2020-21 College Basketball thread

Howland was widely regarded as a complete a$$hole around the UCLA athletic department, from what I heard, the Bo Pelini of basketball. That had more to do with his departure than anything, was the word on the street.

 

Boy oh boy, that was disgusting. That airball on a wide open in-rhythm 3 by Wagner is the sort of thing that will and should hang with him his whole career. He choked, Smith was terrible, Brooks had nothing, they missed free throws and layups the whole damn night. Pisses me the hell off.

 

Nah. The people who criticized Bartow, and Cunningham, and Hazzard are dead. There is not the same expectations. At all.

 

Plus Cronin looks like he doesn't put up with very much crap from boosters.

 

As chronicled here daily, UCLA and the entire conference have been in the shitter for decades. Nobody is demanding NCAA titles in Westwood in 2021. In gymnastics and men's volleyball maybe. Not basketball.

 

By the end of the Mike Shula years in Tuscaloosa, people would have sworn they could be content with back to back Outback Bowls for a while if it would just stop the bleeding.

But then we got our first real taste in a long while and off the wagon we went. Because when you are at a historically great program, relapse to insane expectations is never far away.

 

Going to torch Juwon Howard now?

 

Of that I have zero doubt. When Ben Howland left Pittsburgh, it seemed as if people liked the idea of Jamie Dixon because they liked what he brought to the table without Howland's prickliness. Howland has had that label chasing him for a long, long time.

I strongly suspect that people didn't fabricate that label.

 

Alabama got over the idea that only one of Bear's boys could coach football there. Eventually.

It took some bad years and a lot of pain to get there though.

I never thought I'd see a worse case of it. Wooden's only been dead twelve years, but he retired in 1975.

 

Nine teams from the Big Ten and they don't make the Final Four.

 

I’m going to assume that money would be the same and facilities would be similar.

You would be crazy to leave UCLA for any Big 10 school right now.

Why stay? The state of Arizona is a mess. Do Cal and Stanford even play basketball anymore? You have free reign to battle USC for recruits, and you win that battle consistently.

Big 10? You are recruiting against Michigan, MSU (going to start to fade), OSU, Purdue, Maryland, the ACC is a few hours south, and what’s left of the Big East is east.

And Gonzaga is not going to curb stomp UCLA. Michigan had sand thrown in their well oiled machine. UCLA is strong and fast on defense and knows how to play it. They have and absolute sniper and an absolute grinder on offense.

They are a hell of a team.

 

They were living on borrowed time without Livers and it caught up to them eventually