re: Alabama Basketball Megathread | 26-7 (16-2)

Yep - they do kind of have an early 2010s SEC problem. They have 5-6 solid teams and then 3-4 atrocious teams that drag down the entire league.

What the hell happened to Arizona State?

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It's been a pretty terrible league at this point for going on 20 years. They were a couple of years there when Stanford was good and UCLA was good with Howland where it was a really good league, but outside of that, it's just been a disaster.

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And it happened so suddenly too. West Coast basketball was pretty great all the way up into the 90s/early 00s, and dominated the landscape of college basketball for long stretches. But yeah, over the last 15-20 years, aside from some sporadic success from one program or another, it has largely been irrelevant. Gonzaga has been the best West Coast program of the 21st century by a pretty wide margin.

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I may be completely full of shite. But I've days it a few times, and I'm sticking by my prediction. I can see Iowa getting upset in the tournament by a mid major, or decent underdog. They're great offensively. But that defense is terrible.

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In 100% agreement with you, with how they play defense, they will need to be pretty much on top of their game offensively for so many games in a row that it seems unlucky. Maybe they get some good match ups so it doesn't hurt them so far but out of the top 8 seeds in the tournament, they have the highest chance at losing in the first weekend imo.

In general, defense will carry you deeper into the tournament.

Having looked at KenPom, it looks like they've improved 60-80 spots from when I last checked. They were at like 120-140. So again, there's a good chance I'm full of shite.

It looks like Ohio State's D has dropped off. They're down to 80.

I think we are setup for success either way. Kentucky and State are physical teams who will wear each other down and they have to play us the next day. We should be fine.

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I may be completely full of shite. But I've days it a few times, and I'm sticking by my prediction. I can see Iowa getting upset in the tournament by a mid major, or decent underdog. They're great offensively. But that defense is terrible.

One thing going for them, is their star being a center, who is taking closer, higher percentage shots. But I just don't trust a team with such a huge discrepancy between offense and defense. Which kinda sucks, because my best friend is a huge Iowa fan.

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The biggest change in Iowa is they have started pretty above average if not very good defense in the last month. They were LSU level bad defensively the first 2/3 of the season but they have kicked it up a notch the last 10 games or so. Now, how much of that was opponent and how much was improvement? I dunno.

They gave up 1.00+ PPP in 11 of their first 14 games vs High Major teams and 1.10+ PPP in 6 of their first 14.

They've given up 1.00+ PPP 3 times in their last 9 games and 1.10+ in 2 of their last 9 games.


With how good (and consistent) they are on offense, they don't need to more than an average/above-average defense to be a huge pain in the arse.


They've had 2 offensive games all season where they were under 1.00 PPP - @ Indiana (0.957) and @ Michigan (0.850).

I’m not gonna be able to focus on anything this week leading up to the SECT lol

I think Kentucky is 4-0 or 6-0 versus Bama in the Sec Tournament shoot that's all the FUEL we should need against them. That should PISS the team off and get them to focus even more.

Yeah we only have three guys (Herb, Petty, and Reese) that have ever even played in an SEC tournament game.

We’ll play hard on Friday because that’s what this team does, but I don’t know that we’ll be especially angry.

Ladies are currently projected as a #6 seed by ESPN