Yeah let's pull one loss and look at the tape and ignore the other 15 posts they show awesome plays being etc. Some of you posters are unbearable. Get a life and have a drink.
How Are The Other Teams Doing It?
- Thread starter Random UK Fan
- Start date
Longevity, loyalty, pride and teamwork basically "heart" can overcome talent when times get tough.
Other teams have players that realize this is their moment not just a stopover. Ride or die mentality not just "if we wreck this b*tch we will get a new one".
Cal recruits players on the way to the NBA not ones with UK in their hearts (for the most part). If they were here 4 years there would be a lot more pride (for the letters on their uni's) and bonds (doing it for my brothers) . NIL's will help weaken that "heart" all across the playing field. Sign of the times
There is no I in team but there is one really big one in NIL.
Other teams have players that realize this is their moment not just a stopover. Ride or die mentality not just "if we wreck this b*tch we will get a new one".
Cal recruits players on the way to the NBA not ones with UK in their hearts (for the most part). If they were here 4 years there would be a lot more pride (for the letters on their uni's) and bonds (doing it for my brothers) . NIL's will help weaken that "heart" all across the playing field. Sign of the times
There is no I in team but there is one really big one in NIL.
It's the same in every facet of life. I can pretend to be proud and invested in the place I work, but as soon as I can find a better opportunity elsewhere, I am taking it. Anyone who has ambitions for better would do the same. Playing for the name on the front of the jersey is a past time.
Very few other teams had the tradition we used to have. Very few other teams had the resources and prestige we used to have. Almost no teams have had the talent we've had.
We could and should have been the exception to what you're stating about very few other teams routinely contending. We were the exception. We aren't anymore. And it's because of what Cal has chosen to prioritize for this program.
Lol, buddy, we have 4 titles since the 70's. We haven't been the level you're referring to since the 60's. We were almost at that level in the 90's and again in 2009 - 2017. Sure seems like no one had much issue with Cal's priorities during the good times.
Cal usually looks like he is about to have a stroke after even minor mistakes. Dude literally stands on the sidelines and pulls is own hair, makes ridiculous faces and curses out players, yet he just prioritizes the NBA draft?
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Add UNC, Duke and Gonzaga to those you listed. I’ve seen those teams the last weekend of play more than I’ve seen UK lately, sadly. Our drought is just glaring. It’s not every year, but at a rate UK should be at considering the talent we land. Which would you say is more likely, any - or a couple - of those teams return before we do, or visa versa?
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When was Duke's last F4? They have underachived more than anyone post 2015. You want to be more like them?
Didn't UNC just miss the tournament last year and squeak in the year before when they went on a miraculous run? They have also been past the sw16 twice since 2017. That's what you want to be more like?
Gonzaga has been okay, but they suck this year. They have yet to win a NC and only have 2 F4s. Again, that's what you want?
Your examples so far aren't teams that are consistently winning championships or making F4's. How are they really doing any better than we are?
Mandela effect with Duke . . . I thought they went with Banchero just a couple years back? We were out of it so my rage clouded my memory I guess. Good catch. The media floods the chain with them so much it’s no damn wonder they seem to be a prominent fixture in the tourney. As for UNC, I’d still take squeaking in. Both have been deeper into the tourney than we have, at least the last few years, but then again that’s not saying much. I’d take even at least flirting with a final four again, but I’m not optimistic about our chances after the game in Columbia.
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UNC barely squeaked into the tournament 2 years ago and went on a solid run that they couldn't close, and then completely missed the tournament last year. You want to trade for that?
If the game in Columbia really rattled you that much, you should pick a new hobby or toughen yourself up.
Uconn lost 3 conference games by double digits last year and still demolished the tournament.
The prior year, we absolutely annihilated KU on their homecourt and they went on to win the title. They also had 2 additional double digit losses that year.
You guys really need to find your backbones. It's becoming embarrassing how soft some UK fans have gotten. You all just lay down and die as soon as any adversity hits.
The only thing that has gotten soft is the basketball program itself. Well... that and the so-called fans who are accepting of it and make excuses for every shortcoming. But I don't believe you are an actual UK fan.
I don’t think anyone, regardless of various perspectives and opinions, can disagree that our trend isn’t frustrating.
I’m sick and tired of next year. We heard that 3 years straight now and nadda to see for it.
Whataboutism is your ONLY argument. Cal hasn't sniffed a FF in nine years.
No offense, the other teams are doing it with a better X's & O's coach than we have. Cal is a great promoter, high octane recruiter, but when it comes to the side lines with all that talent over the years I am willing to bet, Joe B, Tubby, Rick and even Eddie Sutton would have at least won 2 championships with his talent.
Lol, I'm literally replying to a thread that is a whataboutism.
We have historically had very similar trends. Would I have liked to have a better last 3 seasons? Sure! But that's competition. Sometimes there are down times.
