Optimism for next season
- Thread starter WV Wildcat
- Start date
I still say it feels more like a cult than a cavalry.
Cal needs to do better than the sweet 16 this year. This ain't Gonzaga, or Arizona and after the last 2 seasons, Cal needs to do his job.
And yes, the money does matter. He gets 9 million a year simply because this fanbase allows UK to afford to do that.
Cal allowed a handler to dictate the situation. That’s on Cal.
Once a kid walks through the doors at UK and is on scholarship, Cal and his staff should be the only ones dictating what happens with that player.
The whole thing was Cal's fault, this is his program and he got punked by a freaking advisor.
I don't like our depth. We have Ware, Collins, and Fredrick off the bench, all three of whom we can't count on up until this point.
Wheeler is still Wheeler, an uptempo point guard who only knows one speed. He is still going to be a terrible shooters.
Livingston is going to end up in an Alex Poythress role, and that's not a good thing. He should be spending his time at the 4, but because Cal has recruited no wing depth, we'll see him at the 3 most of the season.
We will struggle to score in the halfcourt. Toppin is not a shot creator. Neither is Livingston. We basically have two guys who can score baskets in the halfcourt in Wallace and Reeves. That's not getting it done.
Wheeler is still Wheeler, an uptempo point guard who only knows one speed. He is still going to be a terrible shooters.
Livingston is going to end up in an Alex Poythress role, and that's not a good thing. He should be spending his time at the 4, but because Cal has recruited no wing depth, we'll see him at the 3 most of the season.
We will struggle to score in the halfcourt. Toppin is not a shot creator. Neither is Livingston. We basically have two guys who can score baskets in the halfcourt in Wallace and Reeves. That's not getting it done.
Who said anything about Cal?🤦🏻♂️
You are 100% correct the offense was bad the last month of the season. Did Cal change offenses or who played? No. So what did change? Our freakin health!!! Don’t be so dense. Tyty 3pt % dropped like 15% after his injury, he clearly wasn’t the same player on either end of the court. Grady had a huge drop off after those 2 40-min 2-guard games likely when his P.F. flared up and got worse.
Hell yes Cal should have made changes, as a result of these 2 playing <90%! But that unwillingness to make adjustments does not mean this offense can’t be successful with healthy quality players.
Back to the SP game.🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️ I was the one on here as soon as it was over saying that was our worst loss in UK history! Still it was a game, even injured we should and would win 98 times out of 100. But those 2 times can (rarely) happen. That’s why a 15 has beaten a 2 over a dozen times. Note only one 1 has lost to a 16!! Did that team fire the coach, change the offense? No. They just went out and won the championship the next year (same coach, same offense and defense).
If your brain is too simplistic to understand that inferences should not be made from a sample size of 1, I cannot help you.
the problem here, and difference between bennett and cal, is cal still made excuses for the loss. He blamed it on inexperience. I did not hear Bennett making excuses after losing to a 16 seed.
Cal’s constant excuse making is part of what holds him back. He’s made some changes. but he’s also still refusing to acknowledge other things in how he runs the program that have been problematic.
He blamed 2021 almost entirely on covid. Never did he mention a word about the fact we had one returning player from the season before that played like 10 minutes a game and that maybe seasons like that are just a side effect of poor roster management and a short sighted recruiting sales pitch.
Bringing up 10 years ago just shows how out of touch you are. Newsflash! Anthony Davis is long gone.
So let's be realistic. OP says optimism for next season! Are you saying that you are not having it! Optimistic opinions will not be welcome on Rafters. Just trying to get a gauge of what is going to be allowed here? Why would you follow something if you know it's going to fail? Would you pay tuition to go to college if you knew you were going to fail academic wise?
I’m curious and I don’t have time to look it up, but how many NCAA tourney games collectively have these guys played and how many have actually won a tournament game?
There’s experience, there’s tourney experience, and then there's winning tourney experience.
We may have the first one covered, but we are lacking in the last two categories.
We were the best team in the Country this year before the injuries. Our offense was amazing! We scored over 80 points in 17 games. We scored 90 points or better in 7 games. We destroyed both the National Champs and the runner up. We scored 107 points against Tennessee. We won grind it out games . Then the injuries happened and that was that. Our whole back court.
Looking forward to next year, we'll have a very good team with improved defense and hopefully can be as good offensively. And most of all stay healthy.
We had a unprecedented streak of bad luck. Looking forward to next March!
Looking forward to next year, we'll have a very good team with improved defense and hopefully can be as good offensively. And most of all stay healthy.
We had a unprecedented streak of bad luck. Looking forward to next March!
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How much of that 9 million is coming out of your pocket. You keep complaining about Cal's salary it must be costing you millions.
You're right....you can't help me....the bench was never developed.
Collins and Hopkins were never allowed to grow and become pices that could help. Just spot playing time here and there.
Grady was ran into the ground. Plenty of cupcakes on the early schedule to give minutes to others, but not Cal. Same 6 or 7 guys getting the lion's share of minutes.
Might of come in handy when injuries happened. Keep drinking the kool aid though. You seem to love it.
