Comparing this year’s team to ‘23 and ‘24 teams | The Boneyard

Comparing this year’s team to ‘23 and ‘24 teams

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UCLJ0211

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It’s been discussed a lot, but thought it would be a good time to revisit the conversation now that we are about halfway through the regular season.

We are sitting at 15-1, 5-0 in the BE with several impressive OOC wins and fresh off a huge comeback win at PC in which we showed Championship Pedigree and resiliency. This team can win in many ways and ultimately wears teams down with our balance and depth.

The ‘23 and ‘24 teams through 16 games were both 14-2. To me, this team looks like it can be better than the ‘23 team but not quite as dominant as the ‘24 team- so I would put them as Hurley’s second best team so far.

We obviously won’t have a definitive answer until the season is over, but it’s an interesting debate. Up to this point in the season- where does this team fit compared to the 23 and 24 teams?
 
I don't think we're really that close to the '24 team, even if the record won't be too far off. That starting five may have been the most perfectly constructed starting 5 of any CBB team we have seen this century. We're not built like the '23 team (less athleticism, better shooting, I think) but I think we're overall a more balanced and deeper squad.
 
UCLJ0211 said:
It’s been discussed a lot, but thought it would be a good time to revisit the conversation now that we are about halfway through the regular season.

We are sitting at 15-1, 5-0 in the BE with several impressive OOC wins and fresh off a huge comeback win at PC in which we showed Championship Pedigree and resiliency. This team can win in many ways and ultimately wears teams down with our balance and depth.

The ‘23 and ‘24 teams through 16 games were both 14-2. To me, this team looks like it can be better than the ‘23 team but not quite as dominant as the ‘24 team- so I would put them as Hurley’s second best team so far.

We obviously won’t have a definitive answer until the season is over, but it’s an interesting debate. Up to this point in the season- where does this team fit compared to the 23 and 24 teams?
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DOOMED!
 
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2024 team is one of the best cbb teams of all time. Not a knock on this squad to not even be in the same stratosphere as them.

I don't think this team is close to the 2023 team either. Aside from a crummy Jan, that squad blew everyone out of the water in the ooc slate.
 
Wayyyy too early to do comps. I do think it's safe to say 24 is just off limits regardless of what happens. Even if we ran the table from here on out, 24 was next level good and, barring injurie,s should have only lost 1 game that year. I also think tourney 23 beats this group, as it is at this moment, fairly easily.
 
I don't think you can compare this team to either of those teams because they had Clingan who changed everything just by walking on the floor. What we have as of right now though is a title contender by the metrics that should be a 1 or 2 seed come March.
 
Doesn't touch 2024. It doesn't create the level of defensive fear in the opposition, no real shut down or rim protector, doesn't create offense off defense. Doesn't have the ball handling, shot creation.

I don't think it has the firepower the 23 team had either. Tarris, as gifted a big man as he is, simply isn't as reliable or defined as Adama. We don't have an AJx on this team. A kid like Mullins could become Hawkins-esque, we'll see. This team is still missing a bit of the "it" factor. We shall see if that develops. That 1 or 2 really dynamic players that an make the engine go consistently. We really want that to be Silas & Mullins, so maybe yesterday was a start. We haven't shown a fifth gear.

To answer, I don't think this team is as good as either of those two - not sure it has to be to win an NC. It feels like we are firmly in a group of 7-8 teams that are all around one another.
 
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UCLJ0211 said:
It’s been discussed a lot, but thought it would be a good time to revisit the conversation now that we are about halfway through the regular season.

We are sitting at 15-1, 5-0 in the BE with several impressive OOC wins and fresh off a huge comeback win at PC in which we showed Championship Pedigree and resiliency. This team can win in many ways and ultimately wears teams down with our balance and depth.

The ‘23 and ‘24 teams through 16 games were both 14-2. To me, this team looks like it can be better than the ‘23 team but not quite as dominant as the ‘24 team- so I would put them as Hurley’s second best team so far.

