2024-25 Season General Discussion

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Notre Dame = 2025 National Champions
The first AP poll is out: Five Big 12 teams in the Top 10, including Kansas, Houston, Iowa State, Baylor and Arizona.

The SEC has 9 Top 25 teams.

The Big Ten has only 4 Top 25 teams, none higher than #14 Purdue, who’s joined by Indiana, UCLA and Rutgers.

The Big East has 3 Top 25 teams (UConn, Creighton, Marquette), with St. John’s and Xavier appearing in the first five out.

Locally, UC is #20, Kentucky is #23, and Xavier is around #28.
 
 
Tony Bennett informed Virginia AD he’s retiring effective immediately, 20 days before tip off. Not health related. Coincidentally Ron Sanchez abruptly left Charlotte to return to UVA. Seems like Bennett is trying to force UVA into hiring his top assistant.

Nice move, guy.
 
Orin Swift said:
Tony Bennett informed Virginia AD he’s retiring effective immediately, 20 days before tip off. Not health related. Coincidentally Ron Sanchez abruptly left Charlotte to return to UVA. Seems like Bennett is trying to force UVA into hiring his top assistant.

Nice move, guy.
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Probably tired of people with podcasts thinking they know more about basketball than him
 
Misread earlier, Sanchez randomly left Charlotte in the summer of 2023. So he was back with UVA this past season.
 
If Bennett’s exit means Virginia’s ungodly ugly version of basketball changes, that will be a net win for basketball fans.
 
I look for UVA to backslide into the abyss very quickly in the NIL era.

I get that a lot of people hated the style (practically the Iowa football of men’s college basketball), but man they were consistently good. The only school with more ACC titles than UVA during his tenure was UNC, by 1.

I think the very slow tempo and methodical style of play, while it created a lot of consistency, made them very susceptible to single elimination tournament losses. It still amounted to an NCAA title and a couple ACC tournament titles.

Bennett is going to end his career being arguably the most influential coach of the last 15-20 years. Often copied, rarely replicated in terms of results and consistency. In the basketball rich ACC he’s an all-time great, and in terms of balancing consistency with achievement, arguably ends behind only Coach K and Dean Smith.
 
To me a very sad day in college sports when a guy like Tony Bennett has to step away, not because he can't coach but because of the landscape of college athletics. The motive of college athletics has been twisted and turned. So few college athletes will ever play professionally, but we float it out there that everyone's going to be a pro athlete. Young people grow so much from the time they are 18 through 23, but now we want to throw money into the equation. Shame on college presidents, AD's and administration to let it get to this point. NIL and the transfer portal will continue to ruin college sports.
 
After one night of bball 2 top 25 teams "upset" both from the SEC, both from Texas. Horns knocked off by the Buckeyes 80 - 72 and UCF beats TA&M 64 - 61.
 
nwwarrior09 said:
I look for UVA to backslide into the abyss very quickly in the NIL era.

I get that a lot of people hated the style (practically the Iowa football of men’s college basketball), but man they were consistently good. The only school with more ACC titles than UVA during his tenure was UNC, by 1.

I think the very slow tempo and methodical style of play, while it created a lot of consistency, made them very susceptible to single elimination tournament losses. It still amounted to an NCAA title and a couple ACC tournament titles.

Bennett is going to end his career being arguably the most influential coach of the last 15-20 years. Often copied, rarely replicated in terms of results and consistency. In the basketball rich ACC he’s an all-time great, and in terms of balancing consistency with achievement, arguably ends behind only Coach K and Dean Smith.
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The ghost of Jim Valvano would like a word with you. But yes, Bennett is/was a tremendous coach and very influential.
 
Watching the Zags trying to stave off what seems to be the 287th upset these last 2.5 days against WVU on ESPN and ESPN runs a commercial for the SEC/ACC Challenge. I don’t understand their blatant bias to the SEC. I thought it was an SEC basketball commercial until they flashed the challenges “logo” at the end. They have a vested financial interest in the ACC as well.
 
Dayton goes 1-2 in Maui, thrashing UConn last night following close losses to Iowa State and North Carolina.

Flyers led for 93 out of 120 minutes in Maui against three top-15 opponents.
 
I've enjoyed both Purdue games I've watched against Shaka Smarts' Marquette. I think I'm going to give their game against Iowa St a peak.
 
Chop Stix said:
Michigan destroys X in what looked and felt like a home game for the Wolverines in Fort Myers.
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Fort Myers is basically the Michigan of the South during December - February. You can basically walk up to anyone in the area and say "Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin or Minnesota?" and 95% of the time the person will be from one of those 6 states lol
 
So the SEC dominates college baseball like no other. In the last couple of decades they've dominated college football. Now are they taking over college basketball too? For the big ten, they've just not been able to sustain any kind of national success year after year. Last few year's it's been Purdue, Wisconsin has had some really good teams over time, Michigan State is normally pretty good, but they seem to be more of a top 15 program and that's their ceiling. Ohio State with Thad Matta was there for a few years a decade ago. Outside of that on a national perspective, not much of anything.
 
The Big East really struggled in November but has picked up some key home wins this week:

Villanova over UC
Providence over BYU
UConn over Baylor
Creighton over Kansas
St. John’s over K-State
Marquette over Wisconsin

The Big East is down this year, but UConn, Marquette and St. John’s should easily make the tourney. Creighton likely will, too, even though they’re overly reliant on two or three players to do most of the scoring. After that, the next hopes are with Xavier, Providence and Butler, all of whom seem like bubble-type teams in need of some wins before conference play gets rolling. Xavier losing late at TCU was tough.
 
Here you go betters. Since 2003 the national champion has come from the top 12 of week 6 of the AP poll
 

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Cedar_Point said:
Here you go betters. Since 2003 the national champion has come from the top 12 of week 6 of the AP poll
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Purdue still in this Baaaaabeeeee!

Purdue is going to be a win at home team this year. Painter has tried to adjust to a more guard oriented offense but the weakness screams. Any team with long guards and even one tall that can shoot outside will score at will and will strip the ball on defense. IF Renn is post, they have zero forwards over 6'6" with hands. They fumble the ball. The best they had were the two freshmen, one of whom broke a leg.If Painter had found a way to make peace with the player he exciled to BYU, they would have been able to defend the talls shooting from outside and had one of their own.
 
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