As disappointed as I was in last year’s opening weekend of March Madness, this one is exceeding all expectations. Putting aside the fact that my bracket now resembles Kabul after the Taliban rolled through in ‘96 – a map of ordered failure – and that Texas received a much-needed mercy killing, if you’re a basketball purist, you can’t help but be pleased at the quality of play this weekend. It had everything: dominance, upstarts, Cinderellas, clutchitude, chokiness, and fascinating and obscure mascots.

Some observations:

Guard play continues to cover team blemishes like the make-up counter at Sephora and it’s crystal clear that the skilled guard who can dribble, shoot, and make good decisons but lacks “NBA measurables” is currently the most undervalued commodity in college basketball. Who wants a 6-1 guy that doesn’t immediately project to the Clippers if all he can do is nail open threes like lay-ups, possesses a recognizable basketball IQ, and has a good handle?

Second, if you can’t find skill in the post, have strength, aggression, and effort. The 6-6 260 pound power forward who knows his role and will stick to his knitting frustrates more talented thoroughbreds at the college level in halfcourt. Always has. Always will.

Third, possessing an actual system – whatever it may be – is preferable to rolling out a bunch of athletes and hoping that they cohere. Watching the Wake Forest-Texas game was a painful reminder of that fact, particularly when viewed in contrast Butler/Murray State. But we have lottery players, dood!

Fourth, the mid-range game is dead. Mid-majors have learned that they need only defend the three point line and have enough team defense to step in and take the charge on the drive. Rinse, wash, repeat.

If you can sink an open 12-15 footer consistently off of the bounce, you’re in like Flint. Where have you gone, Andrew Toney and Joe Dumars?

Northern Iowa’s upset of Kansas – the best combination of the observations above – illustrates why basketball is a cool sport. What other game allows fundamental play to equalize pure athleticism more powerfully? Line up the rosters for Northern Iowa and Kansas and have them run a bunch of shooting and dribbling drills, test verticals and speed, and then do a draft. Seven or eight Jayhawks will be selected before the first UNI player.

Never mind that they’re whiter than Greg Gumbel’s squash game – UNI can ball.

So how did KU lose?

Collins and Taylor combining to go 4 of 21 from the field is a good place to start. When Sherron’s shot won’t fall, he won’t settle for being a creator. That’s a problem for a senior point guard.

From the UNI perspective, the recipe is a familiar one and it smacks us upside the head every time Greece routs a Dream Team. Take a bunch of shooters, mix in some hipster beef – UNI’s rotation at 4/5 weighs 245, 255, 255, 280, respectively (including a heavily tattooed lycanthrope Irish wookie named Lucas O’Rear) – that will block out and screen like their lives depend on it, take care of the basketball, make great decisions, and refuse to play the game that And 1 videos tell you that basketball is.

Having an Ali Farokhmanesh with the onions to sink a cold-blooded three pointer doesn’t hurt either.

That game also demonstrated why officiating is crucial. If the Jayhawks had been afforded a Dukeian deference from the zebras, they would have cruised by 10+. The fact that you can still get an honest game of basketball called at the collegiate level is reason enough that it’s a better game than the NBA.

St. Marys over Villanova might have been the least surprising upset to date. It’s pretty clear that Scottie Reynolds checked out weeks ago and his disinterest in playing his last games as a Wildcat is as evident as the fact that he as at least one member in his entourage whose only job being to repeat what Scottie says preceded by the words “My man Scottie say…” followed by ingratiating high fives all around.

Scottie’s 2 game NCAA tournament statline against 15 seed Robert Morris and 10 seed St Marys?

4 of 26 from the field.

For a smooth 15.4% shooting percentage.

He also had two fouls total in two NCAA tournament games. Thanks for the hard-nosed D, team leader. I’ll follow your career in Ukraine with interest.

Continuing on the theme of the Big East’s semi-fraudulence, Ohio’s massacre of Georgetown was a shock to me, though apparently not to some Hoya supporters. Perhaps they could have let me know before I put Georgetown in my Elite 8? The Athenians shot 58% from the field and dropped 97 points on the Hoyas and though Greg Monroe managed 19 points and 13 rebounds…that was paired with 7 TOs. There’s a message there, NBA GMs.

Watching Georgetown’s weirdly unassertive body language and disinterest in defending forced my own Jesuitical inquiry – why are a bunch of guys who play their summer ball on the open run courts in DC such total pussies? Is Anacostia now completely gentrified?

