Looking at the rankings and the SEC has 5 of the top 8 plus 11 and 15. Meanwhile the only ACC team in the top 25 is Duke and the highest ranked Big 10 team is MSU at 12. Normally there’s like 1 or 2 good SEC teams and that’s it.

I'm no expert, but it is interesting seeing SEC schools like Tennessee, Auburn, and Alabama be consistently ranked high and competitive. On the other hand, ACC schools that used to be powerhouses like Syrcause, Louisville, and somewhat Virginia, have struggled in recent years.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I don't know about the sustainability aspect of it(the SEC has had solid depth for a few years now but not ranked close to the best conference), but with the SEC and ACC in particular, a big driver at this point in the season might be the SEC/ACC challenge having the most lopsided outcome I've ever seen in one of those challenges.  Normally you see home teams win all but a couple games and that determines who wins 9-7 or 10-6, etc, but this year the SEC won that over the ACC 14-2.

[gflore34]

Illini bounced back in a big way 94-69 at Indiana, KJ was good as was Ivisic.  Don't get Indiana, think they should be better, maybe, it's their back court, coaching, both?

[cwood218]

13 minutes ago, gflore34 said:

Illini bounced back in a big way 94-69 at Indiana, KJ was good as was Ivisic.  Don't get Indiana, think they should be better, maybe, it's their back court, coaching, both?

It's time for a new coach.

[gflore34]

Illini lost a tough one today falling by 2 to MSU in East Lansing, didn't watch the game.  Apparently foul trouble severely limited KJ, from reading the comments and seeing some highlights 2 of his 5 fouls were extraordinary questionable. Including one where KJ literally didn't touch the Spartan player. He was +7 when he played, I think it's pretty safe to say if he was allowed to play 30 minutes the Illini win, maybe even, win comfortably.  Guess there was also an out of bounds initially called for the Illini, Izzo comes out and whines, gets the call reversed.

Funny how every time MSU beats a better Illinois team there's always some BS angle, Ayo getting punched in the face.  Best player on either side, KJ, has his minutes limited by foul trouble including two phantom calls.

[Irrelevant Dude]

29 minutes ago, gflore34 said:

Apparently foul trouble severely limited KJ, from reading the comments and seeing some highlights 2 of his 5 fouls were extraordinary questionable. Including one where KJ literally didn't touch the Spartan player.

If I recall correctly, the first and last could be considered legitimate fouls (although the first foul was called about 5 seconds after it occurred by the ref who was furthest from the play).  In between, there was one where the opposing player stepped and KJ's foot and fell down, one where KJ fell down and the opponent fell on him, and another one where he didn't make contact with anyone.  It was as if the referees went into the game deciding that they wanted to take out the best player on the court.  

On top of that, there was a play late in the game where it appeared the officials gave a Michigan St. player a timeout when he was on the ground without possession of the ball, which then led to a Technical Foul on Brad Underwood and two made free throws by Michigan St.

Those were the most egregious offenses, but it was a very one-sided game from the officiating crew.  No surprise really, with Tom Izzo on the other end.  But this was one of the worst refereed games I have seen in a long time and it's a shame that Big 10 refs frequently decide to insert themselves into the storyline of what could have otherwise been a great game.  I'm curious whether Underwood called them out at all after the game, or if he took the high road to avoid being fined.