MarkInAustin

Is Jonah injured again?

I thought Mark was as exhausted as anyone on Texas' team. He really played hard, if not efficiently. Lack of depth is showing here in the late season, and that certainly has been critical since Traore's injury. Weaver is essentially the power forward when he comes into most lineups now. That really doesn't bode well. Codie is quite limited as a backup Center. Both Swain and Mark are being called upon to play too many minutes at full speed at both ends, play making, ball handling, shooting, rebounding, and defending. And there is no real choice available. Next season: Assuming Miller can keep Matas, he will also have a "phenom" in Goosby and a situational rotational shooter in Ogden. His redshirts may provide rotational help and Wilcher is serviceable as a rotational sub. Even with a couple of other useful freshmen he will need four starting quality portal in-transfers. 1-2 BIGs who can play inside or out [stretch 5s or 4s], 2 combo Wings who can shoot, rebound, defend, and pass, and a true PG or very skilled CG. Should have a 12 man roster with 9 true rotational players to go deep in the season and 3 developmental pieces, and I don't see that happening with fewer than 4 starting quality in-transfers after Swain, Mark, Traore, Weaver, and Pope are gone.

If I had to pick six guys in their prime to play one professional 48 minute game They would be Wilt, Timmy, Bird, MJ, West and LeBron. LeBron because he makes substitution possible at every position. In his prime he was able to defend five positions as well as play offense at all five. This is a different question than "who was the greatest", really. For me that was either MJ or Wilt, take your pick. But the six I named would out rebound, out defend, and out score any other six you could put on the court, more times than not, even if your next six were also all time greats.

A 2020 peer ranking of faculty strength across departments in 67 American universities, public and private, had Texas at 14, overall. Eleven of the 67 schools have all academic departments ranked 30th or better in the nation. The private elites in this group are Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell; the public universities in the group are UC Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, UCLA, and UT Austin. IIRC, 15 departments were ranked for the metric. Some of the privates would argue that their undergrads are exposed to their vaunted faculty, and that in the publics one has to be in an Honors program to avoid instruction by junior faculty and T.A.s. Two of my daughters are alums and were not in Plan II and they did see "vaunted" faculty members as early as their second years. But more important, faculty rankings are based on publications, not teaching ability, so this "debate" really gets into the weeds pretty quickly.

This ranking and the London Times world rankings have a different perspective than US News or Niche rankings. Graduate schools are extremely important to the world rankings. That contrasts with the ranking of undergraduate schools upon which US News and Niche focus. Texas has ranked as high as #29 in world rankings in one past year. An obvious difference in the rankings: Princeton is always US News #1, but never in the top world group. Princeton has no professional schools - no medical school, no business school, no pharmacy school, no law school. The great US public universities of which Texas is one are all well endowed in breadth and depth of graduate and professional schools. They usually score among the top fifty both on US undergrad rankings and world rankings based on metrics like peer reviewed publications and patents produced. The consensus that Texas is an elite academic university is widely shared by employers, peer universities, the press, and the public. As one result, it is ever more difficult to be admitted as a freshman - and even automatic admission [requiring inclusion in the top 5% of one's HS graduating class] does not guarantee admission to Cockrell or McCombs, both now accepting fewer than 10% of applicants. I have twin 17 year old granddaughters one of whom wants engineering and one of whom wants marketing, and both want to go to Texas. They are both in the top 5% of their junior class and both worry that they will be admitted to Texas but not to Cockrell and McCombs, respectively. You may remember a time when it was less competitive. I certainly do.

Plays WR on HUDL. Unless I looked away for a moment and missed it, he was never in line. He outclassed every opponent by such a degree that it seems impossible to really gauge him. Those opponents didn't look like much. Which is not to say he isn't great. I just have no way of seeing that from this HUDL.

Paulie, I think Cojoe was robbed of a year in which he would have shown that marked improvement. As Bobby has pointed out, he was ahead of Baker at RT when he was injured. Were he to have fully recovered, do you [or Jeff] think he has a shot at "marked improvement"? It certainly would be a boon to the OL were he to come back strong.

Bradley was an insanely good athlete. And I used to leave work to watch both Street and Hooton pitch. Hooton had an excellent Major League career. Street, who was the ace, who threw 2 no hitters including a perfect game, never pitched again after he was injured in the CWS. I think James Street was robbed of his career in baseball by that injury; perhaps his son's success was Karma.

Will Zina get more snaps than Lance Jackson?

I watched my recording of the game late last night. I did not know that we had won, beforehand, for once, so I stayed involved. Have to say it is pleasant to FF through timeouts. I assume every upside within the game has been detailed even beyond Jeff's recap, so I will go back and read the game thread.

Strike 3

So this will be Schloss's 1000th win?

Jordan Pope is not a defensive threat against most of the guys he must cover in the SEC. In fact, he is a liability. He physically cannot defend the three point line because he must be in the face of the shooter to defend it, which guarantees a foul. He is better off leaving his man open for three and crashing the boards - it is that bad. I write this as someone who had the same problem defending guys three inches taller than I on the perimeter. Might as well race to the boards as the shooter committed. [That was in City League, I never played in school]. There are some good man defenders on the team. What I find disappointing are team lapses - open lanes, open baselines, allowing a man to get behind the entire team at the basket... . Two of the best man defenders are the engines of the offense, Swain and Mark. They may suffer fatigue in grueling games, which shows on defense first. I think Matas is quicker than you think he is, Jordan, but I think he simply hasn't mastered the game yet as he is still relying on his height and strength, rather than his positioning. I believe he is often guilty of [fortunately for Texas uncalled] three second violations, btw.

So Ohio State football players rely on tutors and do not necessarily attend classes? I could not play the media.

lamar has been very sloppy even when the bobbles were not scored as errors. switching over to hoops.