Running 2019-2020 college hoops thread

They should have beaten UNC in 2017 if not for that lumbering oaf who missed like 10 layups

 

This might be the year. Big obstacle may be Duke, which may run the table in the very down ACC. Looking like 1999 again.

 

As we've discussed before, Gonzaga's rise coincides with the Pac-12's fading influence on the national scene/tournament. GU gets a lot of the recruits that used to get sucked up by all the Pac-12 schools.

Definitely no longer a Cinderella.

 

Anyone who consider Gonzaga a traditional mid-major is brain-dead.

No, they don't play major D-I American football. Yes, they're tucked away in Spokane.

But their 20-year track record is among the five best in the country (maybe better: Kansas, Duke, Chapel Hill, perhaps Kentucky). Not a mid-major.

 

So I went to Oregon State and with a win today the women's team would have likely passed the UConn team and been no. 1 in the nation - of course they lost to Arizona State on an uncharacteristically off-night (though they played in the day) by much of the team - but dang -still crazy to think of the women's team in the same conversation with UConn. Hell of a job by the coaching staff that I think just signed their first McDonalds All-American in program history.

 

This happened last season, too. Saturday night, all of the sports I like had ended, but USC was playing UCLA. Again, Bill Walton ruined the game as the ESPN analyst. He is just so out of his mind that you wonder how any network could give him a microphone.
After making a big deal out of how "progressive UCLA" had a male cheerleader, who he named, Walton had the following sequence:
Apparently, earlier in the game, he mentioned something about liking peanut butter. So midway through the second half, the crew brought him and the play-by-play guy each a jar of peanut butter. Walton loved it. He stuck his finger in and licked off a big scoop. Then, he decided the thing to do was to get another finger load and wipe it on the camera lens. His partner bantered about him ruining a million-dollar piece of equipment and that he would be working for free for the next 30 years to pay off the damage. Walton scoofed and said, "Just wipe it off. Here, I'll do it." He leaned forward and licked the peanut butter off the lens. Then they showed an instant replay of it. Oh yeah, there was a basketball game going on while this was happening.

 

Those two factors (especially the geography) are all that's kept them from joining a major hoops conference, such as the Big East — which has many similar types of institutions.

Other than Saint Mary's and (some years) BYU, the West Coast Conference games Gonzaga plays are a joke.

 

No way in hell I'd put money on that. This is shaping up for UNC like that year Kentucky slumped, missed the tournament, and then got beat at Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT. If North Carolina even makes the NIT, it seems like an under-talented and dysfunctional team that will be happy just to have to season end with a loss in the first or second round of the ACC tournament.

 

Shrug. You're right, but call it what you will, Gonzaga does not have the inherent financial advantages that schools who are members of the football Power Five do. That's why the "P5" gets used so often in talking about the big schools, even if it is a sloppy label that does not truly apply in MBB. They just use P5/Mid Major instead of P5/G5.

 

In 2018, Gonzaga's basketball budget was $8.8 million, which puts it on par with schools like Georgia Tech (8.8M), Virginia (8.5M), St. John's (8.3M), Michigan (8.8M), Utah (8.4M) and Texas A&M (8.9M); and way more than a mid like San Diego State (5.9M).