Fishy
Elite Premium Poster
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2011
- Messages
- 17,955
- Reaction Score
- 129,175
UConn offers no more competition to a power conference team than does a low major.
I’m not surprised that we lose to them - our roster is littered with mid-major talent and some of them just prospects at that. That’s purely the result of a head coach who took a sabbatical from recruiting while alienating half of his roster. (“Ten toes in....yours, not mine.”) But we don’t even get in their way - Villanova did not have a single anxious moment today.
What talent is here is on its own. It doesn’t get better, it doesn’t get stronger and it certainly doesn’t enter games with any sort of plan of attack. We have players, they play games and to the extent that he physically occupies space on the bench, we have a coach.
The next and perhaps last round of conference shuffling is coming in a few years and while we’re likely on the outside looking in no matter what, we’re definitely screwed if we head into that scramble with the 200th best basketball program. The money involved in a coaching change is huge, but the money involved in being permanently excluded from the power conferences is much, much bigger.
All this is frustrating and disappointing. Ollie could have been great - 2014 was not a fluke, but he stopped working and I don’t know that he can ever get it back.
I’m not surprised that we lose to them - our roster is littered with mid-major talent and some of them just prospects at that. That’s purely the result of a head coach who took a sabbatical from recruiting while alienating half of his roster. (“Ten toes in....yours, not mine.”) But we don’t even get in their way - Villanova did not have a single anxious moment today.
What talent is here is on its own. It doesn’t get better, it doesn’t get stronger and it certainly doesn’t enter games with any sort of plan of attack. We have players, they play games and to the extent that he physically occupies space on the bench, we have a coach.
The next and perhaps last round of conference shuffling is coming in a few years and while we’re likely on the outside looking in no matter what, we’re definitely screwed if we head into that scramble with the 200th best basketball program. The money involved in a coaching change is huge, but the money involved in being permanently excluded from the power conferences is much, much bigger.
All this is frustrating and disappointing. Ollie could have been great - 2014 was not a fluke, but he stopped working and I don’t know that he can ever get it back.