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Re: MBB thread - BostonCard - 02-06-2014

(02-06-2014, 03:25 PM)LuckE2Bhere link Wrote:Fair enough...  and I think your final question to me nailed it: our results to date have approximated my expectations (given that 4 players are out of what should have been our 2 Deep). 

I was sorely disappointed by our (defensive) performance in the BYU game (though I figured we'd blow one "should win" pre-conference game), thrilled with our (defensive) performance against Arizona and our win over UConn, and saw at least a "moral victory" in how close the Michigan game was.  Last night's win effectively offset my disappointment in our poor showing against K.al at home, and while I was disappointed in our play down in LA and at Oregon State, we came away from both road trips with splits, which is all I could have realistically expected in a "base case" scenario (and we held court at home, easily beating both Washington teams).  So quite honestly, I'm not sure who would have reasonably assumed that we'd have more than 1 or 2 more wins at this point?!?

That said, have our results met my hopes?  Of course not... I hope we win every game!

We have the talent and experience to finish no worse than third in the Pac-12.  That is my expectation.  We are currently in a three-way tie for third at 6-4; I expect that we lose no more than twice in the rest of the conference season: At Arizona and one of at ASU, home against UCLA, or at UW.  That would put us at 12-6 for the conference, which is about what I had expected going in.  I also expect that we make the P12 conference semi-finals, or, preferably, the finals.  And I expect to make it past the first round of the NCAA's.

BC

Re: MBB thread - LuckE2Bhere - 02-06-2014

I hope you're right (or being conservative), BC.  Unfortunately, with all due respect to the kids we have busting their butts out there, I fear that you may be overestimating the talent we have walking out onto the court in uniform each night.  When was the last time we had a recruiting class ranked among the top 3 in this conference (aside from the gift of one alumnae who was kind enough to send her twin Lottery picks here)... let alone averaging such a ranking over a 3-5 year period?  Serious question... I'm guessing Never?

Re: MBB thread - Papa John - 02-07-2014

(02-06-2014, 10:33 PM)LuckE2Bhere link Wrote:When was the last time we had a recruiting class ranked among the top 3 in this conference (aside from the gift of one alumnae who was kind enough to send her twin Lottery picks here)... let alone averaging such a ranking over a 3-5 year period?  Serious question... I'm guessing Never?
This current group of seniors constituted the #1 recruiting class in the Pac-12 and #15 in the country per Scout. UCLA was a close second that year. Per ESPN, Stanford was #2 in the Pac-12/#18 in the country and UCLA was #1/#15.

This is a big part of my frustration: Johnny Dawkins has recruited talented basketball players, but has not come close to meeting my expectations that are based on the supposed potential of that talent.

Re: MBB thread - BostonCard - 02-07-2014

Exactly papa john.  And not only was that class tops in the P12, that group did not attrition and they are new seniors or redshirt juniors.  The combination of talent and experience should have made this one of the top teams in the conference.

http://stanford.scout.com/a.z?s=18&p=9&cfg=bb&c=14&yr=2010

BC

Re: MBB thread - CapitolHillCard - 02-07-2014

Our 2010 recruiting class was ranked highly because it was a six-member class.  Very few bball programs recruit that many in a single year.

Only two of our recruits that year were ranked in the top 100 recruits in the country -- Powell at 40 (the 11th ranked power forward recruit that year) and Anthony Brown at 82 (the 17th ranked small forward that year).  Gage was a 4-star recruit, but not ranked.  Bright, Nastic, and Heustis were all three star players.

Our current team has four active players who were ranked in the top 100 when recruited -- Powell, Brown, Randle (60th & 10th ranked PG his year), and Verhoeven (89th, 19th C).  Rosco Allen was also in the top 100, but has only been able to play 7 minutes this year.

In contrast, Arizona has recruited 12 top 100 ranked players over that time period, most of them much more highly ranked than our ranked players. Their classes have just typically included 3-4 players per year.

In basketball, quality of recruits counts much more than quantity. The incoming class of recruits -- all 4-star recruits, all ranked, with a McDonald all american in Travis -- should be much more highly regarded class than our 2011. Whether they will play that way remains to be seen....