Baylor is learning to win on a big stage. Stop them soon or go ahead and book them in Indy. I love their guard play and the Dunn/Carter combo certainly gets the attention it deserves, but Udoh is what makes them go. Vasherized likens Udoh to a prawn from District 9 and that’s a solid comparison, not just because Scott Drew feeds him cat food and keeps him in a dorm shanty. Old Dominion focused on Udoh after he massacred Sam Houston in the opening round and Josh Lomers made them pay on the weakside with the easiest 14 points and 8 rebounds I’ve ever seen.

Josh Lomers made them pay is a sentence written as frequently as Secretary of State Kim Kardashian found common ground with the Chinese on the subject of Iranian nuclear proliferation so enjoy Halley’s Comet when it burns through the sky.

If Kentucky handles Wiscy and their trip-to-the-dentist style of play, they likely take on West Virginia for the right to make reservations in Indy. Epic basketball. Epic feudin’. There will be skirmishing and musketry on the Kantuck-Wes’ Virginny border – count on it.

Now…Swayze!

I could prattle on – what were your takeaways from the weekend?

Feel free to spare me any references to Texas basketball – that dead horse is beaten.

Villanova goes down.  Not really a surprise there if you’ve been watching them lately.  Do we still want to get JayWright on the line?

Tennessee cruises, Butler survives, Baylor goes on to the Sweet Sixteen.

Cuse’ dominates the Zags.

Bradley or Hamilton? In an ideal world they are both back next season. Withought knowing how well they are responding to Barnes’ style or what kind of draft grade they are looking for it’s hard to project what they will do.

Bradley has been listed as a mid-first round guy but I have trouble seeing it. He’s a shooting guard all the way and 6′2″ is small at that spot. His strength, defense, and offensive confidence would be greatly boosted by another season with Wright and Barnes.

Hamilton could definitely improve his stock, which I’ve heard described as being in the early 2nd. His strength and defense could benefit a lot along with the chance at being the best creator on a high-screen team in heavier minutes. I think Hamilton has a much higher ceiling and thus much more money to make by staying. I think mid-first round is close to the cap for Bradley unless he’s shooting 50% from the field and 40% from 3 next season while locking down the best perimeter offensive players in the country. Barring that higher than a mid-first round pick is a heavy price for an undersized shooting guard. Next year might reveal him as a better Daniel Gibson who could only play point with a point forward like Lebron James or Jordan Hamilton in the game.

For similar reasons I think Texas is better with Hamilton coming back next year than Bradley. He offers more offensively and Bradley’s great defense shouldn’t be irreplaceable with Balbay and Ward back. However, if one of them seems more likely (from the outsider’s perspective) to bolt for the NBA it’s Hamilton.

As for that whole NCAA Tournament March Madness deal, my bracket still has all final four teams remaining which is a serious improvement over my typical selections. There’s something to be said for picking all the higher seeds I suppose.

There’s been some speculation regarding the next great hope at Texas, Cory Joseph. I think the desperation for a point guard is based somewhat on the over-simple thesis of great point guard=good Barnes team. Bad point guard=bad Barnes team. I think a stronger case could be made that Texas needs pick’n'roll players to have good offense. The big men, the wings, the guards, if they aren’t excelling in the high screen game they aren’t excelling at Texas. Two of the better Barnes teams 05-06 and 03-04 lacked great point guard play and advanced as far as any team that didn’t have TJ Ford.

Now, Cory Joseph might be a quick fix to a headache-inducing Barnes offense but I think 35 minutes of Hamilton per game would probably be a stronger bet for success. Then there’s the potential problem of Joseph getting stuck in the doghouse while Barnes is content to start Ward, Brown, Balbay or God forbid Jai Lucas most of the season. I can actually talk myself into next year more easily at this point than I could for the next team after the Duke loss in that the personnel will actually be geared towards Barnes offense. I could stand another year like 07 when the defense was frustrating but the team would score like crazy, it’s so much easier on the eyes.

If you have the stomach for it Simmons covered Texas-WF in his Thursday draft diary. Mostly he just describes Rick Barnes as a horrendous coach and predicts (accurately obviously) that the game will be determined by a team blowing it. Remembering that Augustin and Durant would be seniors barely even fazes me any more when I saw his predictions for Durant’s averages for this season if at Texas. Any system that kept Durant in college for this season would be so stupid it’s not really worth dreaming about, he’s already better than almost the entire NBA roster.

