bierce

We haven't seen enough of Codie, Vinson, Pryor, Presley, and Clark to know what they will be able to do against P5 competition in 2025-26, but we do have a lot of usable parts. Adding a plus ballhandler should be top priority in the portal. Mark has another year available, btw.

The NCAA is also thinking about just junking the entire system of waivers, redshirts, and exemptions and just giving everyone 5 years, no questions asked. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/college-sports/college-sports-leaders-considering-new-eligibility-rule-that-eliminates-redshirts-waivers-and-other-exceptions/ar-AA1xoa8j?ocid=BingNewsVerp

That isn't the rule in basketball. The NCAA is considering applying something like a 33% rule to all sports to give everyone a fifth season, but it hasn't done that yet. https://www.si.com/college/gonzaga/basketball/ncaa-to-discuss-5th-year-of-eligibility-for-all-sports-in-2025-01jgpcmthpd1 So I'm back to my question, but I suppose we can add "anticipation of the implementation of a 33% rule?" Even so, he'd be allowed to play in 2 more games.

Killed on the boards in several games. Suffered two blowouts. No Vinson even when game was well over. Is he hurt and looking for a medical hardship year, is he in trouble with coaches, or is he so unready that he doesn't get even mop up minutes?

Says the guy who always ignores the impact of Tyrone Branyan on the history of Texas Longhorn basketball.

Don't forget the contacts he has in South Sudan for recruiting among the Dinka. Not joking here. He coached South Sudan in the 2024 Olympics.

But Schlossnagle's top annual salary in his contract will still be under 3 million a year. The top basketball coaches are getting salaries in the $8-10 million range. Sark is now the 3rd highest paid coach after getting to the CFP in consecutive seasons. He didn't start that high. CDC won't pay the basketball coach Sark money, and that is what it would take to get someone like Hurley, or maybe even Lloyd, so I expect any hire will be more along the lines of what I suggested earlier--the guy pushing 50 with a great record at a lower level and some record of success at this level.

Now that you have amended this to talk salary and not buyout, then I will say the target should be Dan Hurley. He gets a little over $8 million a year and the buyout is only $4 million as of April 1, 2025. He's only 52. But I said years ago, and I will stick by my prediction that Hurley has no interest in leaving UConn. He is fully established at a basketball school in a basketball conference. He is very, very, very well paid, even if he is behind Self and the squid. He has spent his entire life in the Northeast. I don't see him having much interest in leaving. I don't see Wright leaving retirement. I don't see any amount of money getting Few out of his fishing grounds. Sometimes the ideal target for us might not find us the ideal destination no matter how much money we throw at the target. I was of a similar opinion when it came to Hoiberg years ago when we were discussing potentially replacing Barnes. He wasn't leaving ISU for anything except the NBA. I think Otzelberger is a Midwesterner and wants to stay in the Midwest, but I also think he will be approachable. So will be Tommy Lloyd.

I left 247Sports last spring for other reasons. I miss a few of the posters there. I miss Jeff. I always made a point to go say hello when I went to a basketball game, and not just because he comped me a lifetime subscription when I announced a few years back that I was leaving due to lack of basketball coverage. I guess he felt I was worth it then because of my very detailed threads on conference recruiting and bubble watch and conference basketball action. I have a hard time spending that much time researching and writing now that I have to take care of my 93 year old dad, his house, and his pecan orchard, but with my near retirement from my legal practice, maybe I'll find the time again. I have a feeling we'll win a few more games this year and be curious about the bubble. We might wind up on the wrong side of it, but I doubt we will be out of the discussion come March 1.

Money will not be an issue, but it very well may be a factor if CDC decides to make a move at season's end and finds himself choosing among several excellent candidates. $10 million less in a buyout translates to $2 million a year more in NIL for 5 years. That can go a long, long way to giving candidate 2 a better chance to quickly build a powerhouse. And it's not like Otzelberger has proven to be a tournament wizard at this point. His first ISU team did make a surprise visit to the S16 as an 11 seed, but it got there by beating a mediocre LSU team and a hideously overrated Wisconsin team that was in a bad slump. Then he lost to worse seeded teams the last two seasons. I've always said the tournament is a crapshoot, so for other reasons Otzelberger is still my #1 choice at present if a move is made, but I don't necessarily see him as so far above the competition that he is some kind of must hire. But for now, I'm going to focus on our upcoming games against Missouri and A&M. The season is far from over, even if we can all see the issues. Let's see how the next few games play out.