Sure doesn’t appear that way. I've never seen so many whiny losers after a loss.
Close. I think the difference -- top to bottom -- of talent is nowhere near as great as imagined. Thousands of kids are getting virtually year-round coaching these days. After watching highlight reels of high school prospects I noticed that the kids playing with the "stars" were almost indistinguishable in skill to the named player the clip was supposed to be about. Everybody jumps high. Everybody shoots 3s. Everybody has snaky handles.
It isn't that UK's "stars" aren't good. Everybody's good. It's that the kids playing at Directional State Teachers College are almost that good, too.
I don’t disagree. It seems as though that there have been a few teams that have weathered the droughts a little better than we have. If we competed further into the tourney than as they have I’m sure the fans wouldn’t be nearly as restless.
To add to this thread, all programs absolutely go through peaks and valleys, including UK. UK has had gaps of 20 years and 18 years and 14 years between titles during the 65 year stretch we have won 4. We won 4 in the prior 11 year stretch so half of our ultimate success is built on titles won right after ww2 and when I Like Ike was a thing.
If you look at the modern era of when 3 point shooting and ncaa tourney at 64 plus teams began you see the following:
UCONN 5 titles
Duke 5 titles
UNC 4 titles
UK 3 titles
KU 3 titles
Nova 3 titles
FL 2 titles
Indiana has 1 way back in 87 and UL n 86 and UCLA in 1995.
UK and Duke play a huge role (negatively for uk and duke) to uconns rise. Duke and UK each failed twice to beat a UCONN team they were debatable better than in the final four.
If you look at the modern era of when 3 point shooting and ncaa tourney at 64 plus teams began you see the following:
UCONN 5 titles
Duke 5 titles
UNC 4 titles
UK 3 titles
KU 3 titles
Nova 3 titles
FL 2 titles
Indiana has 1 way back in 87 and UL n 86 and UCLA in 1995.
UK and Duke play a huge role (negatively for uk and duke) to uconns rise. Duke and UK each failed twice to beat a UCONN team they were debatable better than in the final four.
Ron, I'm very glad that you've asked this board a legitimate question that deserves the best response possible. I respect the premise of the thread. Moreover, I respect that you're serious in asking it. It deserves my best shot.
I'm a long timer here. There are plenty others. I value, greatly value, the opinion of many of them. Some, I tend to disagree with, others, I think are overboard with either negative or positive leaning. So hopefully, you can read what I have to say and realize it's what many of us "old timers" around here are , and have been, thinking.
Much of what has previously been posted as a response centers around Cal. Bottom line, that is where the problem lies. So you can pick out the relevant coaching points that has already been discussed like :
1 ) Defense - Cal's defense is, always has been , man to man. NO ZONE. That's a huge problem. easy to plan for.
2 ) Offense - Up until this year, he never spread things out, opening up the offense pro / modern style. It's been fun to watch how young, talented players have adapted to it and made this years team one of the most explosive offensive teams UK has had. But therein lies this issue.
Why had he never done this before ? Simple. He got an assistant coach that got him to change a little bit.
let's call it a "tweak" ... lol
3 ) For years, us basketball bennies have pointed out coaching flaws. here's some of them :
a ) out of bounds plays, both offense / defense
b ) late game timeout, or even in game time out usage.
c ) Questionable substitution patters, or not subbing at all ( for apparently preferred players) dare I call him out on all of them over the years. Especially when it cost us in the NCAAT ?
d ) Sticking to his "coaching philosophy" to the detriment of the team and university:
- he'd rather have raw talent than experience ( in developing players into experienced ones, very few concrete examples of when he did this ) WHY NOT RECRUIT THE BEST TALENT AND DEVELOP PLAYERS ?
( like most other coaches try to do ?)
- emphasis on NBA draft. This is my biggest issue with him. You DO NOT focus on that. You focus on WINNING TITLES and making Final Fours here at Kentucky. The NBA draft will take care of itself. He's always put the cart before the horse with this philosophy.
other things we've collectively noticed :
The Cal / Kentucky "Injury Curse " - it's pretty simple. Many times he's ridden his best players far too long during a season and they were plain worn out by seasons end. End season. HOW MANY TIMES, how many SEASONS do we have to endure this ? It's more than a by product of bad luck. Look at the head ball coach. Sometimes, it's unavoidable, granted, but this many times? I've watched college ball for almost 50 years and never seen anything like it.
There's a lot more others can add. Im tired of typing. ive spent a lot of time on this board pointing a lot of this shit out. I'm tired and have been for a logn time, of Cal.
