Around the Country

[jacobkdoyle]

That freshman PG for Oklahoma State Juwan Evans is the real deal. We recruited him for a while, then he blew up and became a McDonald's All-American. Mick isn't allowed to recruit those.

BUT he had 6 TO last night!!! He'd be getting Jenifer minutes here.

 

[UCalum08]

With all these teams losing week to week, it does not bode well for UC who will be a bubble team come March. Even if we only lose say 1-2 more games, a team from a P5 conference like B12 or ACC who is 10-8 or 9-9 would have a better chance of getting in than a bubble team from the American conference.

 

[Bearcat_NTS]

Great interview from a coach that used to be a coach here.

Your guys have won a lot of games so far but also made their share of bonehead plays. How have you dealt with that?

That's kind of part of it. When you try and get guys to play as fast as we try and get them to play, it's hard at times to slow down yourself.

Is the reason you play fast because you can't score?

Yeah. We've got to get more shots than our opposition. We've done it for years by rebounding the ball offensively and being able to turn people over, score in bunches. Scoring off our defense has helped us tremendously.

Why haven't you recruited more shooters?

The fallacy is that I haven't had guys who can shoot. One of our radio guys said to me, at Cincinnati, looking back, would you recruit more guys like Alex Ruoff -- who was a good shooter. I went back and looked, and we had seven guys make more 3s in their career than Alex did -- and Alex was a three-year starter. We got a lot of 3s because we were so good inside too.

When you play the way we play, people think you can't shoot. But we lead the country in 3-point field goal percentage defense. We lead the country because we take their legs. And to think it doesn't take our legs to a degree -- it does. So we probably shoot better than what people think, but at times we don't have legs because of the way we play.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...huggins-talks-squad-state-game-yes-sweatshirt

 

[Bulldog01]

NIT playing in AMERICA??? Everybody should get fired

 

[UCalum08]

Great interview from a coach that used to be a coach here.


http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...huggins-talks-squad-state-game-yes-sweatshirt

Sure is nice to read. Def leaves a lot to be desired in our own current situation.

 

[UCBearcats]

Great interview from a coach that used to be a coach here.


http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...huggins-talks-squad-state-game-yes-sweatshirt

You don't need to have great shooters when you recruit and develop big men who can get you buckets when you need them. Even in the half court sets WVU is light years above us.

 

[Bearcat_NTS]

WVU down 15-11 to Texas with 7:40 to go in the first half. Mountaineers are 2-11 from the free throw line.

Also, Nebraska is up 2 in East Lansing early in the second half.

 

[Bearcat_NTS]

Nebraska with a HUGE road win over Michigan State. They have won 4 straight B1G games. Their RPI jumped nearly 30 spots with the win to the top 150.

 

[GarradJ21]

Oh my god west Virginia has 47 points with 1:30 left. Something must be wrong. That's Bob Huggins team

 

[UCalum08]

Nebraska with a HUGE road win over Michigan State. They have won 4 straight B1G games. Their RPI jumped nearly 30 spots with the win to the top 150.

Does that do anything for our RPI?

 

[Bearcat_NTS]

Oh my god west Virginia has 47 points with 1:30 left. Something must be wrong. That's Bob Huggins team

SMH. They shot 8-23 from the FT line, a statistical anomaly. If we were 16-2 and #6 in the country, I could live with a loss like that.

BTW, I was reading that this season conference winning percentage at home is all the way down to 59.82%.

 

[Bearcat_NTS]

Does that do anything for our RPI?

We moved up 3 spots from 83 to 80. We also have been helped by VCU who has won 9 straight games since we beat them, including tonight, and are all the way up to 62 in the RPI.

 

[UCalum08]

We moved up 3 spots from 83 to 80. We also have been helped by VCU who has won 9 straight games since we beat them, including tonight, and are all the way up to 62 in the RPI.

Excellent. Thanks for the info.

 

[ZCat]

You do realize that your opinions don't necessarily reflect reality either right? It's amazing how many people get caught up arguing semantics here.

The reality of the situation is we didn't win the conference championship last season, it will take a miracle for us to win it this season and we've been to 1 sweet 16 in 10 years.

Those are facts, how you choose to view those facts is entirely up to you. If that's okay with you that's your choice.

I find it hard to believe anyone is really scratching their heads and having a hard time figuring out how people aren't okay with that.

Well said. I don't want Mick to lose his job. I want him to win bigger to avoid it. Let's put things this way: unless things change (change something: tempo, philosophy, something), the results will be similar, maybe trending up some as I do see some better players coming...in the next 5 tournaments, including this yr, how many sweet sixteens do you think we would get?? Or at least Sweet 16 worthy regular season/
Sweet 16 caliber teams as we all know the tourney can be a crap shoot. 2 max = 3 in 15 yrs. If he can learn to blend the O and D maybe an E-8, but how long do we wait?

 

[ZCat]

Xavier plays a brand of basketball that wins at the college level. I watch all their games. It's actually enjoyable.

Doesn't Mick know kids love to run and gun?

 

[WAITE HOYT 2]

SMH. They shot 8-23 from the FT line, a statistical anomaly. If we were 16-2 and #6 in the country, I could live with a loss like that.

BTW, I was reading that this season conference winning percentage at home is all the way down to 59.82%.

While watching the game was shocked to see so many empty seats.

 

[WAITE HOYT 2]

Doesn't Mick know kids love to run and gun?

when we were Scoring 70 points and losing were you any happier? I want to win. He needs to figure out based on his players abilities how to get that done.

 

[ZCat]

when we were Scoring 70 points and losing were you any happier? I want to win. He needs to figure out based on his players abilities how to get that done.

Yes he does. But we want better players, Waite. Better players mean more wins. Tough teams like the teams we lost to this year are hard to beat if you can't score with them. Our ceiling is always low because our offense has limited us. We need both O and D to be reasonable. Or at least preferably keep the D aa good as past years and raise the offense. My point was our players and players that we want to recruit, like to play fast. This is in general of course, but is pretty typical.

 

[WAITE HOYT 2]

Yes he does. But we want better players, Waite. Better players mean more wins. Tough teams like the teams we lost to this year are hard to beat if you can't score with them. Our ceiling is always low because our offense has limited us. We need both O and D to be reasonable. Or at least preferably keep the D aa good as past years and raise the offense. My point was our players and players that we want to recruit, like to play fast. This is in general of course, but is pretty typical.

I do not dispute Kids like to play a certain style. But there is much more that goes into the recruiting game then style. Immediate playing time, Facilities, path to the pro's and others. Bottom line is Mick needs to win. As I have stated I would prefer a faster paced style as a fan but you can only do so much with the hand you are dealt. Getting better players is not just about style. If we play a style that doesn't get us in the tourney how does that help. If we hadn't made the dance 5 years running do you think anyone would be looking at us? By the way we scored with the teams we lost to except X and we lost. We lost because we didn't guard not because we didn't score enough.

 

[UCBearcats]

when we were Scoring 70 points and losing were you any happier? I want to win. He needs to figure out based on his players abilities how to get that done.

As a fan who attends every home game and watches the road games on TV I'll say yes I was happier. It's much more enjoyable to spend a few hours of my day watching a good basketball game.

Losing to Butler and Iowa State was hard to take and we needed to find a way to step up and get some stops in both those games but I'll take the experience of watching both those games over seeing us play that awful game against USF.

At least when we were scoring points I had some hope that this team would figure out the defensive issues and be dangerous come March. Now we're back to playing Mick-ball and all hope is lost.