Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

They had 16 at halftime, I believe I saw. Points, that is.

 

They were 5 of 7, and they never missed two in a row, which means no free bacon for the Tech students. Was laughing at the students booing heavily upon each made free throw.

 

It isn't news that will affect much, but Penn State's Mike Rhoades has booted top scorer Kanye Clary from the team. There had been talk about Clary and point guard Ace Baldwin not playing well together. And if PSU's going to be make any type of last-ditch run, it's going to be on the shoulders of Baldwin.

Penn State Men's Basketball: Kanye Clary Dismissed from Team

 

Ace Baldwin*

 

Thank you. Fixt.

 

Every school in the Big Ten, outside of Purdue, probably Illinois, and definitely Michigan at the opposite end of the scale, should get a No. 9 seed at the Big Ten Tournament.

Why No. 9? I don't know, it just seems apt and appropriately insulting.

It's a lot of evenly-matched flotsam. Not terrible (not you Michigan, go sit in the corner), but not good enough to escape the blob. Even the schools that are tracking for the tournament - Wisconsin, Northwestern, Michigan State, Nebraska, if it could ever figure out how to win on the road - strike me a first or second-round roadkill.

To be fair, the ACC is like this too. Even the Big 12, hailed as a cut above, is suspicious given how they gamed their non-conference schedules to take advantage of the NET, thus ensuring that every win is a quality win in-conference. To a point, the SEC did this too.

Which leads me down this road. Everyone fears the power conferences jettisoning off on their own. I don't want that to happen, but if it ever did? I would want scheduling taken out of the hands of the individual schools and done centrally to avoid the manipulation of schedules.

That won't happen, the big schools would never want to concede that advantage (see how they continue to schedule FCS schools in football), which makes a break-off less likely, at least in basketball.

 

We're getting a good view of just how miserable coaches are here. Pitino has EVERYTHING...the moment he walked in the door, the AD's nuts were cut off. The president and the boosters all want to win at whatever cost necessary. Pitino is the most powerful person at a school that doesn't give two shits about anything else except being good again at MBB. And he's STILL a miserable prick.

But for the first time in his life, he's trapped. Where is he going to go if this doesn't work out, or even if it does? He's 72, miserable to work with and scorches the earth behind him every place he goes. Even if a power football school wanted him as a quick-fix, he'll never be able to handle being the second-biggest man on campus at an Ohio State or Michigan. The NBA obviously isn't an option. He needs the misery of the job and to make people around him unhappy, but for the first time in his life, there's no carrot dangling, just out of reach, promising him a better and more fruitful experience somewhere else. Gonna be interesting. I never would have guessed he might be two-and-done, and a miserable Pitino is still a better coach and recruiter than anyone else St. John's is gonna get. But if he's bitching like this again next year with another .500-ish team, anything is possible.

 

15 seconds.
I still laugh.

 

First thing someone should have said to Pitino after his tone-deaf rant, "how did Florida Atlantic do it?"

The veteran coaches HATE the fact that they are no longer dictators over their sport. Where they could decide every aspect of the lives of their athletes, even to the point of controlling where they could and couldn't transfer. Where they can't treat players like shit with impunity. Where every dollar isn't being funneled their way to decide how it's spent. He bitched about his practice facility. Practice facilities? Good luck with that. All of that facility money is going to NIL now, and honestly, thank God for it.

I'm happy they're unhappy about the current state of affairs because they lived unfairly off the fat of the land for decades. They get paid way too much to bitch and moan about their lot. Adjust or GTFO.

 

Good thing one of those schools is Christian-based, otherwise it could have really gotten nasty.

 

Per Pitino, as a manager it's perfectly acceptable to call out employees who aren't accomplishing what they have been paid for.

 

He'd say: if you put this team in Conference USA we probably do the same thing.