re: Tide Hoops | Please Anchor

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Alum69

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I respect your opinion, but you seem to always have excuses for the players without ever really putting any blame on them.

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The melt downs in the second halves of games lately are nothing more than a team that is burnt out.

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Tired legs and burnt out...man, these are mostly 19-20 year old kids that live and breathe basketball and dream of playing professionally. Effort is usually the minimum requirement to play even semi competitive high school ball. We have guys that are routinely on the floor just dicking around not really doing much besides being out there.

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Other coaches have learned that if they make us play defense with the intensity that CNO demands for 20-25 seconds every possession, we will wilt sometime in the second half.

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Didn't happen last year. Makes you wonder if personnel and individual ability has something to do with it.

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One of the saddest things is that the players will eventually realize it, if not already, and will always live with the "what if" that could have been but for the coach over working them.

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I mean, what the frick is this? You think that one day when JQ or Shack are 40 years old they are gonna think, "dude, we could've been so much better if Oats didn't try to make us to play defense or play as hard as we were physically capable of". That isn't logical whatsoever. That sounds more like revisionist history from a shitty player that only played when he was in high school, because he wasn't even good enough to play Juco ball.


I'm all for placing the appropriate amount of blame on Oats and the staff, but to act like every single little thing is his fault is ridiculous and blasphemous. At that point, why even have him as a coach? Let's just make Shack a player/coach and he can let us know how much defense we should be playing and how much conditioning the team should be doing to make sure their stamina is up game in and game out.

How do you even get that from that message? Dude’s grateful to have played for Bama, and if you look at replies, he comments that there’s a lot of basketball left to be played.

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That sounds more like revisionist history from a shitty player that only played when he was in high school, because he wasn't even good enough to play Juco ball.

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I feel personally attacked.

We moved from 30 to 28 yesterday in the NET. Most of the teams we needed to win won, Miami lost to Duke.

Auto-bids today:
UMBC vs. Vermont -15.5 (10/ESPN2)
Coppin vs. Norfolk St -7 (Noon/ESPN2)
Monmouth vs. St. Peters -3 (3/ESPNU)
#14 Texas Tech @ #6 Kansas -2 (5/ESPN)
SD State vs. Boise St. -2 (5/CBS)
Texas Southern vs. Alcorn St. -3 (5/ESPNU)
Creighton vs. #8 Villanova -6.5 (5:30/Fox)
Akron vs. Kent St. -2.5 (6:30/ESPN2)
N. Colorado vs. Montana St. -4 (7/ESPNU)
Va. Tech vs #7 Duke (7:30/ESPN)
La. Tech vs. UAB -3.5 (7:30/CBSSN)
#13 UCLA vs. #2 Arizona -1 (8/Fox)
Texas A&M CC -1 vs SE Louisiana (8:30/ESPN2)
Abilene Christian vs NM State -4 (9/ESPNU)
CSU Fullerton vs. Long Beach St. -1 (10:30/ESPN2)

Semi’s:
(Ivy) Cornell vs. Princeton -6.5 (10/ESPNU)
(SEC) Texas A&M @ #15 Arkansas -6.5 (Noon/ESPN)
(Big 10) Indiana @ #24 Iowa -6 (Noon/CBS)
(Atlantic 10) St. Louis vs. Davidson -3.5 (Noon/CBSSN)
(Ivy)Penn vs. Yale -3.5 (1/ESPNU)
(SEC) #5 Kentucky -2.5 vs. #9 Tennessee (2/ESPN)
(AAC) Tulane vs. #18 Houston -13.5 (2/ESPN2)
(Big 10) Michigan St. vs. #9 Purdue -5 (2:30/CBS)
(Atlantic 10) Richmond vs. Davidson -3 (2:30/CBSSN)
(AAC) Memphis -4.5 vs. SMU (4/ESPN2)


I guess Ala would want LaTech, Ark, Davidson, Houston, Tenn and Memphis today. Altho, no on Memphis.

We played KY twice vs. Tenn once, so by the metrics I think we would want KY. But I’m not sure I can root for them to win another tourney now that AU and LSU are already out.

I should have been more careful in my wording. The game issues come from what happens between games. Over training without adequate recovery between workouts actually harms. The cumulative effect is what I was addressing re second half meltdowns. Just to make sure that I wasn't off in the weeds, I went to the ESPN website and did a quick check of our 1st vs 2nd half points. Through Dec. (13 games) we averaged 10.8 points more in the second half vs the first half. Since Jan 1 (19 games) we have averaged 0.6 more points in the second half - a 10 point swing.

For example, blowing a 15 point lead to Vandy. We were up 51 to 36 at the 14:04 mark and got outscored 46 to 25 in 14 minutes. There were other games with the same pattern.

It seems to me that by far the most logical explanation is fatigue - they just simply don't have the energy to sustain for the whole game. As a result, in the first 13 games we were 10/3 and since then 9/10.



LINK

The NIT is going to be pretty decent this year if Va Tech, Aggie, Fla, State, Okla, Wake, BYU, Colorado, VCU, Ore, UVa, Vandy are in. The remainder will be regular season champs.

SCar maybe?

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#14 Texas Tech @ #6 Kansas -2 (5/ESPN)
#13 UCLA vs. #2 Arizona -1 (8/Fox)

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These are the two non-SEC games that I want to watch today. Need to watch more of Texas Tech, they're kind of my darkhorse this year but want to see if they have the offensive firepower to beat Kansas.

UCLA is getting hot at the right time and looks like they are finally healthy again. Seems like they're not being talked about enough. Also haven't watched much of Arizona this year.

I would love a match-up with Rutgers in the first round.