Another thread hijacked
UConn not in Gavit Games?
- Thread starter 87Xfer
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Your Coach Cronin would love to play a Gavitt game
I hope you are not serious. In our conference loses our opponents outshot us from the foul line 188 to 128. We are the National Champs and on a level playing field, as in March, they should be struggling to defend us.
UConn and Villanova have won 5 National Championships in the last 12 years. The rest of the conference, this loser of a Commissioner gives preferential treatment to, has won zero NC’s in this period. She should be kissing our butt not giving us the shaft.
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I hear you, Chief, but ... the adversity toughened the team up and may have helped them win the championship. They figured out how to play when teams were roughing them up and pushing them around, and officials weren't calling fouls. In the tourney, the rough physical teams like Arkansas and San Diego State took a lot of opponents out of their game. Our guys kept their poise. They didn't keep their poise in those games in January. ... I think this is a case of the Big East helping us out, perhaps unintentionally.
I understand the argument you are making. I do think it made us even better once we performed on a level playing field. However, there is no honor amongst thieves. The officiating wasn’t ethical and the lackluster Commissioner did nothing. Then somehow even after paying our dues for a few years in a new league - there is no slot for the National Champion school in the Gavitt Games. Must be all these national powerhouses the last 13 years. PC, Seton Hall, St John, DePaul, Georgetown, etc. deserving the slots. Lol
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What you are saying would be 100% true if during UConn's 6 game NCAA run, the FT disparity was similar to the BE disparity. That would imply it was UConn's poise that got them through to the championship. But that is not true. The FT disparity during the NCAA run was about even. You can argue it was our poise that somehow translated to the officials calling our games even. For me that is a stretch. Although I am sure what you are saying is true to an extent, no amount of poise, coaching and, sometimes talent, can overcome out of control officiating.
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IMO, the only thing the Big East officiating did was prevent UConn from being considered, perhaps, the most dominant NCAA champion ever. UConn may have finished with a 36-3 record (using MQ 3 loss BE record as UConn's) and undefeated out of conference etc. Having said that, it was not all bad officiating. A lot of it was the competition itself. The top half of the BE was pretty damn good. It really does not matter at this point though. Can't be too greedy and need to stay real.
Yeah there really is no excuse not to have UConn in the Gavitt Games. UConn is the 1) biggest national brand in the Big East and is the 2) National Champion. I know there are contracts, but damn, the Big East could easily amend the contract with the B1G to get UConn a game. If they did that it would be mutually beneficial for the B1G and the B1G opponent of UConn and UConn themselves.
Remove DePaul, add UConn-it's simple.
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The reality is we are not going to be 20+ points better than our competitors every season. The fact that we started with that competitive spread and still lost 8 conference games with huge foul shot attempt discrepancies, while running the table against top national competition by double figure margins, is actually the best time to highlight this unfairness. I know it is counter intuitive but we have more credibility bringing this up after an NC than after a tough loss with bad whistles.
I know this because I also brought it up after the tough uneven ref games. I was called a sore loser and that I did not understand the brilliance of these other teams, when frankly there wasn’t much in certain cases, in my opinion.
Then when I called the Commisioner on it, some labeled it sexiest as if I never criticized a male official, NCAA leader or opposing coach. These Gavitt games decisions, just drives home the point to me that this inept Commissioner has not yet fixed the problem. I don’t want to wait until a cold night in January 2024 after a loss to ask again that this issue be fixed.
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No, what I'm saying is that learning to be competitive on a tilted playing field against the likes of Marquette and Providence, taught them how to be dominant on a level playing field against the likes of Arkansas and San Diego State. By March 1 they had learned a level of mental and physical toughness/composure/poise that they didn't have on January 1.
Danny Hurley stated multiple times during the tourney run that he had had to change his focus from fighting the referees to winning the games. It was not only the head coach, but the whole team that learned to make that mental adjustment. And focusing on what was in their control, not what the referees controlled, was a key step toward the dominating performance we saw in the tourney.
"no amount of poise, coaching and, sometimes talent, can overcome out of control officiating" -- agreed. Officials can rig games for sure. The officiating was fair in the tourney and that's why UConn won by double-digit margins.