Re: MBB thread - Papa John - 02-07-2014

Sorry, CHCard but by using your metric I think you prove my point. How many teams besides Stanford have five top 100 players on their current rosters? I'm guessing not more than 15, and I bet that only a few of them have three top 100 players in their third or fourth year in the program. The time for excuses is over. This team should make the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, and I really, really hope it does.

Re: MBB thread - czaja - 02-07-2014

(02-07-2014, 12:14 PM)Papa John link Wrote:Sorry, CHCard but by using your metric I think you prove my point. How many teams besides Stanford have five top 100 players on their current rosters? I'm guessing not more than 15, and I bet that only a few of them have three top 100 players in their third or fourth year in the program. The time for excuses is over. This team should make the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, and I really, really hope it does.

I'm completely in agreement that we've severely underachieved given our talent level.  I thought that this group had turned the corner with the NIT win a few years ago, and my expectations were to be something like a 6-7 seed last year and a top 4-5 seed this year.  I don't think that this group is talented enough to be a true national contender (unless we had landed a phenom freshman) since I don't think that we have the 1-2 mid-high 1st round prospects that you typically need to get to that level in basketball.

Corresponding to earning a seed in the 4/5 range, I would have been happy with a Sweet 16 exit and a bit disappointed (but not devastated) at a round of 32 exit.  At the rate this team is going, i think we'll be lucky to win our first round matchup.  If this was an isolated year of underperformance, I could accept that, but underperformance has been a general trend of Dawkins' teams.

Re: MBB thread - BostonCard - 02-07-2014

Out of the 12 top-100 ranked player that Arizona has signed, how many are still on the team?  And among Pac-12 teams, other than Arizona and UCLA, who has as many top-100 players as these teams?  At a first glance, does't look like Cal, ASU or Colorado do, yet we are tied with those teams.

BC

Re: MBB thread - CapitolHillCard - 02-07-2014

My point was only that the ranking of our 2010 class is overinflated by its size. David Shaw made the exact same point this week regarding football recruiting -- it makes no sense whatsoever to rank recruiting classes by the number of players as opposed to the caliber of players.

In terms of assessing talent, it gets complicated because other schools take junior college recruits or transfers (like Cal with Cobbs and much of Oregon's current team), who aren't ranked in recruiting classes.  We don't take JC recruits or, with the exception of Shiller, transfers. So while PAC-12 teams may lose more recruited talent than we do, they also gain them through transfers and JC players. Again, Oregon is a great example of this.

I think we have a reasonably talented, very experienced team -- a top 4 team in the PAC12 -- which is how we have been playing. Most brackets have us off the bubble, seeded 8 or 9, which is better than everyone in the PAC12 other than AZ and UCLA.  Our RPI is 37 and the advanced ranking systems have us even higher. We have a number of good, not great wins (UCONN (road), Cal (road), Oregon (road), ASU) and no bad losses. We have not lost to any team outside of the top 100 RPI.

Going forward, it would be great if we won at UW, but much more important that we avoid losing at WSU or to USC at home (the two worst teams in our conference).



Re: MBB thread - BostonCard - 02-07-2014

Exactly.  It's not a good sign when the high point of your career is winning the NIT.  Dawkins has been here long enough that he should have made the NCAA's at least once, if not several times.

BTW, as a basis for comparison, compare the accomplishments of this class to the one that featured: Art Lee, Mark Seaton, Peter Sauer, and Kris Weems.  Those guys went to the tournament four times [yeah, it helped to have Brevin Knight for two of those years], and went to the final four their junior year.  It's been a while, but I don't think in terms of recruiting profile any of those guys were all that much higher than our current crop of seniors.

BC

Re: MBB thread - slide - 02-07-2014

(02-07-2014, 05:44 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:Exactly.  It's not a good sign when the high point of your career is winning the NIT.  Dawkins has been here long enough that he should have made the NCAA's at least once, if not several times.

BTW, as a basis for comparison, compare the accomplishments of this class to the one that featured: Art Lee, Mark Seaton, Peter Sauer, and Kris Weems.  Those guys went to the tournament four times [yeah, it helped to have Brevin Knight for two of those years], and went to the final four their junior year.  It's been a while, but I don't think in terms of recruiting profile any of those guys were all that much higher than our current crop of seniors.

