[FarmBoy]

I'm surprised he's that low, but I'm not surprised he was in the bottom quartile. The knock on MM was always that if you give him a season to prepare against the schedule, he'll have his team well positioned to win, but ask him to put together a quick gameplan against new opponents, and his team doesn't do as well. Every year at tourney time, ESPN or some other group would publish a list of teams that underpeform their seeding, and Stanford was always high on that list.

When MM moved on, I comforted myself that the sliver lining might be that we can recruit a coach who can exceed their seeding. Unfortunately, I'd underestimated the reality that we would not HAVE a seeding against which to underperform.

[FarmBoy]

I'm surprised he's that low, but I'm not surprised he was in the bottom quartile. The knock on MM was always that if you give him a season to prepare against the schedule, he'll have his team well positioned to win, but ask him to put together a quick gameplan against new opponents, and his team doesn't do as well. Every year at tourney time, ESPN or some other group would publish a list of teams that underpeform their seeding, and Stanford was always high on that list.

When MM moved on, I comforted myself that the sliver lining might be that we can recruit a coach who can exceed their seeding. Unfortunately, I'd underestimated the reality that we would not HAVE a seeding against which to underperform.