Ummm...Louisville having trouble with SC Upstate....who are currently KenPom's 346th ranked team....yikes.
Roy used a timeout not 5 minutes into the game against Elon. Is everything ok down in hell?
Armando Bacot = Beaker. Look it up if you must.
“Coach said no 3s.” - Zion on The Block
Just noticed that former Duke player Derryck Thornton is now with Boston College. Talk about a long, strange trip.
Just some more supporting data to the "perhaps Duke isn't so overrated, but instead plenty of the top teams have glaring questions" hypothesis. Unx struggling most of the night with the Phoenix is more. Top-25 Memphis (of course, without James Wiseman, who's suspended 12 games) had trouble with Little Rock.
I really do think it's a down year (at least at the top) in CBB this season. I don't see ANY teams out there that look "dominant", i.e. likely to only lose 2-3 games total in the regular season, aside from ones like the Zags, who are always a threat to do so based on the WCC's weakness. Could one (or more) develop? Sure, but right now, NOBODY looks like a world-beater, and I wouldn't be surprised by ANY top 5-10 team losing to a top 30-50ish squad.
Notre Dame played a pretty bonkers game last night to beat Toledo.
Captured well in this twitter thread, which shows:
1) One of the worst foul calls I've ever seen
2) Up by three with a 6.8 seconds left, Toledo intentionally fouled. Prentiss Hubb missed the front end of a one-and-one, which lead to this insane sequence (starting at the 1:11 mark of this video):
3) Notre Dame then hit a game tying three anyway
4) Toledo's only field goal in overtime was a halfcourt heave at the buzzer that wasn't even shown on TV--the camera cut away to show the coaches shaking hands.
Last edited by Truth&Justise; 11-22-2019 at 10:36 AM.
It was a truly insane call... and one of the many replies says, "Gotta be Mike Eades"...
To which Mike Eades himself actually replies with this: https://twitter.com/i/status/1197722334943207424
-Jason "I might have to revise my opinion of Eades... strong twitter game there" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
I watched the second half of the UVA-AZ ST game this afternoon. This is the first that I've watched UVA play this year outside of 5 min against Vermont.
The final score was 48-45. To say that UVA is offensively challenged is offensive to offenses everywhere. UVA led 26-16 with 1 min left in the first half. They didn't score again for nearly 8 minutes during a 19-0 AZ ST run. However, due to their very strong defense and AZ ST not being very good they held the Sun Devils scoreless from the 11 min to the 4 min mark of the 2nd half and the game was a tossup with 4 minutes left.
Thanks to some clutch shots from freshman Casey Morsell and an AND-1 in which Diakite may have initiated the contact with the defender (he did) they emerged victorious. Morsell looked pretty good (however a quick check of Ken Pom showed this was BY FAR his best offensive game) and Diakite looks much more polished from the perimeter and will be their primary offensive weapon. Key, Clark, and Huff showed offensive flashes last year as the 4th or 5th option. I am not sure they have improved to where they can be the 2nd option. Perhaps Morsell can be the 2nd option or perhaps it is early and one of them will grow into the role. After all, Duke's offense is not particularly polished yet either.
All that being said, UVA's defense is still top notch. That combined with their glacial pace limiting possessions will still make them a top team in the ACC race. I don't see them winning the ACC or being a 1 or 2 seed in the NCAA (which they have been 5 of the last 6 years). However, none of the top teams look like TOP teams this year so who knows.
Coach K on Kyle Singler - "What position does he play? ... He plays winner."
"Duke is never the underdog" - Quinn Cook
Yeah, given all that UVA lost I thought the AP was crazy to rank UVA as high as they did preseason, and I’m even more astonished they’re ranked 7th. But then I go through and try to find more than 6 teams who are clearly better than UVA and it’s tough. Sure, if someone says they’re actually 8th or 10th, I won’t quibble. But getting much lower than that is a stretch.
Same thing with Duke at #1. They don’t FEEL like a dominant team to me, but then I try to think of who deserves it more and I come up empty. It’s just a year that, so far, just doesn’t have a dominant team.
This year’s UVA team feels overall very comparable to our 2017 squad (that squad had crushing D and all outside shooting with no interior O while this team is the reverse) which was a 5-seed. This year’s team feels like it’s on pace to be a 2 or 3-seed, and I think the difference is an odd lack of strong teams at the top pushing UVA towards the 4-seed it should actually deserve.
It happens to all champs. Villanova was ranked top-10 in the preseason last year, for example.
I could probably name 15 teams better than UVA, as long as our Hoo friends like you don't take offense.
I mean, why is UVA better than kenpom #16 team Oregon, for example. On a neutral, I would definitely take the Ducks to win. Same with kenpom #13 Arizona.
This early in the season, a lot of rankings shakeup will be forthcoming -- both with kenpom and human rankings -- and UVA's most likely direction is down.
Which I'd agree looked overenthusiastic at the time. That Nova team had a great incoming recruiting class but it lost even more than UVA did. Worth remembering is that they ended the season ranked 20th which isn't a complete disaster for a team ranked 9th pre-season.
Thats thoughtful of you, but any hoops fan who posts on another team's board and doesn't have 6" thick skin is asking for whatever hurt feelings come their way. I've got a list in mind, but it felt presumptuous to post it.
Briefly, I agree with you on Oregon (tough, but slightly under-the-radar schedule and they've been blowing everyone out. I'd pick them over UVA, too), disagree with you on Arizona (gaudy win margin, but they've yet to play even a neutral site game and their schedule has been heavy on cupcakes. If they torch Baylor as well then it'll be a different story), and certainly agree on likely coming shake-ups. As others have said, there aren't any dominant teams and I think anyone in the top 10 can lose to anyone in the top 25-40 on any given night.
As a result, a lot of movement is likely, and since its insane UVA is #4 on KenPom (KenPom rocks, but its still pretty early in the season to take his numbers super-seriously as they're still massively weighted towards last year) I agree they have nowhere to go but down. For the AP poll, #7 seems high so it'll probably go down, but I think lots of teams will be yo-yo-ing up and down all year. I doubt UVA will look all that much different from anyone else between about 5 and 15 and will probably end the season in that range.
I still think Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State are in a top tier by themselves, but I don't think the distance between them and then next ~10 or so is as big as it was, say, last year, and I don't think the gap between that next 10 and the ~25 after them is particularly big at all.
Last edited by ElliottHoo; 11-25-2019 at 12:54 PM.