The only other thing I would address in your post, I think needs to be addressed is comparing and contrasting UK to the other programs.
since 09-10, here's what other teams have done in terms of winning titles :
UConn - 3
Duke - 2
UNC - 2
Villanova - 2
kansas, baylor, Virginia - 1
I'd have loved to see ANYONE come in and have won 2 titles in the time Cal won his one. But let's say I'm willing to stand pat with the past and not have a "do over". So we got 1 Same as KU, Baylor, Virginia. And we made several final fours. So, overall, maybe it doesn't look so bad. I think that's your point.
but let's discount having the worst season in the history of kentucky basketball. That's on Cal. OK, so we're going to blame covid ? Whatever.
Following up the title in 12', he made some disastrous roster moves. So bad, he promised us he would never construct another team like he did that year. UH. well. I'm just gonna say he fell short of that.
I think we've come to a point where we need to look hard at some of the other young coaches and look at making a change. and make it.
that's were the bottom line is. To one degree or another
I'm a long timer here. There are plenty others. I value, greatly value, the opinion of many of them. Some, I tend to disagree with, others, I think are overboard with either negative or positive leaning. So hopefully, you can read what I have to say and realize it's what many of us "old timers" around here are , and have been, thinking.
Much of what has previously been posted as a response centers around Cal. Bottom line, that is where the problem lies. So you can pick out the relevant coaching points that has already been discussed like :
1 ) Defense - Cal's defense is, always has been , man to man. NO ZONE. That's a huge problem. easy to plan for.
2 ) Offense - Up until this year, he never spread things out, opening up the offense pro / modern style. It's been fun to watch how young, talented players have adapted to it and made this years team one of the most explosive offensive teams UK has had. But therein lies this issue.
Why had he never done this before ? Simple. He got an assistant coach that got him to change a little bit.
let's call it a "tweak" ... lol
3 ) For years, us basketball bennies have pointed out coaching flaws. here's some of them :
a ) out of bounds plays, both offense / defense
b ) late game timeout, or even in game time out usage.
c ) Questionable substitution patters, or not subbing at all ( for apparently preferred players) dare I call him out on all of them over the years. Especially when it cost us in the NCAAT ?
d ) Sticking to his "coaching philosophy" to the detriment of the team and university:
- he'd rather have raw talent than experience ( in developing players into experienced ones, very few concrete examples of when he did this ) WHY NOT RECRUIT THE BEST TALENT AND DEVELOP PLAYERS ?
( like most other coaches try to do ?)
- emphasis on NBA draft. This is my biggest issue with him. You DO NOT focus on that. You focus on WINNING TITLES and making Final Fours here at Kentucky. The NBA draft will take care of itself. He's always put the cart before the horse with this philosophy.
other things we've collectively noticed :
The Cal / Kentucky "Injury Curse " - it's pretty simple. Many times he's ridden his best players far too long during a season and they were plain worn out by seasons end. End season. HOW MANY TIMES, how many SEASONS do we have to endure this ? It's more than a by product of bad luck. Look at the head ball coach. Sometimes, it's unavoidable, granted, but this many times? I've watched college ball for almost 50 years and never seen anything like it.
There's a lot more others can add. Im tired of typing. ive spent a lot of time on this board pointing a lot of this shit out. I'm tired and have been for a logn time, of Cal.
The only other thing I would address in your post, I think needs to be addressed is comparing and contrasting UK to the other programs.
since 09-10, here's what other teams have done in terms of winning titles :
UConn - 3
Duke - 2
UNC - 2
Villanova - 2
kansas, baylor, Virginia - 1
I'd have loved to see ANYONE come in and have won 2 titles in the time Cal won his one. But let's say I'm willing to stand pat with the past and not have a "do over". So we got 1 Same as KU, Baylor, Virginia. And we made several final fours. So, overall, maybe it doesn't look so bad. I think that's your point.
but let's discount having the worst season in the history of kentucky basketball. That's on Cal. OK, so we're going to blame covid ? Whatever.
Following up the title in 12', he made some disastrous roster moves. So bad, he promised us he would never construct another team like he did that year. UH. well. I'm just gonna say he fell short of that.
I think we've come to a point where we need to look hard at some of the other young coaches and look at making a change. and make it.
that's were the bottom line is. To one degree or another
If you’re talking about the freshmen dominated teams Calipari has had, then I doubt those coaches would have won any titles either. Talent doesn’t win – developed talent does. The great talent some freshmen have usually takes time, development and physical maturity to blossom into good, efficient production. It’s why teams led by really good upperclassmen spank teams relying on more “talented” freshmen over and over in college basketball. And Smith and Pitino would have had the same problems with trying to win consistently and predictably relying primarily on freshmen.
Pitino in particular was a system coach at UK, and the system needed upperclassmen who had become great at running the system. Smith, I think, would have pulled what hair he had left out too.
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Wait, I thought y’all said we had terrible facilities and were screaming far Mitch? Y’all were even touting Xavier’s practice facility. Which one is it, are our facilities bad or do other teams not have our “recources”?