I agree about the average results, and I'll go you one better by saying disappointing results so far, but look at the parts you have listed. Two SGs and one combo forward are significant minutes players. Three other guys are "good pieces," You mean like role players off the bench? When two of them have to start for us and the third was starting while Mark was injured and coming back from his injury and is now injured himself? Maybe our roster is mostly Terry's fault. Maybe its largely the fault of the guys with the money not doling it out for other players Terry wanted. I think it's a mix of fault there.

I'm not the guy making the hire. CDC will be. I'm just predicting what I expect him to do. He will look for a guy 50 or under with an excellent resume at lower levels and some experience and success at this level. Without incidents of assaulting women in his past. Or not disciplining a current player for taking a firearm to a former player when the former player used it to shoot someone. Otzelberger would be a dream hire, but the buyout for someone under contract through 2032 might be too much to handle, and the buyout terms of his new extension have yet to be announced. So I'm thinking someone like McCasland. Not saying he's the guy, because I was unimpressed with Tech's offensive play against ISU after Toppin turned his ankle. It was way too dependent on iso drives like we see with Texas this year. In fact, the things that make Tech so much more successful than Texas on offense this year are Hawkins's ability to get into the paint to cause a defense to break down, and the rest of the team's ability to use that disruption to get open for easy shots and to get in position for offensive rebounds. But I then watched a lot of Tech's game against Arizona. That was a very good showing by them. But there you are looking at about $16 million in the coach's buyout (40% of remaining value of contract, and due in 60 days of resignation). And you are looking at a guy whose teams play a slow game on offense. Of course, maybe Musselman is already sick of the fires and is looking to pay big money to get out of L.A. I could say the same about Cronin, but his behavior over the last two weeks has been pretty odd.

I think I said we would never hire Jans, who I think is a very good coach, because of the incident that happened while he was coaching Bowling Green.

Weaver's primary role on this team is not as a scorer, and you know that. He's a defensive hawk, a vicious rebounder, and a guy who gets things done when things get chaotic. That is a guy we sorely missed having, especially against Tennessee. Larry might have been a recruiting miss. I don't disagree with that.

I always said that I thought we would not go 0-5. I was referring to the doomsayers on this board saying not going 0-5 would be a miracle. There was a thread about it before conference play started. Sometimes teams win as underdogs. Sometimes they lose as favorites. I know that. You know that. Statisticians know that. The point is that most of the same people having snits today were the same one saying we'd be 0-5 at this point. Are we better now than I thought we'd be? No. We are where I thought we'd be in the w-l columns. I don't think we should pat ourselves on the back for getting there while we were shorthanded, particularly after the abortion of a second half we just witnessed, but we are where I thought we would be. Now, if we could get a win in our next two games, we could be all right in trying to reach the tournament. If we don't, then I think we're probably toast.

I think I'm saying our team has shortcomings and the team and the coach need to fix them. I've never denied that. I even pointed them out before the season started. You guys are incredible. I write 8-10 paragraphs about what our team did wrong today and the few things that it did right and the things it has done well and hasn't all year, and you guys have no desire to discuss the effect of not having Weaver on the floor, the lack of rebounding, the lack of a top flight pg, or any of the possible ways to try to circumvent those problems. No, you just distill it to "the coach sucks." Fine. You think the coach sucks. You want to talk about basketball now?

You might try reading my comments above yours. Then you might consider I might have pretty objective view of our basketball program.

Barnes was sent away because he went 7 years without a second weekend and was -2 in conference play over his last 4 seasons.

We really need to be able to edit more than once. In the above exegesis, I mentioned we need to win one of the two upcoming road games against ranked teams. I meant home games. And for the record, I want us to win both.

