Soak this tweet in | The Boneyard

Soak this tweet in

This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
 
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
We would have won that road game had Dyson not gotten hurt.
 
.-.
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
We had a bad game tonight and still broke away.
 
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
The bigger issue was that we lost our starting SG and heart and soul of that team, Jerome Dyson, to a meniscus tear a month earlier. With Dyson in the lineup I think we would have had even odds against UNC.
 
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
Agree. That UConn team was loaded. Too bad Dyson got hurt .
 
Mike Honcho said:
The bigger issue was that we lost our starting SG and heart and soul of that team, Jerome Dyson, to a meniscus tear a month earlier. With Dyson in the lineup I think we would have had even odds against UNC.
Expand ...
Dyson was a tenacious defender and a heck of an athlete who wasn’t afraid to slash to the rim through contact. It was a major loss and yes they would have beaten MSU with him in the lineup. I’ll always be bitter about that, especially with how Sparty nation reacted after the win
 
SeattleHoop said:
Dyson was a tenacious defender and a heck of an athlete who wasn’t afraid to slash to the rim through contact. It was a major loss and yes they would have beaten MSU with him in the lineup. I’ll always be bitter about that, especially with how Sparty nation reacted after the win
Expand ...
losing at final 4 didn’t bother me. Returned favor in elite 8 in 2014.
 
.-.
SeattleHoop said:
Dyson was a tenacious defender and a heck of an athlete who wasn’t afraid to slash to the rim through contact. It was a major loss and yes they would have beaten MSU with him in the lineup. I’ll always be bitter about that, especially with how Sparty nation reacted after the win
Expand ...
And Dyson is the type of wing defender who would have locked down Korey Luscious and Dorrell Summers, the two players who went off and got MSU the lead with their scoring spurts.

But UConn got sweet revenge in 2014 with their home court advantage at MSG :)
 
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.
 
jibsey said:
March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.
Expand ...
The good news is that we don’t have to worry about a virtual road game the first two weekends if we keep playing like this. It was great in ‘14 to start Buffalo to MSG, but this year, Albany to MSG is even better. Four games within what — 90 minutes from the state line?
 
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
Bah. I was there, it wasn't that much of a road game. They win it all if Dyson doesn't get hurt that season.
 
jibsey said:
March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.
Expand ...
Bah again. That wasn't some run of the mill nightmare. That team had no heart. They were lucky to get as far as they did. They struggled with the 16 seed F F S.
 
It seems this year that we get the three-point dagger when we most need it. Reminds me of the Rashard days!
 
.-.
Deadrody said:
Bah again. That wasn't some run of the mill nightmare. That team had no heart. They were lucky to get as far as they did. They struggled with the 16 seed F F S.
Expand ...
That's a little harsh. They won a heck of a lot of games and won a #1 seed.

What they didn't have was a secondary ball handler after Marcus Williams, either from the wing or as a backup point. As we've seen time after time, normally to our benefit, guard play becomes more important in the tourney than it is in the regular season, and we had one true guard. And what they also didn't have was the pure alpha dog who you could get the ball to and they were going to get their own shot and make it no matter what. Anyone like a Rip Hamilton, a Ben Gordon, an Omeka Okafor, a Kenba or a Shabazz. Everyone on that team could score, but only Rudy Gay had the real skill set to be the alpha scorer, and as an underclassmen on a team full of good upperclassmen, he never wanted to take over offensively. (Anderson had the onions, but he needed the offense to get him looks with his feet set.)
 
UChusky916 said:
This team is the most complete, deep and balanced since UConn's '09 team which may have gave UNC a run if they didn't get stuck with a road game in the final 4.

We're really good. And even the best teams lose games now and then. This place will be a nightmare when we finally have a bad game and lose. Players will get crucified and people will say Hurley should be canned. It will be fun.
Expand ...
We absolutely would have beat UNC in 09
 
jibsey said:
March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.
Expand ...
It took a long time before this forum stopped saying George F'in Mason.

Lack of ball handling with the suspension of AJ Price for the season. Austrie did well but he and Marcus were not enough. That loss of AJ was the only incident that nyhuskyfan/Gurleyman demonstrated an emotional negative reaction in his illustrious presence in this forum.

