bendm
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Amen. F the P4 (unless/until we’re a member).
November General CBB Discussion Thread (Non-BE)
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Me too. I slept on Gonzaga entering this season (didn't think they had the firepower and Saint Mary's was much better), but this is arguably Mark Few's deepest team in years as they'll regularly go nine-deep.Matt Norlander thinks they can go to the Final Four.
Everyone underrated Gonzaga, and now it looks like Mark Few has yet another team with Final Four DNA
The Bulldogs got off to a great start at Players Era with a double-digit win over No. 8 Alabama late Monday nightwww.cbssports.com
Ike/Huff make up a hell of a center combo and have enough skill/spacing to share the floor together. Maybe they don't have "a guy" at point guard, but the Smith/Saint-Supery PG combo have good vision. Warley/Grant-Foster are combo guards who can create their own bucket off the dribble. Adam Miller (yes, he's still playing college ball, lol) can score in bunches Venters is a nice offensive piece of the bench Innocenti is a bulldog of a defender.
Overall, nice balance as they don't need to win by scoring a lot as they now have a damn good defense too.
bendm
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Big 12, Players Era sign $50M hoops deal with NIL payouts
Big 12 announced Monday that it will get eight automatic bids to the Players Era Festival, in coming years, which will give every participant a guaranteed $1 million NIL payout.
"They're giving us $1 million," Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson said. "That's why we're there, and I would say that's why all the teams are there. We didn't sign up for this to have a tournament where we could play each other. We signed up for this because they're giving us $1 million. If they decided to put a court down at some vacant lot and they'd give us $1 million, I'd go play there, too.”
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Creigton looks like they could get run - they're not very good. Bubble team at best. I don't know how far they fall in the league because they have McDermott (who seems to dislike his team), but their roster is really meh. They lost a ton with Kalk/Neal/Ashworth, and now don't have McAndrews. These Iowa kids didn't even make the tournament last year, how good can they be?
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We turned it down this year. We are making more playing in Boston and New York twice.Big 12, Players Era sign $50M hoops deal with NIL payouts
Big 12 announced Monday that it will get eight automatic bids to the Players Era Festival, in coming years, which will give every participant a guaranteed $1 million NIL payout.www.espn.com
"They're giving us $1 million," Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson said. "That's why we're there, and I would say that's why all the teams are there. We didn't sign up for this to have a tournament where we could play each other. We signed up for this because they're giving us $1 million. If they decided to put a court down at some vacant lot and they'd give us $1 million, I'd go play there, too.”
Can we get an invite please???
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Well they beat St John and are running Creighton out of the gym. Creighton cannot rebound nor stop dribble penetration.
HuskyHawk
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Iowa State is ranked #15 and just beat #14 St. Johns. I think they are pretty good. Agree with you that Creighton doesn't seem to be good.
Mr. French
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Tennessee and Houston should be good -KU and Cuse is big name value. We’ll see if Cuse can maintain some positivity.
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Brand has to start somewhere, and the challenges remain. UCLA & Indiana have great brands and haven't touched Gonzaga's consistency. It's all Few. Will be interesting to see how far the brand takes them once he retires.
I remember the shot of Few & Boeheim at the 2024 finals watching that Uconn team in awe - that was great.
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And intense lack of athletecism. Not sure what McDermott was thinking with this roster. It looks Ivy league. He may be checking out.
He did a nice job getting a kid like Neal last year, who complimented that team well. This year, he's gotten nothing resembling
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Man, that ND/Rutgers game was a real dick punch. After Rutgers got crushed by Tenn, I loaded ND -6.5. At one point Rutgers was +23.5 live. ND up 10 with 2 mins left, 1-4 for free throws including missing 2 front ends, 2 turnovers and 3 fouls to win by 5.
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Creighton has always lacked athleticism as team for the most part with the exception of a few players they have had on their roster (i.e. Neal, Trey Alexander, Arthur Kaluma, Ryan Nembhard). Ryan Kalkbrenner was the big brother in deep drop coverage near the cylinder in the paint helping out other teammates that were not great 1v1 defenders. When he had to go out to the 3 pt line, Creighton's defense could get exposed sometimes.
Oddly enough Hurley lucked into this strategy of playing small in the game in Omaha last year when Tarris and Samson got into foul trouble. This pulled Kalkbrenner from the paint and forced him to defend by the 3 point line and it allowed McNeeley to cook who ever was guarding whether it was Neal (a good defender), but especially the bad defenders in Traudt and Ashworth. In fact, I remember McDermott saying in the press conference after that game saying "well we have to put Ashworth on somebody".
This Creighton-Iowa State game is a dick punch because I had strong confidence Iowa State would defeat them and yet I turned on the TV and sat on my sofa like a slug and did not rush to bet on this game. So basically it was a dick punch due to inaction on my part.
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You can't lose if you don't play, lol. I balked on betting it because Lipsey was out.
Correct, have to play. And that's the other thing, too. with Lipsey out, you know the Vegas line would drop making the Iowa State not favored as much.
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poor poor rutgers. they can't even beat the hapless domers these days.
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I had this one in the works for about a week, but it feels really good to drop this feature on CCSU's Jay Rodgers following the OT win last night:
Mr. French
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Agreed.
Houston is similar to how they always are, but I agree right now they aren't as good as the last few years.
I wouldn't be surprised to see them in it until March because they will keep getting better, but they aren't dominating teams with physicality like usual.
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Still very young - Sampson hasn’t gotten enough time to work the frosh. They aren’t nearly as tenacious defensively. Whether they get there is tbd, but they are very talented. Right now not third best but could be by end of year.
HuskyHawk
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Not at the moment anyway.
Glad my Jayhawks made a little OJ. But until Peterson is back, if ever, I don’t trust them in big games. This tournament is weird. No idea who plays tomorrow. There will be three undefeated teams.
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@HuskyHawk is there a chance he doesn't play next week?
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bendm
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If ever?
My UK fan friend said he heard a rumor Quaint is going to sit out the rest of the season and prep for the draft instead
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Interesting story about the Iowa State-Creighton game. The Players Era final is determined by record and average margin of victory (with a 20 point cap in a game). There isn't a bracket like most tournaments. Iowa State led by 18 with the ball at the end of the game. They could have tried to score but TJ Otzelberger declined to take the last shot. McDermott hired him for his first coaching job and Oztelberger said he wasn't going to run up the score and take the last shot with the clock running out. That may have cost his team a spot in the final and an additional $500,000 for winning the tournament.
"Going into it, you know that point deferential is a part of this," Otzelberger told CBS Sports. "The respect I have for Coach McDermott and his program, we're not going to put the game in position where we're trying to run up the score and get extra points late to win by a greater margin. To me, the relationship and the character of our program is more important than that. The easy solution would have been if we would have been up by [20], then it would have been fine, but that wasn't the case. We want to do the right thing."
Players Era Updates, Day 2: Why Iowa State didn't run up score vs. Creighton: 'Want to do the right thing'
Players Era, Day 2: Iowa State takes foot off the gas late in win vs. Creighton
www.cbssports.com
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Tennessee out toughed Houston. I’m with Mashburn on his comments to just worry about winning the game.
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