So here's the thing...

[SoCalCanine]

I'm generally more a lurker but I have no idea why ANY of you would engage this guy in conversation, it just encourages his intentional jerkiness, he clearly roots for the Huskies to fail!

 

[jibsey]

It's a tall order to knock off Louisville, but if it happens "they" will be forced to confront our program and we become a bigger story, bigger boost for Ollie maybe recruiting. The NCAA probably had visions of a fade to obscurity this season with the defections. It's a big game.

 

[ctchamps]

I am fine admitting 17 was my guess for this team, give or take one. I didn't think they would beat any of NM, MSU, ND, or NCST pre-season and had Marquette as a loss because it was an away game.

Boatright and Napier were somewhat known quantities, but there were questions about leadership and if there would be an issues between the two.

Calhoun was a very good recruit and has played about as well as expected, though his shooting is off.

Giffey and Olander were also known quantities but neither were exactly lighting the world on fire last year.

Daniels had just come off a pretty poor freshman year.

Wolf hadn't played (under 60 minutes) in the past two years, anyone who really thought he would be doing this well needs to tell me the lottery numbers soon.

Nolan, Tolksdorf were project recruits.

Evans was a transfer who many questioned if his game would translate to BE caliber.

Ollie is a first year head coach.

.500 may have been setting expectations low, but either way they have exceeded expectations so far.

.500 was a realistic expectation given what UConn lost in personnel and what you have described regarding the players on the team this year. But as aceboon and others have stated you have a poster who is jaded and unable to realize this. His continuation to argue otherwise is irrational but he presents his posts rationally. He is the person presenting his thesis the entire time the building is burning around him. Doesn't make any difference how logical and well constructed the thesis, no one is joining him in the burning building. He's still hoping for a miracle. In his case it will have to be UConn going on a losing streak to several of the weaker teams. And then he will argue how correct he was. But if the season plays out the way it started, he won't admit he's wrong. Waste of time imo debating people like this.

 

[upstater]

They are playing well under Ollie. Everything else is irrelevant.

 

[Gurleyman]

Respectfully disagree. We stumbled into that tournament game last year. A loss doesn't hurt us true, but a win shows that our relevance is still very high.

Not really. We had gone 2-1 in the BET with a win over WV and had a 10 pt lead on Cuse in the second half of the quarters before losing by three. There was some hope we could do well in the NCAA, although Kentucky looming in round two tempered much optimism for a deep run. But I'm of the opinion that any NCAA Tournament game is bigger than any regular season game. That's what I've been telling Providence fans for years. Enjoy your win over us in January - we'll take the national title.

With no postseason available to us, it's probably going to be the biggest game of this year (unless we defy odds and battle for the regular season title by year end). You could also argue Michigan State was, merely for setting the tone under KO.

 

[freescooter]

I thought 18 wins was well within the realm of possibility, even probablity. When you looked at the schedule it was not overwhelming. The crappy teams in the Big East remain crappy. Did anyone really think we'd lose to DePaul? St Johns should just drop down to the MAAC and maybe they compete. Maybe they can take Providence with them. UConn is one of a bunch of solid teams in the middle of the league. I never should have bought into all the nonsense about how bad we were. 18 wins was indeed the minimum expectation for this group.

 

[hungry husky]

Not really. We had gone 2-1 in the BET with a win over WV and had a 10 pt lead on Cuse in the second half of the quarters before losing by three. There was some hope we could do well in the NCAA, although Kentucky looming in round two tempered much optimism for a deep run. But I'm of the opinion that any NCAA Tournament game is bigger than any regular season game. That's what I've been telling Providence fans for years. Enjoy your win over us in January - we'll take the national title.

With no postseason available to us, it's probably going to be the biggest game of this year (unless we defy odds and battle for the regular season title by year end). You could also argue Michigan State was, merely for setting the tone under KO.

Losing 12 out of 20 games is stumbling into the tournament, plain and simple. This game has so much more meaning because it's at home, it's a great way to gauge the fan base. You can make an argument about the Iowa St game or the Michigan St game but this one is the most important for me.

 

[ctchamps]

Not really. We had gone 2-1 in the BET with a win over WV and had a 10 pt lead on Cuse in the second half of the quarters before losing by three. There was some hope we could do well in the NCAA, although Kentucky looming in round two tempered much optimism for a deep run. But I'm of the opinion that any NCAA Tournament game is bigger than any regular season game. That's what I've been telling Providence fans for years. Enjoy your win over us in January - we'll take the national title.

With no postseason available to us, it's probably going to be the biggest game of this year (unless we defy odds and battle for the regular season title by year end). You could also argue Michigan State was, merely for setting the tone under KO.

Certainly the biggest game of the year. But the importance of this game can't be understated. Given CR and the post season ban, this game has huge potential implication for KO and UConn. It won't be the demise of UConn if UConn loses. But a victory would certainly propel KO into the limelight, something that would have to wait until next season otherwise. Between beating ND on it's home court and a w against Ville other coaches would no longer be able to whisper in recruits ears that KO is an unknown. A victory would have the effect of demonstrating KO has the potential of being a fantastic coach, because he beat Izzo and Pitino in his first year with a team that lost so much from the previous season. That would also keep UConn in the spotlight. So I won't be devastated by a loss. But I strongly feel a victory is very significant for UConn's legacy and down the road, should UConn win tonight, be one of the pivitol points in KO's young career that propelled him to the forefront of college bb coaches.

 

[OkaForPrez]

The crappy teams in the Big East remain crappy. Did anyone really think we'd lose to DePaul?

Decoury?

Scooter hedging post = Good Mojo. The worm is turning.

