re: South Carolina, Florida and Kentucky in the sweet sixteen

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Texas, Auburn, LSU, Tennessee (2x), among others... these were all games that we won in close, if not uncomfortably so, fashion... against teams that were not only not tournament quality, but in the case of LSU and Texas, some of the worst P5 teams out there.

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That happens in basketball way more often than you think. Texas lost @ Michigan and to Arkansas by 3 (both tourney teams). We played without Yante against LSU.

Tennessee beat Kentucky, Florida, and Kansas State (all tourney teams), and lost to Oregon and North Carolina (2 sweet 16 teams) by a combined 6 points.


Our biggest problem this year was the inability to close out games, which is on the coach some for sure. But if Malik Monk does have the half of his life against us or hit a tough shot at the end we win @UK. If the refs don't bail out Florida we win @UF. A&M game is more on Fox but the refs killed us there too.

If we win 2 of those 3 we're in the tourney. So I'll agree that in part it's on Fox, but I think it's ridiculous to act like we weren't close to being a tournament team.

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you retards quit posting at this time next year when the Thornwellless USC Cocks all of a sudden don't look as good? Jesus Christ...

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Folks like you don't seem to get it. Thornwell leaving isn't gonna take away this sweet 16. Unlike uga fans when our best players leave, sc fans have been given reason to celebrate and know they have a coach that can actually accomplish something.

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That happens in basketball way more often than you think. Texas lost @ Michigan and to Arkansas by 3 (both tourney teams). We played without Yante against LSU.

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Oh, I am fully aware that it happens a good bit. Sometimes you just get a team's best shot and your team isn't playing their best ball... I'm just saying that the argument that we played good teams close isn't particularly indicative that we were "close". We play good teams close often... what we don't do under Fox is win those games with any rate of success... and indications are not currently good that the team is going to get better with JJ's departure. Ultimately, it looks like the discussion is moot, as McGarity has come out in support of Fox, so unless he leaves of his own volition, we likely get to see what he has to offer next year. I believe that we are simply putting off a decision that likely is going to have to happen at some point, but would be happy to eat some crow and be wrong.

Not pointing to you, as most of your commentary that I've seen has been quite reasonable, but there are some on these boards who seem to give Fox a pass stating that next year is "the make or break year". I just don't think pointing to close losses as some indication of him having us "on the doorstep of success" is valid 8 years in... if we had a young team, that's one thing. But JJ is gone next year, and Yante will be gone after next. The roster short of those two has looked pretty much devoid of scorers. That's a problem, and it's been a consistent one under Fox... we lack offensive threats and we play defense good enough to beat bad to mediocre teams but lose close games to teams with good offensive players. (see continued below)

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Our biggest problem this year was the inability to close out games, which is on the coach some for sure. But if Malik Monk does have the half of his life against us or hit a tough shot at the end we win @UK. If the refs don't bail out Florida we win @UF. A&M game is more on Fox but the refs killed us there too.

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But this has been a *recurring* problem under Fox. If it was a one year or two year anomaly, it would be one thing... but we've been making the same arguments in Fox's defense over the past several seasons, and that's with 2 guys on the roster that likely will go down as 2 of the best to suit up for our basketball team (side note: I think it's been brought up here before, but can we drop the term "HoopDawgs" and not make it like they're second class?) in Frazier and Maten on the same team. How many games has it taken JJ Frazier or Yante Maten having a career day for us to just pull out a close win against a bad team? Good players are going to have good games... UF or UK getting the benefit of the ref is not a new thing and it's not going to go away next season either... In some of our close wins, I seem to recall some pretty beneficial calls going our way... maybe not to the same degree of the UF game, but that's also viewed through the lens of a UGA fan... Fans are conditioned to get upset about bad calls against "their team", even less egregious ones, while they often ignore beneficial calls as "the right call". I do it. You do it... it's just part of pulling for a team.

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If we win 2 of those 3 we're in the tourney. So I'll agree that in part it's on Fox, but I think it's ridiculous to act like we weren't close to being a tournament team.

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First I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm fairly confident I didn't say we weren't close to being a tournament team... I actually said that that's somewhat a staple of what Fox gives you... "almost there"... it's a tease or glimmer of future hope

I'm not sure I agree that just any 2 out of those 3 gets us in the tourney either. Let's say it's A&M and UF. Only one of those wins came against a "tournament quality team". Certainly a UF and UK win would have done it, but I don't think the A&M debacle was really at the crux of why we didn't go. We weren't in the "first four out" and I'm not sure that those 2 wins would have pushed us any higher than maybe Syracuse (who had quite a few good wins, but also some bad losses). It's all conjecture, of course, so it's certainly possible, but the other thing to keep in mind is *this was a bad bubble year* by most accounts... If it takes 2 additional top tier wins to get you into the tournament as a low seed in a bad bubble year and you have 2 all conference players on your roster, where is the encouragement for next season with one of them gone?

Even if we pretend that we were going to make the tournament, where do you think we would have gotten slotted in? Probably as an 11 seed, maybe as the play in 11? Which 6 seed would we have been able to beat (just assuming we make the field of 64)?
Maryland, Cincinatti, Creighton, SMU - 3 of those teams did lose, but I'm not so sure we matchup well against any of them. Creighton lost to a *very* explosive URI team that gave Oregon all they wanted in the second round. Xavier is a not-insignificantly better team than UGA... Of their 13 losses on the season - 11 came against teams in the tournament. They also had 4 wins against RPI top 50 teams (5 if you include Providence which was a play in team I believe?). I think SMU maybe was a little overrated, but not sure we could have beaten USCw in the play in game to get there. We were a questionable at best team... in year 8 under Fox with arguably the best roster that he's had thus far (with dropoff expected next season by most reasonable accounts).

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Folks like you don't seem to get it. Thornwell leaving isn't gonna take away this sweet 16. Unlike uga fans when our best players leave, sc fans have been given reason to celebrate and know they have a coach that can actually accomplish something.

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Seems to me he squandered 3 years with one of the best basketball players USC ever had... if Fox or the next coach can bring a guy like him in and put a few players around him, UGA will make it to the tourney too. Either way, the point is that USC has a solid coach and if he brings in some more top 40 players this season, he may get there next year, but odds are, they won't have a Thornwell level talent on this team for a while. Without him, they are about as good as UGA was this year. Which may even be a stretch, as the only good victory they had in the SEC was UF. They beat the teams they were supposed to beat for the most part, but the top 6 or so in the confrence had their ways with them. That doesn't take away from them getting hot in the tourney though. I think it does show how vulnerable they are sans the talent Thornwell has become.

Their wins over Monmouth, Michigan, Syracuse, and uf were not classic mark fox outcomes, and neither were their past 2 wins. Surely that's not confusing for you.

Of course not. That's dumb. The issue is there aren't good things to ignore. If there were, these discussions wouldn't be happening.

Holy topic jump. I thought we were discussing basketball.

It sure is odd that the harshest critics of smart also seem to be the biggest defenders of fox. Completely hypocritical.

I have also asked a few of those defenders about "bball support" and it always goes ignored and unanswered.

You literally have no way of knowing that. There are examples every year of new coaches at a program turning things around. Saying it 100% not going to happen is ignorant