Give UConn an added string of Nationals and .. ???

[RegisteredUconn]

This is, what Communism/socialism? If this happens, sports will be something that happened in the past. Sports is capitalism at its purest and best. Hard work and innovation, means payoff. No payoff, no desire to win. No sports. What is this guy thinking?

I harbor no illusions that "judged sports" won't overtake competitive sports at some future date. From the coverage I see, the fastest growing parts of the Olympics are those where winners and losers are decided by judges' criteria rather than more objective measures like how fast someone completed a given distance or how many times a ball went through a hoop. Don't get me wrong, participants in judged contests are every bit the athletes as those in competitive contests.

I can remember when the winner of the ski jumping "competition" wasn't necessarily the one that landed farthest down the hill because there was also an element of who looked the best accomplishing the jump. There was a time when jumpers using the now universal "V" ski formation lost "style" points (and thus competitions) to those who recorded shorter leaps but whose skis were parallel. I wonder if Dick Fosbury could have won the '68 Olympics had the high jump criteria included style points.

How many times have you heard Megan or Doris or whoever say that KML has the prettiest jump shot ever? How gorgeous where those two MoJeff moves against South Carolina where she started, hesitated, then blew past the defender? Or Kemba's ankle breaker against Pitt? Think there aren't people don't believe the sport would benefit by more of that sort of thing? It can be a small step to go from "the sport will benefit" to offering rewards, i.e., points for such behaviors. How will we know when those things happen? Someone will tell us, that's how.

 

[hoophuskee]

I harbor no illusions that "judged sports" won't overtake competitive sports at some future date. From the coverage I see, the fastest growing parts of the Olympics are those where winners and losers are decided by judges' criteria rather than more objective measures like how fast someone completed a given distance or how many times a ball went through a hoop. Don't get me wrong, participants in judged contests are every bit the athletes as those in competitive contests.

.

Absurd imo. Beyond absurd. Unless I'm missing your point.

You think "judged sports" are going to overtake soccer on the world stage?

In USA you think it will overtake football?

 

[watanabe]

Banishment is probably not appropriate because there are no rules violated. Call me crazy but I enjoyed the brain exercise of trying to figure out what was being said- kind of like a really really hard puzzle wrapped in BOLD TYPING.

It took me a while to figure out where the poster was coming from. I was floored. When I said banishment, I meant from the entire sport of college basketball. Hope BillinGeorgia sees the errors in his approach.
PS: did he just throw TonyC under the bus?

 

[huskeynut]

Bill -

Sorry to say but your premise is wrong.

What the next few years holds for UCONN no one knows. Injuries and the like can quickly hurt a team's chances for a national title run. And UCONN is not immune to injuries.

As has been said in this post - if you want your team to be relevant and challenge UCONN, then start doing the things that have made UCONN so successful. Expect the absolute maximum effort from your players. If not, they get benched - Stewart, Tuck and Stokes just recently. That sends a monsterous message to all on the team. Push your players to go beyond what they thought was their limited. Teach life lessons, not just basketball. Demand excellence all the time. Geno has always had open practices for coaches who want to learn.

Too many coaches are satisfied with a couple of big scorers. That will win you a lot of games. But UCONN has 5 to 7 who can score double figures on any given night. You want to win, learn how to play "in-your-face" defense like UCONN. Why did South Carolina get beat down - UCONN's defense first. Then a varied offense that does not allow a team to focus on just one or two players.

 

[hoophuskee]

1--- this year, this team, the 2014/15 may be the weakest in the next five years, even with the leaving of Stewart. “
2---People like SC’s Wilson may never win a national, and she went to SC on the thought of a sure National Ring.
3---Or is it time to consider a point lottery or National Draft.
4---UConn could have a mix of ten players where the 10th can be the 1st any given night… so that’s 200 minutes divided among ten players

These points above are all so bizarre – that’s why I mentioned that they came from another planet.