BC
at least 3 of those guys start on this year's team. 

Re: MBB thread - BostonCard - 02-07-2014

Its called player development.  how would you have compared each respective class on the day they set foot on campus?

BC

Re: MBB thread - LuckE2Bhere - 02-07-2014

That's great, Garvin... keep defending Trent Johnson (and your other hero: Wilner).  I have tremendous respect for your contributions to this board, but can only pull the virtue of Loyalty from the realm of absurdity on those fronts!  If you can really argue that the the barren cupboard that Johnny inherited is completely irrelevant to the Win-Loss record you site (which includes dozens of games played with those players in the starting line-up), you're a master of self-delusion!

By the way, I wonder if Trent has become as popular at TCU as he was at LSU, with his 20-point loss in the CBI (with another coach's talent), followed by his 11-21 record last season, and this year's 0-9 conference record?!?  Wow... I still can't believe we were stupid enough to let him go and settle for (a, by all accounts, awesome human being who represents Stanford honarably every single day, whether you think he's "under-performing the talent he was eventually able to bring in" or not) Johnny Dawkins!?!  People do still care about that stuff around here, don't they?  :-[

Re: MBB thread - BostonCard - 02-08-2014

Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, let us not re-open that can of worms.  Whether you think that Trent Johnson got a bum deal and shouldn't have let go, or you think that we dodged a bullet by not renewing his contract and allowing him to leave for LSU... please, keep it to yourself.  At this point, he is not our coach, and hasn't been our coach for five plus years.

Let us look at Johny Dawkins, without comparing him to the other guy.

I agree he is a great representative of Stanford, and a genuinely good guy, but that and $4 will get you a latte these days.  Buddy Teevens was a nice guy too, but couldn't coach a lick. As for Dawkins, I have found him to be a good recruiter (with a nice class coming in) but underwhelming at developing that talent.  In five years, he missed the NIT three times (did get to the CBI once), and hasn't made the tournament.  He's had a winning conference record once, and has never finished higher than sixth.  That's pretty bad.

The flip side is that this team has a decent shot to get into the tournament (the win against Cal was [rather large]), and is currently tied for third in the conference.  Good for Dawkins.  While I have found his coaching and player development underwhelming, I will root for him as long as he's our coach.  I'd love nothing more than to see him succeed, and while I was skeptical about this season, we have a good chance to make the tournament, and who knows; we could go on a run.

BC

Re: MBB thread - LuckE2Bhere - 02-08-2014

Won't even bother responding to Garvin, as he clearly can't be objective on certain subjects (notwithstanding his insights on others).

BC - I agree with almost everything you said in your post.  I am NOT suggesting that Johnny has been as successful (on the basketball court) as we had hoped.  I would just ask that some of you pause in assessing your disdain for him, and consider that it may be possible that one or more of the following points are valid:

Re: MBB thread - LuckE2Bhere - 02-08-2014

Wow - I used to admire you Garvin.  For the record, I too was very disappointed in how the team performed under JD last season (can you show me where you think I said I was happy with it, aside from noting that his team smoked your Almighty Monty's team twice?).  As BC noted, and I acknowledged/re-focused (without taking personal offense), this particular discussion was about this season's performance.

In my book, objective analysis usually involves conceding that few of us have all of the answers all of the time, and considering that most questions worth debating are not entirely black and white.  Ironic that you're suggesting that I'm throwing out red herrings, and ignoring statistics, when you can't even concede the simple fact that the roster a coach inherits will have at least some impact on his early Win-Loss record.

I will apologize to you for mentioning Wilner's name in attempting to draw an analogy as to how I perceived your responses to less-than-favorable assessments of Trent Johnson's coaching performance. I had no idea how sensitive that nerve apparently is for you, and truly did not mean to upset you (or anyone else).

It's really a shame if people on this board can't "agree to disagree" (let alone concede that "both sides" may have points worth considering).  That's exactly why I've never posted on The Bootleg.  Maybe I should just keep my ideas to myself, unless they conform to the consensus (or the unassailable conclusions of board veterans such as yourself)?  Lesson learned.  :'(