bierce

I'll believe Few will leave when he announces he is leaving. I wouldn't much mind having him, but I would worry that he'd be an unmotivated guy only in it for the paycheck. He's a hall of famer with or without a title, and he knows it.

And the beauty of both moving away from grown children and taking your 16 year old away from his high school. Give it up, guys. Few is happy where he is.

I'm hoping, too. Not expecting at this point, but hoping. Hey, NC State came from nowhere to win the ACC tournament last year. This after losing its last four regular season games and 9 of its last 13 regular season games with only one of the wins coming over a team better than 71st. And it had to beat both Duke and UNC on its way to the ACC tournament title. It can happen.

Other than being guys who created powerhouses at a smaller conference program, Garrido and Few are nothing alike. Garrido loved wine, women, song, and limelight. Few loves fly fishing and staying out of the public eye. "Augie is a baseball lifer, but he was the life of the party, too. He was dashing and debonair, and loved women, food and booze - not necessarily in that order. He always embraced the spotlight but there was little of it at Fullerton even after all that success. After the 1996 season, when Texas came calling in the wake of the sudden ouster of its legendary coach Cliff Gustafson, Augie jumped at the chance." https://fullertonbaseball.blogspot.com/

Some guys care more about their life away from the basketball court than they do about their legacy as a coach. Few is one of those guys. He's completely happy where he is, three and a half year old offseason dui incident notwithstanding.

I read some opinion pieces by a Blacksburg area writer on that topic. He initially said Mike Young is a goner. Then he quickly wrote a follow-up suggesting Va Tech is currently stuck with him because it doesn't have the money right now to fund his buyout and get a quality coach.

Which is true of most bracketwangers. Every now and then you get a team in the field that was overlooked by nearly everyone (I'm thinking Tulsa 2014 here), but when Texas is included by only 2 of 99 bracketweirdians who have updated since our Saturday loss, then I'm feeling pretty certain we have a lot of work ahead of us. And I think Lunardi is really cool because of all his work at St. Joe's with radio broadcasts and teaching classes. I just don't live and die by his predictions.

We need at least 3 straight wins and probably 4. That will be winning @ Mississippi State, beating a bubble team in Austin, beating a bubble team in Nashville, and probably needing to also beat either Tennessee or Missouri in the second round in Nashville. It's possible, but do you see us doing that with how the team is playing? I sure don't. BTW, Lunardi has always been higher on Texas than the matrix as a whole, and he is not the most accurate bracketwit. He's merely the most visible.

And let's now start talking about getting Wright, Calhoun, and Krzyzewski out of retirement to act as a triumvirate of coaches, why don't we?

I watched only the very end of it. The Southland doesn't have any competition for McNeese this year. SFA has really fallen off. I had hoped UTRVG would do something under Fennell this year, but it collapsed when Abdul-Hakim left the team.

Drake beat Vandy by 11 on a neutral floor, and it beat K-State in OT in Kansas City this year, so it is pretty good. Not good enough to really complete with really good P5 teams, but good enough to compete with P5 bubble teams. MVC is not the strongest mid-major, but it is far from the weakest. It generally runs behind WCC, MWC, and A-10, but it usually has one team that could be deserving of an at-large bid if the committee was a little more receptive to teams that don't get many q1 games. Indiana State was passed over last year. NW Mo State would have made it four in four years had the 2020 tournament not been cancelled. McCollum is a witch of a coach. In some years, his teams lit up the scoreboard. In other years, they didn't score more than 70 in the entire tournament. It all depended on what style of play best suited his players. Anyone who can win a D1 mid-major title by using a team of players he brought over from his D2 team has to be considered someone who can get the most out of his talent. The only question is whether he can recruit talent at a high D1 level, and that's a big question. I, and many others, think he is destined to start a P5 coaching career in the Midwest, because that is where all his contacts are, but I would be extremely interested to see how he might fare outside of the Midwest.

I'm guessing they and their fans will break down long before going to Knoxville on Nov. 1.

BTW, South Carolina will be looking to get a third straight home win against a bubble team when it plays Georgia tomorrow. The Gamecocks were blasted in the other Columbia by Missouri between the wins over Texas and Arky.