We obviously won’t have a definitive answer until the season is over, but it’s an interesting debate. Up to this point in the season- where does this team fit compared to the 23 and 24 teams?
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Nowhere near as good as ‘24, but who is (or will be). Very hard to compare to ‘23, because 23 sucked for a while in January but then played great down the stretch. I think the starting five this year may be better than 23, but not the quality of depth (just DC being on the bench makes that impossible). Of course, 23 won a national championship relatively easily and this team has shown it could be on that level, but so have a number of other schools. We’ll see.
 
'24 UConn is off limits, it's the best college basketball team of the 64 team era.

'23 UConn had 7 losses before the NCAA tournament beating three ranked teams. '26 UConn has 1 loss without 2 starters to the #1 team in the country in a close winnable game and has 4 wins over ranked opponents. UConn was a 4 seed in '23, I expect UConn to be a 1 seed in '26.

UConn '26 looks to be the better regular season team over '23 unless something goes drastically wrong. It remains to be seen what they'll do in the NCAA tournament.
 
superjohn said:
'24 UConn is off limits, it's the best college basketball team of the 64 team era.

'23 UConn had 7 losses before the NCAA tournament beating three ranked teams. '26 UConn has 1 loss without 2 starters to the #1 team in the country in a close winnable game and has 4 wins over ranked opponents. UConn was a 4 seed in '23, I expect UConn to be a 1 seed in '26.

UConn '26 looks to be the better regular season team over '23 unless something goes drastically wrong. It remains to be seen what they'll do in the NCAA tournament.
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This is a solid take!
 
I was thinking that neither the '23 or '24 teams would have come back from the game vs PC yesterday.

Realistically '24 would never have fallen behind like that though ! The '23 team had the January games that they lost so that's enough to convince me.
 
Nothing to do with this convo per se but one of the sports books dropped a hypothetical line suggesting 25-26 Michigan as 4.5 point favorites over 2012 Kentucky (Anthony Davis year)
 
Marat said:
I was thinking that neither the '23 or '24 teams would have come back from the game vs PC yesterday.

Realistically '24 would never have fallen behind like that though ! The '23 team had the January games that they lost so that's enough to convince me.
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The 24 did actually fall behind PC in Providence by that same amount!
 
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RuffRuff said:
Doesn't touch 2024. It doesn't create the level of defensive fear in the opposition, no real shut down or rim protector, doesn't create offense off defense. Doesn't have the ball handling, shot creation.

I don't think it has the firepower the 23 team had either. Tarris, as gifted a big man as he is, simply isn't as reliable or defined as Adama. We don't have an AJx on this team. A kid like Mullins could become Hawkins-esque, we'll see. This team is still missing a bit of the "it" factor. We shall see if that develops. That 1 or 2 really dynamic players that an make the engine go consistently. We really want that to be Silas & Mullins, so maybe yesterday was a start. We haven't shown a fifth gear.

To answer, I don't think this team is as good as either of those two - not sure it has to be to win an NC. It feels like we are firmly in a group of 7-8 teams that are all around one another.
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I would say we miss the athleticism and two-way players compared with 2023 more than the "it" factor, unless that's what you mean? But I think we have shown the it factor since we're good in close games and have beaten a bunch of awesome teams already,
 
We have quality depth that the other two teams didn't have. And the chemistry needed to keep it from becoming a potential source of problems. Last night being a good example.
 
ConnHuskBask said:
The 24 did actually fall behind PC in Providence by that same amount!
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That was actually one of my favorite regular season games from that year to re-watch because they started out slow and PC looked like they were going to run them out of the gym and by halftime I think UConn was up by 18 after Hassan hit an off-balance 25 footer at the buzzer. The gym was a morgue.
 
RuffRuff said:
Doesn't touch 2024. It doesn't create the level of defensive fear in the opposition, no real shut down or rim protector, doesn't create offense off defense. Doesn't have the ball handling, shot creation.

I don't think it has the firepower the 23 team had either. Tarris, as gifted a big man as he is, simply isn't as reliable or defined as Adama. We don't have an AJx on this team. A kid like Mullins could become Hawkins-esque, we'll see. This team is still missing a bit of the "it" factor. We shall see if that develops. That 1 or 2 really dynamic players that an make the engine go consistently. We really want that to be Silas & Mullins, so maybe yesterday was a start. We haven't shown a fifth gear.

