Watching how good Maxey is now, how great KAT is, SGA, Booker, Fox, Murray, Davis...how in the hell did our bum coach win one championship with all this amazing talent in 15 years??? These guys are incredible ball players!
NBA talent
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Those guys weren’t nearly as good as they are now. Yes, they are all-stars now, but most were barely 18 when we got them. We fail to remember that when we see them 7 years later, up 25 lbs of muscle, with thousands of hours of professional training behind them.
Let's not act like they sucked when we had them. A lot of them were poorly used and shined once they got to play their game and not how Cal wanted them to play.
WildcatfaninOhio
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Peak physical maturity is typically reached somewhere in the mid 20s. Certainly not as a teenaged college freshman.
I didn’t say they sucked, I said they were nowhere near as good as they are now, which is accurate. How many nights was Devin Booker knocking on the door of 50 points at UK? KAT wasn’t misused. Maxey is playing an identical game.
The difference is an added 4-9 years, a shitload of muscle, and a whole lot of experience playing against the best players in the world.
Cal aside, Maxey is an absolute thrill to watch.
Booker knocking on 50 in college could've never happened when your loyalty is to the Harrisons, who granted had a magical run the year before. If Booker and Ulis play the majority of the minutes against Wisconsin the following year, you probably would've seen a 40-0 season. Stubborn Cal being Stubborn Cal!
Titles are difficult to win for anyone. Cal should definitely have had 3 titles at UK though.
Disagree. Dekker was absolutely destroying Booker and his pathetic defense. Should have played Ulis more, though, since Towns was unstoppable and Ulis would have fed him everytime unlike the dam twins.
They are difficult to win but give Hurley the talent Cal had and good lord! How many titles would he have won with that talent the last 15 years?
SGA, KAT, Fox, Murray and Davis were really good and good enough to win it all here. Coach failed outside of Davis
You can use the they were young excuse but when it’s all said and done this will be the biggest question when looking back on the talent Cal coached and how he only ended up with 1 title .
Maybe.. MAYBE there was a case to be made in hindsight, that you play Ulis and Booker at the start of the year.. but in no way do you just give them the keys just for the Wisconsin game. Harrison twins were 38-0 and had just went 9-1 over the last two tournaments. You don't go away from them. No coach would have done that. Booker was also in the midst of an awful shooting slump that had him around 30% from the 3 for the prior 15 or so games.
This is classically bad take that sometimes gets spread around here. You just don't go way from the two guards who had tremendous chemistry with the team, and who were good in their own right.. just to see if Freshman Booker and Ulis could get it done better.
Look at it this way.. just how bad would the optics have been, if Cal takes out the twins, who again just went 38-0, just to play his freshman (something we all hated this year, didn't we?), and they lose their first game, in the tournament, with a chance for a perfect season, and go home because of it.. It would be considered one of the worst coaching moves in sports.
Just a horrible take that I wish would be put to bed.
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How about Coach K?. The supposed GOAT coach who had the same level of elite 1AD recruiting, even more so from 2016 to 2022.. and all he has is 1 title and even less Final 4s. (His 2010 title did not have 1AD recruiting).
I mean, no one ever confuses Cal with being a great X's and O's guy.. so what's Coach K's excuse? Seems to me like he was even more of a letdown during this time.
I mean, no one ever confuses Cal with being a great X's and O's guy.. so what's Coach K's excuse? Seems to me like he was even more of a letdown during this time.
Kinda like starting Wagner all year instead of Reed or Dillingham....and now he's at Arkansas and not our problem anymore. It's not a bad take when we all know it's the truth
You can't know something that didn't happen lol.
Wagner was also a freshman, that's not the same as two returning twins who just went to the title game the year prior.
There's many hills to die on when it comes to proving Cal isn't a great coach. This isn't one of them.
Remember when Saban benched Hurts at halftime in the championship game and played Tua? Tua had completed 35 passes all season before going in.
Sometimes you have to know when to roll with talent.
And this is the comment of all comments! The great ones know. Kinda like Coach K putting a freshman Grayson Allen in in the title game against Wisconsin, when they were trailing and couldn't get anything going. He went on a scoring run by himself and changed the entire momentum of that title game! No one thought he had any business being put in in that moment
Lmfao. The spin here..
Grayson Allen is one player, not two. And he didn't take over for the two main playmakers, Cook or Jones. If I recall, he mostly took over for Matt Jones, who was clearly outmatched at this point. He wasn't very good, certainly not like the Twins were. Coach K played Grayson because he was getting nothing from Matt Jones, it wasn't some keen coaching foresight.
The hilarious thing here is that if Cal did play Ulis and Booker, and lost.. the same people would be dragging him for taking out proven players for two guys who wilted in their first game.
It's also hilarious that Cal did the one thing that everyone here wanted him to do: not favor his freshman, and stick with proven and experienced players.
But don't let facts get in the way of agenda.