Jordan isn't joking about McCollum playing guys very heavy minutes. Stirtz averages OVER 40 minutes per game against D1 opponents. He's played 45 minutes in 5 games this year. Another guy played no less than 37 minutes in all but two games against D1 opponents, and in both of those he was in foul trouble.

There has to be a picture on the internet somewhere of someone mainlining college basketball film and stats.

Wake down 81-47. NIT bound absent winning conference tournament. Wake was arguable screwed by the committee twice, but I don't think missing the tournament 5 straight years was what Wake had in mind when it hired Forbes. Texas, Georgia, Indiana, UNC, Boise State, and WVU on the road tomorrow. Arky @ Vandy and Nebraska @ tOSU are the double bubble games.

He's only a 155 mile drive away. Maybe he has mellowed with age. For that matter, Weltlich is only 81.

Not even the most recent of successful hires by P5 schools of coaches who never coached P5 before--Hurley, Oats, Lloyd, Otzelberger, Scheyer, Golden, and McCasland. It's too early to tell about May and Byington, but they might make the list, as should Dennis Gates if if last year if proven to be just a blip. I don't think that much of Jans, but a lot of people on this thread do for some reason, and I would remind them that he never coached P5 before being hired by Mississippi State. There is one man involved in this process that does not have his job on the line, and that is CDC. I am sure he wants to get this right for the sake of getting this right, but I also think he has so much cred with the administration and the boosters that I can't believe that he is under any pressure to get this right to save his job, so here is hoping he makes what is truly the right choice instead of a safer one.

Drake had its third near miss yesterday, needing OT to win at home over a Missouri State team that finished 2-18 in conference. Because P5 bubble teams are playing so middlin' of late, I am tempted to give Drake an at large bid, but after yesterday's escape, being in a one point game in the final minute against Evansville, and needing OT to beat No Iowa in its last 3 games, I can't really say for certain that I would or that the committee should. But it went undefeated in non-conference action, beat Vandy on a neutral floor, and beat K State in Kansas City, so why not? Only game of interest to bubble watchers tonight is Wake Forest @ Duke. WF is desperate after going 1-3 over a four game stretch that included home losses to FSU and VIrginia and a road loss to NC State. Only win in there was the 11 point win over SMU in Dallas. WF did win its last game 74-71 over Notre Dame, but that only made it look worse.

Heard it on the Goodman piece.

Hey, on another board long ago, posters nominated me for head coach, and I did not hesitate to tell them we would finish the year 1-17 in conference with the sole win coming on the night I was home sick and an assistant took over.

I think it will be hard to get Otzelberger away ISU. He and his wife have roots in the midwest, and both are heroes in Ames. Otzelberger has spent his entire life in Wisconsin, Iowa, or South Dakota save two years as an assistant at a JC in Florida, two years as an assistant at UDub, and two years as a head coach at UNLV. They have three children ages 6-10, so maybe they won't want to move. He's already approaching god-like status in Ames, and Hilton is packed every game with an extremely enthusiastic crowd. But we have a lot more money. I like Otzelberger for several reasons, many of which Gerry and Mark mentioned, but what they haven't mentioned is the fact he adapted playing style to the players and environments in which he was coaching. He began his HC career in the Summit League, a league notorious for spread it out and jack up the three. His team was the best at that after his three years there. He really wasn't at UNLV long enough to create a real identity. He inherited a mess that returned only 2 starters and 2 significant bench players, and he lost 5 of his top 8 in minutes played after the first year. At ISU he has created a team that focuses on half-court pressure defense to force turnovers and transition scores. This is the first year ISU has not lead the Big 12 in defensive turnover percentage. I guess Sampson was embarrassed about finishing second at it last year.

My apologies for missing that one. Got too distracted by the Quin Snyder chatter that immediately followed on the thread.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/indiana-coach-search-tommy-lloyd-wins-with-efficiency-on-both-ends-of-the-floor/ar-AA1A0Ic9 Embedded in the link above is a video with Jeff Goodman discussing candidates for Indiana. Of particular note is his comment about Otzelberger's buyout at the 2:28 mark. Goodman says it is around only 4 million.

Because who doesn't like