NFL Draft:

Tebow demonstrated his new throwing motion at the Florida pro day. That Tebow can throw more accurately and with more touch when using proper mechanic and not under pressure may be the most worthless bit of news regarding the draft. I can throw pretty well using proper mechanics and under no pressure as well.

The Tebow we saw during the season doesn’t have strengths that match NFL offenses and an improvement in his throwing, which I obviously think is suspect anyways, only elevates him from unsuitable to perhaps barely suitable. Just for his intangibles, work ethic, and athleticism I would draft him and put him to use in short-yardage packages while seeing where his talents fit on the field but a first round grade is ridiculous. Quarterbacks who throw low with long deliveries after staring down receivers don’t see tremendous results in the NFL.

Football:

For you X’s and O’s enthusiasts our new friend Whiskey at onefootdown has started a series on the 3-4 particularly as it pertains to his Irish starting with expectations for the defense and line play in the odd front.

Reading the guest column on line play creates even more respect for Muschamp from me as he has managed to get the defense to absorb complex schemes by using packages and simplified assignments to create complexity out of understandable tasks. It also reinforces the importance of Kheeston Randall with Sacho likely having to take over the 3-tech job in providing the heart muscle of the Longhorn defense. I’m pretty excited to see how he handles the duties this season given his impressive showing last year and the 2 remaining seasons he has with the program.

Additionally, Texas will probably require some strong play out of the Mike this season inside the tackles to handle the running game unless Christian Scott is even more of an aggressive god of war than we are already dreaming of from vague practice reports and 1 quarter of game action. For the descriptions of the 3-4 we’ve been reading Texas doesn’t actually employ that defense very often but uses the 3-3-5 with a weakside backer, Mike backer and the “buck” who is generally always flying into the backfield. So it’s on that 1 inside linebacker (Earnest? Does Eacho move over) to handle whatever Randall doesn’t pick up and free mr. Robinson to keep up this wonderful new tradition in Texas football where a linebacker actually rings up 100 tackles in a season.

“Where do we go from here?” Alicia Keys once opined.  What do we do after the party has mercifully ended?  (Rebuild) What will this train wreck look like next year?  (Small) Could it get any worse? (It could).  So much of next year is dependent on who’s coming back.  We know that Plexy Dexy will take his game to some non-descript European league or maybe the D-league.  Mase will most likely move in with Rick Barnes so that Rick doesn’t suffer from detachment issues and Damion will be in The League somewhere making us proud.

Where do we go from here?  How about back to your place, Alicia?

Basically, we need to know what happens with 3 key contributors—the three freshman.  The rest of the team are role players and honestly, if Matt Hill fell down in the woods, would anyone hear him?  So let’s go ahead and do what internet blogs do, give uninformed predictions of each’s possible return:

1.  Avery Bradley.

Avery was the #1 recruit in the land coming into the land and that moniker and talent still goes towards building his draft status.  He’s quick, plays both ends of the court, is tough minded and has displayed the beginnings of leadership qualities.  He has a nice mid range game and has very nice form on his jump shot.  He should be able to extend his range with a little more strength.

On the bad end, he doesn’t have a definitive position.  His ball handling is too deficient for a PG, not to mention he doesn’t have a PG feel for the game, yet his size is small for a 2 guard.  He has problems finishing at the rim because a lack of upper body strength and too easily gets the ball ripped from him in the lane.  In short, he’s not really ready for the NBA right now.  He either needs to get a handle and be an offensive PG, like a Monta Ellis or George Hill type or gain some strength to allow him to finish more effectively at the rim while extending his jump shot and be a solid, if undersized, off guard.

Of course, none of that really matters; it’s all about the flow.  If AB can get into the top 15 to 18 picks, as some are slotting him now, then he needs to go and get paid.  Especially with a NBA work stoppage on the possible horizon.  If he can’t, then he needs to seriously consider coming back and working on his game.   I think you see a ton of under classmen declare.  Also, some have speculated that Avery may want to just get out of Austin and away from Colonel Klink’s offensive unimagination (yes, I know that’s not a word).  I haven’t seen or read anything that would suggest that Bradley is miserable, but that’s what the comments section is for.

Percents of a return:  33.333333333333% (repeating)

Barnes teaching offense?