Grayson Allen is one player, not two. And he didn't take over for the two main playmakers, Cook or Jones. If I recall, he mostly took over for Matt Jones, who was clearly outmatched at this point. He wasn't very good, certainly not like the Twins were. Coach K played Grayson because he was getting nothing from Matt Jones, it wasn't some keen coaching foresight.
The hilarious thing here is that if Cal did play Ulis and Booker, and lost.. the same people would be dragging him for taking out proven players for two guys who wilted in their first game.
It's also hilarious that Cal did the one thing that everyone here wanted him to do: not favor his freshman, and stick with proven and experienced players.
But don't let facts get in the way of agenda.
People on this board are delusional about what it takes to win a single elimination tournament. If the NBA playoffs was a single elimination it would have a different result every year from the actual result it has. Coach K coached at Duke he doesn't need an excuse for not winning. The majority of the Duke fans understand this.
I don't agree.
Dekker would have just obliterated them more especially Booker.
I have never understood the takeaway that what the problem was insufficient getting roasted by Booker and to a lesser but still very serious extent Ulis.
We'd have probably been better off with both of them on bench more rather than less in thar particular game.
They couldn’t stop Towns. Cal was screaming for the Twins to get it to him down the stretch but they wouldn’t. Ulis would have fed him everytime.
We're talking explicitly about their heavy 1AD years, which coach K only has one title for. I would agree that winning a title in a single elimination tournament is extremely tough..
But my point is, Coach K actually had worse results with 1AD recruiting. Why does he get a pass? Or said another way, you must think Cal did pretty well then.
I've been making this argument forever. One and done (at least pre-Covid) seems like it was a really good strategy to just out-talent teams and get to the Elite 8, but once you were there it was a really bad way to win a title. K didn't even make the Final Four with that stacked Zion team.
Bart Tovik has coaching efficiency rankings based on how coaches perform in the tournament taking into account their teams' seeds, players, efficiency, etc. His first decade here Cal was ranked #1 in wins above expectation. The metrics gave him a 62% chance of winning just 1 title over that time span based on the teams he had. Coach K was ranked 18th.
Coach K was maybe the best college coach of all time, but if Cal underachieved with his one and done talent then K did so even more.
You’re full of it if you foresaw several of those guys being as good as they are now. But you clearly have an axe to grind.
Exactly. Which is it? Cal can't be some giant failure with it, while Coach K did well with it. Doesn't work that way.
What did Coach K have during his 1AD time? Like 2 final4s? 3? I know it wasn't 4. And I know it wasn't as many Elite8s.
If we use 2012 as the starting point for when K started using one and dones heavily he had five Elite 8s, two Final Fours, and one title. Compared to Cal's seven Elite 8s, four Final Fours, and one title.
I think the issue is that K won that title in 2010 and distorts people's view. It makes it so Duke won two titles during Cal's entire tenure here vs. only one for us.
Cal biggest mistake is not getting some of the kids that weren't ready to go to NBA to come back. Reed really should come back. He will get drafted but he will struggle for a long time. He did a good job getting talent but he needed to help people make better stay or go decisions especially in his early years. If he did all those other players in the later years wouldn't have felt like failures if it didn't work out in the first year.
As far as Coach K is concerned he failed for the same reasons. Most kids just aren't ready. He was far worse IMO than Cal was at coaching 1AD.
But it is all together different with NIL. You need money but you still have to get talented players and Kentucky on the front of the jersey has never mattered LESS.
No NBA player was as good at 17-18-19 years old, 1 year out of high school, as he is in the NBA! There is a big difference in a 18yo and a 21yo. Physically, mentally, psychologically. And you just can't replicate experience.
Even after many players leaving early, I would bet their are 50 if not 100 JRs and SRs better each year than the 10th best FR in the country. Now in 2-3 years, when their age and experience, that 10th guy will probably be top 5 (among those). But like wine, they need time to mature.
Even after many players leaving early, I would bet their are 50 if not 100 JRs and SRs better each year than the 10th best FR in the country. Now in 2-3 years, when their age and experience, that 10th guy will probably be top 5 (among those). But like wine, they need time to mature.
Because they were 18 YO immature kids who got beat by 21, 22 YO mature men
Kids who were directed by their handlers to just prep for the draft for a few months, nothing else mattered. They failed every time but 1 yr against grown ass men playing for the front of their jerseys, playing for each other, playing for a selfless goal of a championship.
Really quite simple why 15 yrs of teams loaded with soon to be 1st rounders most of the time but 1 season get out hustled, out worked, out toughed by guys who would never be drafted or play pro.
The theory of "give me talent over experience every time!" Was a failure
Kids who were directed by their handlers to just prep for the draft for a few months, nothing else mattered. They failed every time but 1 yr against grown ass men playing for the front of their jerseys, playing for each other, playing for a selfless goal of a championship.
Really quite simple why 15 yrs of teams loaded with soon to be 1st rounders most of the time but 1 season get out hustled, out worked, out toughed by guys who would never be drafted or play pro.
The theory of "give me talent over experience every time!" Was a failure
Gee, I don't know. It's almost like these guys get better as they get older and more physically mature and aren't limited in the amount of time they can receive personal instruction and practice.
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