Rashad Anderson had some skin infection that was so serious he was hospitalized and for a long period. He fortunately recovered but it impacted his play the remainder of the season. He was definitely the best 3 pt shooter on the team prior to that illness.

Hilton Armstrong suffered an ankle or hamstring injury just prior to tournament. Was limited in his play but prior to the injury was playing some of the best ball of his career.
 
jibsey said:
March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.
Expand ...
It could. But I was in the minority in thinking that squad with Gay was never an NC caliber team. I think the chemistry on this team is.
 
.-.
jibsey said:
March 24th 2006. I was in a bar in George Mason’s backyard at the time and let me tell you that it was not a lot of fun. There are plenty of people on this board who don’t think that kind of nightmare can happen to this team. It can. And we pass the ball infinitely better than they did but look back at that lineup.
Expand ...
Worst loss in UConn history. Gets worse every year away.

Two losses in my sports life get worse with age.

1. Yankees game 7 loss to Arizona
2. Losing to GM.
 
JohnFSilver said:
Worst loss in UConn history. Gets worse every year away.

Two losses in my sports life get worse with age.

1. Yankees game 7 loss to Arizona
2. Losing to GM.
Expand ...
I'm right there with you on both.
 
fleudslipcon said:
It took a long time before this forum stopped saying George F'in Mason.

Lack of ball handling with the suspension of AJ Price for the season. Austrie did well but he and Marcus were not enough. That loss of AJ was the only incident that nyhuskyfan/Gurleyman demonstrated an emotional negative reaction in his illustrious presence in this forum.

Rashad Anderson had some skin infection that was so serious he was hospitalized and for a long period. He fortunately recovered but it impacted his play the remainder of the season. He was definitely the best 3 pt shooter on the team prior to that illness.

Hilton Armstrong suffered an ankle or hamstring injury just prior to tournament. Was limited in his play but prior to the injury was playing some of the best ball of his career.
Expand ...
Yeah. That team is my weak spot. I was more mad at Marcus Williams (he was the older player and had his cousin/friend along stealing laptops) and thought we never should have brought him back. AJ wasn’t going to play that season anyway, I don’t think, after having brain surgery - but the suspension took that possibility away (and took his redshirt possibility away).

I kind of liked that team without Marcus, although our ceiling was lower - we scrapped and clawed a little bit when we only had Austrie and Rob Garrison … knowing we needed to fight on defense and fight for rebounds. We won in Maui (Denham at the buzzer) and we were still undefeated when Marcus joined, when we immediately became way more talented and better offensively. But from them on we thought we could just outscore teams and went soft, right from day one when we got drubbed by Marquette. Part of it was we couldn’t defend guards (a bigger problem than lacking a secondary ball handler was that we didn’t have a primary defender against ball handlers), but we also didn’t seem to have the same grit. We had a couple good games (a home win over Nova to split with them, and a game we beat Seton Hall by 40), but basically stunk the entire last month of the season. The loss to George Mason didn’t come from out of the blue - we were tied with a 10-20 Louisville team with a minute to go in the regular season finale. Then lost to a Syracuse team that was NIT bound at the time in a 1-8 game in the BET quarters. We learned our lesson so well from that loss that we needed to come back from 12 down to beat Albany in the 1-16 game. Then let a pedestrian 8 seed Kentucky team take us down to the wire. Then we needed a miracle to beat UW, which probably wouldn’t have been possible without Brandon Roy getting his fourth on a double tech.

Why did George Mason finally pull it off? We got zero defensive stops in the last 10 minutes (5 of regulation, 5 in OT) - or at least no stops that didn’t involve them missing free throws. With the Final Four on the line, we didn’t have the grit to dig in on defense for a single stop against a mid-major. We almost scored enough to pull it out anyway, but I’ve never considered that a vintage UConn team, despite the record (a healthy AJ likely would have solved that).

But it’s water under the bridge now. We have four - and the tradeoff for winning that many comes the occasional shocker as a favorite. Duke vs. Lehigh, Kentucky vs. Saint Peter’s, Kansas vs. VCU, etc. Or, to its largest extreme, Virginia vs. UMBC, followed by a nattie. When George Mason happened, we were only 2 years removed from winning - the 90s losses were harder to take before we got our first.
 
See my "One For The Thumb" thread.
 
.-.
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
168,221
Messages
4,557,758
Members
10,442
Latest member
StatsMan


Top Bottom