1--- You really think this team is going to be weaker than the year that Stewie and MoJeff leave? I think it’s so bizarre to think the team 2 years from now without two superstars and possibly without the tremendous Tuck is going to be stronger than this team. As a UCONN fan we’ve seen over-and-over how much upperclassmen mean to a season. It’s like that’s been totally ignored- and by a UCONN fan to boot. We can understand USC fans mistakenly overrate freshman players like Cuevas when they go against MoJeff- but UCONN fans shouldn’t take a player’s experience like KML so MoJeff so lightly. The upperclass experience of this phenom jr class is awesome. Also-- how can you know of 2016-2017 and beyond?

2---- What is the relevance of A’ja Wilson’s opinion? And she went to USC because she thought with certainty – without a doubt- she is going to win titles? You mean you can’t differentiate ”bravado talk from a young kid” to reality? Sure-- she might win. But don’t most kids that go to a top 5 program think they can win a title at least once? You really think kids as competitive as they are “know” that all 4years (before they play one single game) they have no shot to win a title in college? SO of course they talked to someone about the opportunity for a title.

3--- Lottery as a draft as to where a kid is going to go to school? You think it’s a consideration to force a kid to go somewhere because of “sport?” A lottery enforced on young kids over the right of a kid to choose where she (he) wants to go? Why? Just so we can watch a more competitive game? You really think that is even a consideration? Restricting kids rights to choose where they want to go school? To even consider it – it’s so bizarre.

4--- Again so bizarre. If UCONN is landing the number 1 recruits – you think the 10th player on the bench will consistently be equal to the number 1 recruits? IMO we’ve seen the last two years UCONN only go 6 or 7 deep and win decisively. Where did this 10 player-rotation turn up? In a fantasy league? You really think for example when we got back-to-back number 1 recruits in Stewart and KML and number 2 recruit in MoJeff, that going forward the number 10 recruit is going to be getting as many minutes as the number 1/number 2 recruit? Every so often a number 1 recruit or number 2 doesn’t live up to billing – but so far UCONN has a tremendous track record with superstar top 1/ top 2 recruits.. Yet despite this, – you see a 10 player rotation despite the number 1 and number 2 recruits being superstars? Again – so bizarre.

I almost get the feeling as if you want the game to be played with a 10 man rotation. Almost as if you put Gabby Williams on BStewart on the same tier. That you disregard experience. That you’re overly concerned with a kid’s bravado talk. That you’re only thinking only about the college game as a fan and don’t really care about a kid having a right to make her own choice for a college (from what I can see the only benefit for something like this is because of wanting to watch more games be close. How does that help the superstar get better?). It’s as if you have no appreciation as to how great a superstar really is.

This is what I took from your posts. Sorry – but it is. I can’t believe you’d think all the things I mentioned but it is as if you are. Which is why I used words “bizarre” and “unknown alien planet.” It’s okay for one point maybe two to disagree with, but imo there were many points I disagree with you on. And it looked like most of the board did too.

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Absurd imo. Beyond absurd. Unless I'm missing your point.

You think "judged sports" are going to overtake soccer on the world stage?

In USA you think it will overtake football?

What I'm saying is that the world of sports is moving in the direction of judged contests and away from competitive contests. Recently, the Olympics considered removing wrestling, a sport that goes back to the Greek games themselves while adding what seems like a million-and-one "new" entries all sharing one thing in common: winners and losers are all determined by a panel of experts rather than an objective standard. Will soccer and football disappear in a decade? Of course not, but they are on the wrong side of the trend.

 

[hoophuskee]

What I'm saying is that the world of sports is moving in the direction of judged contests and away from competitive contests. Recently, the Olympics considered removing wrestling, a sport that goes back to the Greek games themselves while adding what seems like a million-and-one "new" entries all sharing one thing in common: winners and losers are all determined by a panel of experts rather than an objective standard. Will soccer and football disappear in a decade? Of course not, but they are on the wrong side of the trend.

I couldn't disagree more. They are popular in part because they are competitive w/o judges.

You get a few irrelevant sports in the Olympics that people can stomach for once every 4 years it's a novelty.