re: Basketball Season Complete // 20 - 13 (8 - 11) // Offseason Portal Stuff in OP

Free throw shooting is embarrassing. Really embarrassing game.

Turned them over 19idh times and our shot them significantly and still got blown out.

Need to sweep the week to have a shot at a tourney birth. Hopefully we can turn it around starting this week. Season’s not over. I was actually encouraged that we outpaced Alabama in shooting. That’s actually a step in the right direction. Now we just need one of those games to spark momentum. I’ll be in the Steg regardless.

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SEC is just brutal this year. We are definitely better than we have been in a long time, regardless of what the trolls say.

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The entire conference is better than what it has ever been, so being “better” just means we are kinda keeping pace but still behind quite a bit with everyone else.

Crucial stretch of the season coming up. Not sure why the wailing and teeth gnashing from Saturday...that game should've been penciled in as an auto-loss the minute the schedule was announced. The fact that we couldn't rebound, coulnd't shoot from inside or out, and coulnd't hit free throws yet were still within single digits midway through the 2nd half is...kinda something. I guess.

Anyways, I said earlier that the arkansas loss isn't a game that by itself will keep us from the tourney, it just diminished our margin for error. Still fully believe that. But that means that games like Wednesday go from "should win" to "absolutely postiively must win". We can't lose games like LSU at home. MSU is better than expected but we can certainly get them in Athens. 2-0 this week and we're looking good. 1-1 and we're not out yet but we're in trouble.


And on a separate note, the segment of the fanbase that continue to shout that Stegeman is holding us back has 10000% OBVIOUSLY never been to coleman coliseum. Saturday was my 5th time watching a game there and it is unequivocally a worse venue than Stegeman. The concourse areas are honestly pretty similar so no point of debate there. Capacity is similar. But inside the arena ours looks nicer and more modern, if you can believe it. Bama has really old looking scoreboards (including a couple tiny TV screens in the corner that looks like they were bought from black friday at walmlart) and low def video on the center court hangdown. The roof is dingy and the seats plain. Bama wins becuase they have elite coaching and talent. Trying to pretend that tearing stegeman to the ground and rebuilding would be the key to make us start winning is simply ridiculous.

The gnashing of teeth comes from how the game played out....we got almost 20 turnovers from Bama and out shot them significantly...and still couldn't score 70 points and got blown out.

We don't look like we belong on the same floor as Bama or UF or UT. Played Auburn tough but they didn't have their best player. We haven't closed the gap against the elite teams at all under Mike White.

Year three of White and his offense is incredibly bad despite having more resources and support than any coach in our history. This team being on the bubble of the tourney is sad. Miss the tourney and he needs to be fired.

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We don't look like we belong on the same floor as Bama or UF or UT.

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those are top 10 teams, a couple of which will be in contention for a top 2 seed in March. Of course they are going to look much better than us- they are.

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We haven't closed the gap against the elite teams at all under Mike White.

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I think we have closed the gap slightly. But we aren't elite and nowhere close to it, so it's not surprising that the elite teams look much better.

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Year three of White and his offense is incredibly bad

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I agree this is very frustrating.

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This team being on the bubble of the tourney is sad

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Of the 14 teams that were in the SEC 12 months ago (not counting the foreginer that wormed their way in), 10 are ranked. That is almost incomprehensible. Being on the bubble against our schedule is pretty damn good. And if we do fire White this year we're sending a message of "If you don't make the NCAAT in 3 years you will be fired". As fans sure that sounds good, but I have to think that limits our prospective hiring pool. Any big name or proven commodity woulnd't even think of agreeing to those terms, so we'd have to shoot for a mid-major type guy on the rise and hope he pans out.

I don't see why we can't have a happy medium somewhere between "make tourney immediately within 3 years or else" and the Mark fox "stay here as long as you want with no accountability whatsoever" route.

We need White to steadily build this program. If he regresses a few seasons, then we have reason, but if we can get someone to get this program some momentum, we can make that jump Bama made. We are not that far away.

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We need White to steadily build this program. If he regresses a few seasons, then we have reason

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i agree but in today's modern NIL/portal era many people don't want to be patient and wait. Bruce pearl and auburn are one of the better programs in america but hell look what he did when he first got there:

year 1: 15-20, 4 SEC wins
year 2: 11-20, 5 SEC wins
year 3: 18-14, 7 SEC wins

keep in mind this was an era where the league isn't NEAR what it is now and you didn't have to deal with the portal decimating your roster yearly.

I've said many times that the biggest thing I wanted in a new coach (after crean) was improvement. We have improved in just about every facet a pgoram can improve in during white's tenures. Wins, SEC wins, fan support, recruiting, overall roster talent....all slowly continuing to creep up year after year. To fire white in 2 months if we don't make the tourney would seem to throw a lot of that away .

Lol at steadily build the program. News flash, but that's not how any of this works anymore. NIL and portal make 3 years equal to 6.

Florida's coach is in year three and look at where they are. USCe third year year coach went to the tourney last year. Mizzous coach is in year 3. Went to dance first year and is 6-2 in the SEC this year, ranked in top 25

Vandys first year coach had them ranked and they are .500 in the SEC.

There is no time to be patient. UGA has invested probably more than any of those teams minus Florida in its roster and what do we have to show for it?

Bama, UT, Florida are elite teams for sure. Better talent overall, but should they be beating us by an average of 20+ points?