Basketball Woes
- Thread starter ocalaman
- Start date
Didn't see the game but saw Walker was 6 of 8 from the field. How did that happen? Did he learn how to play offense finally?
I agree with this 100%. They are 4-3 with 11 conference games left. They need to go 8-3 and then probably pick up 2 wins in the SECT to get onto the bubble. Not impossible, but improbable when you consider the lack of consistency from this bunch.
Finney Smith and Frazier are your two best offensive players by a mile. 10 shots between the two of them isn't enough. It's partly on Billy to get these guys shots.
As far as Calipari, his freshmen sure look confident to me. He lets them play their game. When he had Tyreke Evans at Memphis, they struggled until Cal gave him the ball and told him to do his thing. Cal admitted publicly that he was being stubborn and he needed to just get out of his way.
As far as Calipari, his freshmen sure look confident to me. He lets them play their game. When he had Tyreke Evans at Memphis, they struggled until Cal gave him the ball and told him to do his thing. Cal admitted publicly that he was being stubborn and he needed to just get out of his way.
I know it's hard to admit, but Cal is better than Billu in many ways.
Different styles of course, but better.
Billy relies on experienced guys whereas Cal has a knack for getting his one and dones to stay for more than one year.
Biy consistany goes through a few rebuilding years because of his style
#nickcalathes
Different styles of course, but better.
Billy relies on experienced guys whereas Cal has a knack for getting his one and dones to stay for more than one year.
Biy consistany goes through a few rebuilding years because of his style
#nickcalathes
Calipari and UK were in the NIT just 2 years ago. Cal does a great job recruiting, but X's and O's are not one of his strengths.
Cal is a better recruiter for certain. However, Cal is not very good coaching them up. His teams are always loaded with NBA players so he relies on just having so much more talent than his opponents every night. Give Billy and Cal equal talent and I will bet you Billy beats him 7 out of 10. Not hard to be a good coach with 9 future NBA players on the roster.
I don't buy that Calipari can't coach. First off, his teams defend. That is coaching. Also, it can't be easy to get a bunch of guys, who think they're already lottery picks, to give up minutes and play team basketball. As far as Xs and Os, if you watch them, the right players take the right shots. What else do you want?
I wouldn't trade Billy for him, but at this point it's pretty tired to say Cal just rolls the balls out there.
I wouldn't trade Billy for him, but at this point it's pretty tired to say Cal just rolls the balls out there.
Meh. Donovan is a better X and O guy but his insistence on 'structure' can be a problem when he doesn't have an experienced team. Cal's genius comes in the fact that he realizes basketball is mainly an individual game. So he recruits the best players, give them one small role so they don't spend time trying to learn a complicated system, then he gets out of the way. A lot of coaches can't swallow their ego and do that, so he gets props for that for sure.
It's kind of the same thing in football. You recruit the best players, give them the ball in a spot with a 1-on-1 matchup and let them do their thing, more times that not the best athlete will win. That's what Cal does on the basketball court.
Completely agree. That was a big surprise to me too. Not only has Calipari managed to stay clean, from a NCAA perspective, he also seems to be a damn good coach. He coaches decent defense and his most impressive accomplishment is his apparent ability of getting these entitled young players to buy into the team concept.
He has been good for college basketball. I would not have thought that six years ago,
But that is just the point. Both men have entirely different coaching models.
An ideal Billy team will have a single one and done (think Bradley Beal), a four year future NBA player (think Chandler Parsons) and four or five experienced good but not great journamen. Players that might make it to the NBA as reserves, but not much more than that. (think Scottie Wilbekin, Casey Prather, Patric Young and Will Yeugete)
An ideal Calipari team is just the opposite. Several one and done players and several Chandler Parsons type players. Very few four year journeyman.
No one in their right mind thinks the Florida team from last year had as much talent as the UK team. Yet Florida managed to beat UK three times, win the SEC-T and get to the final four. It took the NCAA tournament before the UK team figured it out.
So, given equal talent, I agree that Donovan beats Calipari 8 out of 10 games. But since Calipari has been there, I do not think there is one UK team that had less talent than the UF team they were facing. UK teams will almost always have better talent than UF teams.
Just think it is incredibly stupid to say Cal isnt good at X and O's. Basketball and football are much different in that regard. He'll, if anything the time that coach's x and o acumen matters is during end of game situations where Billy's teams struggle.
Both guys are hall of famers and ill stand by the statement that if Walker was as advertised this is a top 25 team. He was a rsci rated #7 recruit. All the guys above him except Andrew Harrison are in the nBA. I watched him a decent amount in aau ball and felt he was a tad overrated but did not expect him to struggle like he has THIS year. Maybe Bama was a sign of him putting things together but I think it was probably a bit of fools gold considering the circumstances of the game.
Both guys are hall of famers and ill stand by the statement that if Walker was as advertised this is a top 25 team. He was a rsci rated #7 recruit. All the guys above him except Andrew Harrison are in the nBA. I watched him a decent amount in aau ball and felt he was a tad overrated but did not expect him to struggle like he has THIS year. Maybe Bama was a sign of him putting things together but I think it was probably a bit of fools gold considering the circumstances of the game.
I don't get the sense from watching Walker that he is putting anything together, he still runs out of panic instantly with the ball and he would fall down with his post moves if the defender didn't get in his way and check him. Walker is good for a few dunks when he gets lost in the shuffle on some possessions but he HAS To rebound for us on defense more. We give up FAR too many 2nd chance put backs at the rim. Horford seems to be the only guy that knocks missed shots back out to our guys on offense.. and somehow Frazier seems to get the majority of our defensive rebounds
Donovan does more with less, while Calipari does less with more. The last 3-4 years of UF basketball is a prime example of how good of a coach Billy D is. He took UF to 3 Elite 8s and a Final Four with very very few NBA players. Beal is the only one I can think of and he was just at UF for 1 year.