I can't go quite so far as to say I am "optimistic". Too many recent disappointments for that.
But, I will say that as bad as things have gone for us recently, it seems to me we are close to having a legit national title contending team.
Maybe I'm crazy. Wouldn't be the first time I've been completely wrong, but there is a ton of talent on next year's squad even without Sharpe.
Wouldn't shock me to see them put a special season together.
Of course, it wouldn't completely shock me to see them be a bubble team either.
Here's hoping we are all very pleasantly surprised over the next several months.
Not sure who you were replying to, you quoted two different people with two completely different messages.
My message was about an advisor dictating what a UK player does, or doesn't do and that is most certainly on Cal. Let me know if you want to talk about that.
As far as optimism, no, I'm not. I don't trust Cal, his candle burned out a long time ago.
IDK, Cal doesn't seem to be preparing for injuries. We have very little depth at the 1, 2 and 3. If injuries derailed us last year, we better hope ine or 2 of our guards doesn’t get hurt… ..again.
We know. You wanted Cal to play Allen. He is a Kentucky guy and would have won the title by himself.
This, things are way to quiet. Something is going on behind closed doors we don't know about quite yet. I would think they will add 1 more piece if Sharpe doesn't come back.
Sharpe will not be back. Not sure where that one more piece will come from but hope you are correct.
I dont recall you ever so being so harsh on other posters and being a flamethrower .. chill out . You seem to be carrying water for some serious sunshine pumpers .
I don't think there is a chance that Sharpe comes back but will not be surprised to see us add another SF.
Unless they add another proven scorer the team is going to extremely limited offensively in the half court, they will be a better defensive team than last year. Overall in todays game where spacing and shooting and being able to switch everything defensively is so important is where I have concerns. I think Kentucky will be a good not great team who is offensively challenged, now that can change but the roster right now has a clear cap on what they can do.
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I'm gonna get flamed for doing this, but if tyty and wheeler wouldn't have missed all that time, we would have walked into the FF. Them being injured and Grady not shooting well just all cumulated into a bad team at the bad time. Cal gave brooks way too many minutes as well towards the end. IDK if we would have beaten Duke, but at one point in the year we were the best team and that only stopped once we got hurt. Not sure how Cal is supposed to fix that when three of your best players are out of sync/hurt.
Didn't mean to quote you Elton John. PS Is don't care if you're optimistic or not, couldn't care less
By far this is the dumbest statement on this board in a week.
He should have kicked Sharpe off the team as soon as it was clear he wouldn't play for us in 2022.
Did Toppin riding the bench for nearly the entire 2nd half factor in or nah
A POY that wasn't projected to go in the NBA first-round... which is the only reason he is back. A POY, with a team (as you say), that very easily could have been a 1 seed, but that lost to a 15 seed in the first round. Some years a returning POY would mean much, much more... next year, not nearly as much.
Before the bashing starts, I am a huge Oscar fan... I love the dude's work ethic... but also realize that he's not the type of player that gets his own buckets within the offense. Just like this year, the difference he brings isn't going to overcome Cal's inability to coach when it's tight.
The absolute best thing about Oscar coming back... will be his senior night!
Whole lot of unproven with no transcendent talent on the roster. Brooks/Grady won us the KU game.
It can be great... but I think most of us felt better going into last season than we do now.
It was bad coaching that Toppin not play 2nd half!
I’m not defending the coach. I’m saying we look possibly as good as the team that looked like the best team in the country the middle 1/3 of the season, AND the offense is not the primary reason we lost, it was the defense.
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This is my concern. Cal is the king of doubling down and doing it harder and more even when it doesn’t work. I really believe he thinks he has contributed significantly to the players we have in the NBA. By using this logic, why would you change anything? Unfortunately, they have become who they are in spite of him. He’s an old dog and I don’t think there is much interest in learning any new tricks.
@rabbitTown I've been trying to figure out how to talk about Oscar over here for a while now and I think you nailed it. Its part of why I said him coming back is great but has drawbacks for UK. Yes...obviously having the POY back is amazing. But Oscar's game isn't as well rounded as your normal POY. Look at previous winners - Luka Garza, Obi Toppin, Zion, Jalen Brunson, Frank Mason, Buddy Hield.....All could shoot and all could score at various levels of the court. I thought Cal would totally retool the lineup and bring in a new PG and a true stretch 4 to build around Oscar but that didn't happen - so its going to be up to Cal to figure out what having a retuning POY means for UK next year.
POY in college! I do not care about the NBA. UK plays in college and having the reigning best player is great for us. I would prefer players that produce in college. I’m happy for our former players but the NBA means nothing to me. Also, you may have felt better about last year at the time but we did not know TyTy would be injured most of the season. We did not know Grady would be worked like a mule until he he gave out. All I’m saying is that if Wallace does more than an injured TyTy and Reaves and Frederic can match injured Grady and Mintz, then we can be better because the other pieces are the same only a year more seasoned. Also, if we played St Peters 100 times, we would probably win 99 of them. We just didn’t win that one. Things like that happen in sports.
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