To answer, I don't think this team is as good as either of those two - not sure it has to be to win an NC. It feels like we are firmly in a group of 7-8 teams that are all around one another.
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I actually like this starting 5 more than '23. '23 was for sure more athletic because of Jackson but you can't sag off anyone in this starting 5. One separator for me is Silas is significantly better than Tristen was at this point in his first season. Moreso than the advantage Sanogo has over Tarris.
 
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All comps with 24 at this point are foolish. AT THIS TIME. I reserve the right to change my mind if we go on to win the NCAA title in a similar manner in which the 24 team did, destroying everyone on their path. And I believe we have that kind of ceiling.
 
if i were to compare this team to I might compare them to 2014. It doesnt work, but none of these comparisons really work well
 
UCLJ0211 said:
It’s been discussed a lot, but thought it would be a good time to revisit the conversation now that we are about halfway through the regular season.

We are sitting at 15-1, 5-0 in the BE with several impressive OOC wins and fresh off a huge comeback win at PC in which we showed Championship Pedigree and resiliency. This team can win in many ways and ultimately wears teams down with our balance and depth.

The ‘23 and ‘24 teams through 16 games were both 14-2. To me, this team looks like it can be better than the ‘23 team but not quite as dominant as the ‘24 team- so I would put them as Hurley’s second best team so far.

We obviously won’t have a definitive answer until the season is over, but it’s an interesting debate. Up to this point in the season- where does this team fit compared to the 23 and 24 teams?
Expand ...
The 24 team starting 5 was the best offensive executing team in our history and one of the best in our history
5 guys with not only talent but incredible BB IQ. However I think 3-4 of them played 30 plus minutes all starters averaged in double figurss. They were stone cold killers
When they got in sync no team was defending them .
It was just Diarra and Johnson’
on the bench but barely averaged double figures together
The year before no one played thirty minutes the offense was frequently out of sync but Jackson was an incredible defender that lifted the whole defense
The bench could explode on you
Just when you saw . Sanogo , Hawkins and other starters sitting .
The bench could put you away
I was at the Buffalo game and our starters go off to slow starts .
It was tied at 20-22 for minutes
The bench game in and in a couple of minutes it was 36/22 game over
On paper this team offensively should be closer to 22-23 but no Jackson but it still trying to fin itself
I think we really haven’t seen their potential yet .
 
Reed is arguably having a better season than Sanogo and I think he’s still working himself back after the missed time. Here’s the stats for Sanogo versus Reed:

17.7 pts / 7.7 rebs / 1.3 asts / .7 stls / .8 blks
60% FG and 76% FT
versus
14.5 pts / 7.7 rebs / 2 asts / 1.1 stls / 2 blks
63% FG and 64% FT

This is certainly a better regular season team than 23 and I expect that to continue through the BET. But Let’s be honest we got a nice draw during the 23 tourney the highest ranked team we played was 3 seed Gonzaga. I would expect this team to win it all as well if they can dodge Michigan Zona ISU Purdue etc
 
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superjohn said:
I actually like this starting 5 more than '23. '23 was for sure more athletic because of Jackson but you can't sag off anyone in this starting 5. One separator for me is Silas is significantly better than Tristen was at this point in his first season. Moreso than the advantage Sanogo has over Tarris.
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Hear yeah, I continue to wonder if this team has that "gear" though. There is some season left to play out, but this team hasn't shown that kill shot 5th gear. They grind, they let up at times.

In 23, we saw that early in the preseason before they hit their January lull. When they were clicking, they were flying up and down the court, throwing up kill shot 3's.

The field was much weaker in 2023, but I could not see this year's team running through a tourney like that team did. They might grind through it. There is no way they could just overwhelm with pace and D like that team did. Let's not forget that team had two PLUS defenders in AJX & Clingan. Our current team has none. Clingan's 13 minutes created a major advantage. Reibe has been a nice surprise, but his metrics aren't great and he's not an enforcer like Cling was. i don't see it.
 
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