You do understand that the New England, metropolitan NY-Philly, WAS college basketball then. The south was Kentucky, UNC, Midwest was Cincinnati, Ohio State, Kansas, Indiana. There were no real powers in southwest in 60's, and even 70's. The big deal far west was UCLA, and that was it. The 2 big basketball tournaments, that showcased schools were the Holiday Festival, and NIT. Both held in the Mecca of college basketball, Madison Square Garden. So in essence your rationale about opponents from northeast and New England fails to take into account how good eastern basketball was in the 50's into the 70's.
Gee, thanks. I was a regular at both the Holiday Festival and NIT growing up in the 60s and early 70s. Heck, I would be in MSG for the start of the 5th place consolation games where there wouldn’t be 100 people in the Garden. Yes, college basketball was different, but UConn wasn’t playing the Syracuses and St Johns and ‘Novas all thle time during that period. Yes, they played Providence regularly. And the record of eastern independents getting out of the Eastern regional and getting to the Final Four wasn’t great. Yes, occasionally someone would break through, but it was occasionally.
Just stop. Clingan is light years better than Thabeet ever was. There's a reason Thabeet absolutely sucked in the NBA, he just wasn't that good. Clingan is a better player in so many ways. Even bringing up Thabeet alongside Okafor and Clingan is laughable. Clingan has National Championships and NBA accomplishments...Thabeet has neither.
But the Go-Go's chant for Thabeet (We got Thabeet, we got Thabeet..... WE GOT THABEET!) was truly memorable... much better than any Clingan or even Okafor chants. Gotta count for somethin.
He was 7'3" and therefore blocked a lot of shots. There's a reason he never averaged more than 3 points and 3 rebounds in the NBA, he just wasn't very skilled. In fact, he was one of the worst uses of a draft pick ever. Outside of Len Bias, who never played an NBA game, Thabeet produced the least in the NBA of any TOP 3 draft pick EVER.
You keep bringing up Big East DPOY's. Boone and Armstrong also won Big East DPOY. Who cares? Clingan was way better defensively than all of them.
Again, the Per-40 for Clingan is a pretty significant cop out. I think the Freshman yr Per-40 is simply irrelevant, and he played 10 less minutes as a Soph than Thabeet did as a Junior while struggling with conditioning as we saw.
How is it not relevant that Clingan was more impactful on the court than Thabeet was in his minutes and Clingan shared the center position with the best offensive big in the country and another good center for his two seasons while Thabeet shared it with a couple of nobodies?
Because the gap in minutes per game is so significant, and the stat doesn’t account for inevitable fatigue, which is incredibly relevant especially with guys that are 7’2 plus, lol.
So you're penalizing Clingan because he shared the position with Sanogo and Samson.
Clingan was a significantly more effective scorer as a sophomore than the foul line extended jump shooting Thabeet was as a junior, lolz.
Sanogo was just an automatic 18 & 8. His power/ finesse down low was something of a bygone era
So what would you like us to judge DC on other than how good he was while at UConn?
Well in the minutes he played, he has worst stats. Per-40 isn’t your statistics. I’m not penalizing, you’re just putting a whole lot of weight into a stat that assumes a lot of things. Also, Championships are a team accomplishment.