This is the sort of thing that drives me crazy. People see something a few times in one game and then they claim it is the norm. Texas does not have a high turnover percentage. It is 8th lowest in the SEC in conference games after today and 14th lowest in the country in all games. We were doing quite well in the turnover department before today, averaging under 11 a game in conference. Turnovers aren't our problem. Getting our brains beat in on the boards and getting torched inside are our usual problems. We had a lot of turnovers today because Larry totally checked out. That's a problem. Shedrick and Kent being complete no-shows is another problem, and it's a huge problem. Onyema had the game of his life, and we were completely outplayed in the paint. We were outplayed in other areas, but we cannot reasonably expect to compete every day in the SEC with Kent averaging 2 points and 1.8 rebounds per game and Shedrick averaging 3.6 points and under 4 defensive rebounds per game. I'm going to remind everyone that I said in the first half of the Auburn game that I thought we will see the end of the Terry tenure this year if he doesn't get this team playing better on offense. We saw better offense over the next 5 halves. Then we witnessed the total disaster of a second half today. I think once again that we will see the end of the Terry tenure this year if he doesn't get everyone to focus and put today behind them. We just went 1-4 in a stretch of games we were projected by many to go 0-5. Two of the losses were close. Two were second half blowouts. And we didn't have one of our top 8 players, who just happens to be our second leading rebounder, in four of those games. This team is about on track in the w-l column to still manage to make the tournament, so I'm not giving up on it yet, but maybe right now, more than any other moment in his coaching career, Terry has his moment to prove he is a motivator and can get a team to function after adversity. We saw some of that in our last game in Norman. We lost close games against highly ranked teams and responded with a road win in a game we were the underdog. Now we have a chance to regroup and play at home after a brutal loss on the road against a top 10 team in a game in which the team stopped playing over the last 8 minutes. If we can rally to win one of the two upcoming road games against ranked (or likely ranked) teams, then we still have a good chance to make the tournament. We aren't completely out of the picture if we don't win one of them, but I think we'd be looking at needing to come back from the dead at that point. Is making the tournament and going one and out the standard? If course not, but I'd rather make the tournament than not. Will it save Terry's job? Don't know. Don't particularly care. What I do care about is whether we can get better and how. 1) Larry has to get his head out of his a**. His play today was worse than atrocious. The few times he beat his man on the perimeter and could cause some disruption, he chose to throw stupid show-off passes. He lost his dribble to a floorboard at one point. He bricked shots. And he totally quit at the end. 2) Shedrick and Kent have to rebound and take it to the rim and draw contact if nothing else. We're getting some rebounding from Shedrick, just not enough, and none today. We're getting 0 offense from the two of them. They shouldn't be the focal point, and they aren't, but they need to start making some contributions with their touches. 3) Onyema needs to want to repeat today in every remaining game. He won't, but he needs to try. Stay away from the stupid fouls, take the ball to the basket when fed it, and keep passing out to the open man. I mean, leading us in rebounds, assists, and steals? Go Ze'Rik! 4) Weaver has to come back. If there is anybody on this team that would not quit in a game, he's him. We miss his rebounding. We miss his ability to take over in moments of chaos when pure athleticism takes over. We miss his ability to attack at full speed and damn the torpedoes. I'm not giving up on this team. I'm disgusted that so many of our fans that predicted an 0-5 start have done so after a 1-4 start. A few more losses like this, and I'll chime in on threads about who we should hire to replace Terry, but for now you should expect me to continue to root for wins and describe action on the court without unnecessary perjoratives about the coach.

Larry ends our offensive misery with a pastry pass to no one and walks away from the defensive end before Florida dribbled out the clock. He should sit the next game in favor of walk-ons for that crap.

If Vinson doesn't get in the game, then I have to ask if he is that disgruntled, that far in the doghouse, or so injured that we are looking to get him a medical hardship?

Then Larry loses the dribble. Then bricks a three. We desperately need Weaver back.

Larry got in the lane and instead of going to the rim and drawing the defender, he stopped to make a cute bounce pass to Onyema slightly behind him? WTF?

Larry having another nothing burger of a game. I have to think we'd have been much better off with Weaver on the floor in these last three games.