 

[Waquoit]

I don't even know why you guys bother....No matter what KO does there's nothing changing his mind, best to just leave him be and let him stay frustrated in his own miserable world.

Yeah, but it's still not as bad as the badmouthing you and your contingent did to the players on the current team. Seems like you guys had so little faith in KO that you felt the need to downgrade the talent level of the players to make Ollie look better.

 

[Dann]

SO HERES THE THING...

Either Calhoun, 90% of this board of rabid UConn fans, Bilas, Vitale, Pitino, Herbst, Warde and countless others are ALL wrong about Ollie.

Or freescooter is once again trolling for replies.

I'll go with the latter.

warde was not "right" about ko

 

[8893]

 

[aceboon]

Yeah, but it's still not as bad as the badmouthing you and your contingent did to the players on the current team. Seems like you guys had so little faith in KO that you felt the need to downgrade the talent level of the players to make Ollie look better.

Except I made this thread, try again, old man

http://the-boneyard.com/threads/our-lack-of-talent.27361/

Me correctly pointing out that Tyler was struggling and not hitting jumpers in games or in Final 4s like you incorrectly stated(you are old, so I'll forgive your memory loss) was not badmouthing players.

 

[Gurleyman]

Losing 12 out of 20 games is stumbling into the tournament, plain and simple. This game has so much more meaning because it's at home, it's a great way to gauge the fan base. You can make an argument about the Iowa St game or the Michigan St game but this one is the most important for me.

Well, 12 of 20 is bad, but taking 33-1 Syracuse down to the wire twice in the last two weeks was pretty good. And we had a team of guys who mostly had big-game experience and won it all the year before. Not to mention our BET performance recalled memories of how the team that stumbled into the postseason the year before won 11 in a row.

I wasn't optimistic we could beat Kentucky, but I thought we'd certainly play better against ISU then we did. It's revisionist history to suggest that the ISU game didn't mean anything because the team was sputtering. We had teased with some flashes of what we were maybe capable of.

Gauging fan base and enthusiasm to me are just abstract things that are secondary to winning banners. Although it is a little more important than usual with our realignment issues, that is certainly true.

 

[hungry husky]

Well, 12 of 20 is bad, but taking 33-1 Syracuse down to the wire twice in the last two weeks was pretty good. And we had a team of guys who mostly had big-game experience and won it all the year before. Not to mention our BET performance recalled memories of how the team that stumbled into the postseason the year before won 11 in a row.

I wasn't optimistic we could beat Kentucky, but I thought we'd certainly play better against ISU then we did. It's revisionist history to suggest that the ISU game didn't mean anything because the team was sputtering. We had teased with some flashes of what we were maybe capable of.

Gauging fan base and enthusiasm to me are just abstract things that are secondary to winning banners. Although it is a little more important than usual with our realignment issues, that is certainly true.

Exactly, you did not know what you were going to get with this team. Losing to providence just a week before taking Cuse to the wire is an example of this.

In the long run, yes, banners are way more important than everything. For recruiting, relevance, and fan base purposes, this one is big. There is no wrong answer tho.

 

[Gurleyman]

Exactly, you did not know what you were going to get with this team. Losing to providence just a week before taking Cuse to the wire is an example of this.

In the long run, yes, banners are way more important than everything. For recruiting, relevance, and fan base purposes, this one is big. There is no wrong answer tho.

Yeah - I agree with all of that. This is an unusually big regular season game for the reasons you mention. In most other years since 1994 or so, all those things (recruiting, fan base, image/prestige) have been a given with us. Now, with some major transition issues, our foundation isn't as stable.

 

[joober jones]

Is "Free Scooter" a reference to a Hoveround you received at no charge?

 

[Husky68]

I thought 18 wins was well within the realm of possibility, even probablity. When you looked at the schedule it was not overwhelming. The crappy teams in the Big East remain crappy. Did anyone really think we'd lose to DePaul? St Johns should just drop down to the MAAC and maybe they compete. Maybe they can take Providence with them. UConn is one of a bunch of solid teams in the middle of the league. I never should have bought into all the nonsense about how bad we were. 18 wins was indeed the minimum expectation for this group.

So, to get right to the chase; if Shaka was the coach to start the season how many games would you have predicted Uconn would have won. If 18 should have been within the realm of probablitity with a 1st year mid major caliber coach, how many would the Shak have gotten? Should not a highly experienced coach with several NCAA teams be able to coach Uconn to many more wins than a 1st year mid-major type coach like Ollie, so spit it out. Does the Shak man beat MS and ND (both top 20 teams) with TO as his center and OC as his small forward? Give the wins should have expected, surely not a 9th place BE team out of 15 as expected for a 1st year mid-major caliber coach. I want to see how much coaching matters per you and what the difference is between a Rock Star like Shaka and a mid major coach like Ollie is with the same talent.
By the way, the current Uconn SOS per Massey is 13. I guess the other 334 schools with SOS worse than Uconn really have not not not "not overwhelming" challenges (to quote you).
So Uconn with 2 top NBA draft picks and several Div 1 caliber players who transfer go 8-10 in BE in 2012 and so this year with a starting team that averaged pts per game the prior year 13.0, 10.4, 4.2, 3.0, new and reserves that averaged 2.6, .3, new, new have to do just as well in league. You do know that 2012 Uconn lost to SH, Rut and Prov?
By the way, the 2012 VCU team lead by the Shak man lost to Seton Hall and Georgia State at home (not Georgia or Georgia Tech; that was Georgia State; although they did also lose to Georgia Tech which was actually rated worse than Georgia State in 2012)).
After looking at what Kentucky and NC are doing this year with overwhelming talent, I'm concerned for Uconn that those schools may come after Ollie instead of you guy, the Shak man, to replace their underperforming coaches.