Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Sifaka, post: 3827896, member: 8516"] The OP assumes at least two things: 1. Playing competitive teams sharpens the skills of the UConn team, or any other team. 2. Being in a relatively weak conference denies UConn the chance to sharpen its skills by playing competitive teams. While 1. is plausible, it's not an ironclad certainty. Other members of this thread have already noted such exceptions as Baylor. Let's add Notre Dame. They play in a conference with a number of competitive schools, and have both excelled and fallen flat in recent years. Roster, quality of coaching, injuries, etc. are all part of the mix that leads to success or failure. [B]2. is absolute bunkum, nonsense, and codswallop.[/B] The bottom third of any conference is routinely populated by cupcakes, and most years the middle third isn't much better. So our schedule has some unavoidable cupcakes. The same is true for the best teams in every conference. Now, let's take the middle third. More cupcakes for us, while in some conferences, in some years, there is a bit more competition. We counteract that by scheduling topnotch OOC games. The top third in the so-called P5 leagues typically include ranked teams. That is also true for the Big East. Add it all up, and UConn normally—in a non Covid year— schedules and plays as many top 25 teams as anyone else, if not more. The thread starter's proposition brings to mind something penned by H.L. Mencken. (I paraphrase, as I don't have the 6 volumes of The Prejudices at hand.) [I][B]For every difficult, vexatious problem there is one, simple, easy, solution.[/B][/I] [B]And it's wrong![/B] [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

Forum statistics

Threads: 164,488

Messages: 4,398,252

Members: 10,212

Latest member: MurrDog