I heard Calipari actually argue one time he was doing great because he was taking a team full of mostly freshman while most of the other top tourney teams had upperclassmen.
He is doing great. He's in the final 4 every year. He does have the best players, but there are McDonald's all Americans everywhere that don't play up to their reps, especially early.
And paco, chandler parsons would like a word with you. Point taken though. Billy ' s results are better than his talent, although he's had quite a few very good to great college players that aren't quite pros. We had better players than both butler and louisville the years we lost to them in the elite 8.
And paco, chandler parsons would like a word with you. Point taken though. Billy ' s results are better than his talent, although he's had quite a few very good to great college players that aren't quite pros. We had better players than both butler and louisville the years we lost to them in the elite 8.
Cal is doing great. However, there are currently 19 players in the NBA just from his 5 previous seasons at Kentucky. I will let you do the math of dividing 19 by 5.. Think how many more there will be after this season. When you have 9 MCD AA I can promise you will get at least 5 that aren't flops. So is he just rolling the balls out there, no, but there are dozens of current college coaches that would easily win with his talent at the same rate, and most that would have won more.
It's beating a dead horse at this point, but I don't understand why we play like such spazzes. Down 3 with 2 minutes left, we miss a free throw (of course) somehow grab the rebound and then turn around and throw it right to Vandy for a one man breakaway. Game over.
On the other end, their true freshman grabs a ball going out of bounds, keeps his feet in bounds as calm as you please and calls timeout. If that had been one of our guys we would have grabbed the ball, whipped around wild-eyed and threw it into one of our own guys' nuts, while simultaneously travelling.
On the other end, their true freshman grabs a ball going out of bounds, keeps his feet in bounds as calm as you please and calls timeout. If that had been one of our guys we would have grabbed the ball, whipped around wild-eyed and threw it into one of our own guys' nuts, while simultaneously travelling.
This game was over when we forgot to score in the first 8 minutes and found ourselves down 15-0. The basketball IQ of the team is somewhere between playground and JV. At times we pass it too much and pass up open shots, and then other times guys are jacking up contested 15 foot jumpers. It hurts that we don't have a true 4 or 5. Maybe we should just go with 4 guards.
gosh, our guard play is horrible. What 4 would you put on the floor? Chiozza is our only hope, there is no one else. Hill is done, can't drive, can't shoot, can't pass...great teams start at guard position, unfortunately UF has none much less starting 4 of them.
If you would have told me Hill and Walker would have played like this up until this point prior to the season I would have thought you were crazy. If they produced anywhere near to what people thought this would be a sweet 16 level team probably.
Now 12-10 with 8 regular season games to go.
I semi-jokingly said this would be a 15 win team but our next game is Kentucky, I believe, and at this point I won't be shocked if we barely scratch 15 wins. No way we get near 20 unless we get on fire and also take some games in the SEC Tournament.
Luckily, we can focus on football now.
I semi-jokingly said this would be a 15 win team but our next game is Kentucky, I believe, and at this point I won't be shocked if we barely scratch 15 wins. No way we get near 20 unless we get on fire and also take some games in the SEC Tournament.
Luckily, we can focus on football now.
The biggest problem is the PG position. Kasey Hill is the worst starting PG that Billy has ever had. He's terrible offensively and he's even worse on defense. He doesn't know how to run a half court offense at all. The only time he is decent is in transition or on a fast break. Other than that he's pretty much not doing anything effectively to help the team win. Billy relies a lot on his PG to be effective. Hill isn't even close. I would even take Eddie Shannon over Hill right now.
Pg may be their biggest problem, but this team has a boatload of them. I thought the analyst last night did a pretty good job summing it up: they have no shooting, so defenses sag back and nobody can drive. Thats why they had 10 shots blocked last night at the rim. They have no post presence, so no baskets down low and nobody to cut off of. When they do get to the basket, they have no finishers, nobody who can even catch the ball really. If they get fouled, they are poor free throw shooters. And they are erratic with the ball and have no confidence. They pass up good shots frequently and end up shooting worse shots late in the shot clock.
The only thing they do well is defend, which hill does pretty well, actually. Just a very rare bad showing by everyone, from the top down. Hopefully we learn from it and bounce back next year, but we need to find some scoring for that to happen.
The only thing they do well is defend, which hill does pretty well, actually. Just a very rare bad showing by everyone, from the top down. Hopefully we learn from it and bounce back next year, but we need to find some scoring for that to happen.
So what does that have to do with his point? His point is Cal is loaded with nba talent while Billy generally does not have the same level of talent. Almost ANY coach in the nation could win the same amount with the type of talent cal stockpiles. I promise you cal would not have won with our team last year.
Point is a 1st round loss, 3 EEs a FF is < a Nit , 1 EE, 1 FF, 1 runner up, 1 title all while haveing to replace a large amount of the team every year. No not "ANY" coach could win the same for lots of reasons. 1. Most coaches couldn't even recuit that much talent and rather you like it or not recuitment is a part of coaching in college sports. 2. Almost all coachs would have a hard time having working with a new team yearly. Not saying one coach is better then another but to say cal can't coach is just not true.
Not looking forward to tomorrow's game. UK will take out last year's 3 losses on us in one game. There will be no mercy.
KY would say its due to the "Super Bowl" factor they always get when playing other teams
I guess anything is possible in sports but after watching Kentucky a few times this season I don't see how we will be able to score much at all on them. That defense is really good and big. They have been slacking some on rebounding lately however. We will have to have one of those games where our shots falling big time to have any chance to win.