2.  J’Covan Brown.

This is probably the easiest of the three.  He needs to come back.  Case closed.  JCB is a four year player.  JCB has a very fun and crafty offensive repertoire that’s fun to watch if you’ve ever played where you’re not the most athletic person on the floor.  A cadre of floaters, teardrops and scoop shots allow JCB to get his shot up at times over bigger and more athletic defenders.  He also has nice court vision and a good feel for when and how a play will develop.

Still, he’s painfully slow for a guard.  His jump shot brings images of Monique’s unshaven legs.  He can’t play defense, doesn’t always exert maximum effort, and doesn’t have the decision making ability to take advantage of his court vision yet.  He’s a work in progress and he needs to keep pounding marble.

JCB came in with a reputation for immaturity and emotional explosiveness, so rumors abound if he’s happy with the tough and sometimes confusing love that Barnes imparts on him.  Could this cause JCB to declare for the draft?  Transfer?  Anything can happen when you’re trying to break down the psyche of a 20 year old, but I doubt it.  Like Richard Gere, he has nowhere else to go.  It’s been well documented about how long and hard the road was to get JCB to Texas and qualified and both Barnes and JCB expended a ton of effort and time to make that happen.  I don’t think they turn the page so easily.

Percents of return:  90%

Don’t you do it, Rick.  J’Covan’s got nowhere else to go!

3.  Jordan Hamilton

Has there ever been a more enigmatic or frustrating player to come to Texas than Jordan Hamilton.  Probably the player with the most pure talent on this Texas team, Jordan is the proverbial 1 million talent with a 10 cent head.  I do think that Jordan has really improved this year, specifically in the last half of the year.  Jordan became more patient and less apt to throw up a three every time he touched the ball.  Jordan has exceptional range on his jump shot , displays a keen passing eye, and can rebound and penetrate at times.  He also has a solid handle for his size which makes him valuable in breaking a press or even initiating offense in a pinch.

On the flip side, Jordan has displayed no midrange game.  Like most kids in America today, it’s get as close to the rim as you possibly can or shoot the three.  The few times he tried to post up, he settled for unsuccessful fadeaways.  He’s a terrible defender, although his effort improved on that end of the court throughout the season, but that’s like saying Gary Coleman got a little taller.  He’s still has almost no court awareness and, like JCB, lacks foot speed to keep other wings in front of him and out of the lane.  He’ll most likely never be even a good defender, but if he could upgrade to simply below average then he’d be fine.  His offense is his calling card.

Coming into the season, rumors were that Jordan was the most vocal about wanting to jump to the NBA and his father is known to hold Jordan in a tad higher regard than reality.  Got to love supportive parents, I guess.  From what I’ve seen, Jordan’s draft prospects are all over the place but mostly I’ve seen his name in the 2^nd round.  A couple of mocks have him sneaking into the bottom of the first.  Could his NBA itch be too much not to scratch?  He’s already stated he’s coming back, but it’s early.  I think Jordan will explore his options and then begrudgingly come back to the be the focal point of the offense next year.

Percents of return:  70%

What you talking about, Jordan?  Not defense.

If percents hold, then our starting lineup would look something like this:  Tristan Thompson, Gary, Jordan, Varez, and JCB with Shawn Williams, Alexei, Hill, Jai, and Chappy off the bench.  I didn’t list Dogus, because I don’t know if he’ll 1. Be healthy enough to come back and 2. Decide to go back overseas.  I think Dogus may understand that his lack of a 15 foot jump shot would handicap his ability to make a NBA roster.  He’s in flux.  Wild card would be a Cory Joseph signing and if he would ever make it to campus.  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  That type of squad, while not having the talent that this year’s edition had, may be a better fit playing together in a more up tempo type of game, but that is an article for another day.  Thoughts?

Mike Bellotti, the Duck AD and former head coach earlier this week fired basketball coach Ernie Kent, the winningest coach in school history.

Then today, in a slighly surreal press conference, Bellotti, who resigned as head football coach just a year ago, announced his resignation as Athletics Director so he could talke an announcing job with ESPN.

His successor will try to fix his basketball program while trying to keep the football program off the crime docket in Eugene.

Since that Rose Bowl game, nine Oregon football players have run into public trouble. The headliner of course was QB Jeremiah Masoli, who along with receiver Garrett Embry pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary charges.

In the same courtroom just hours earlier, freshman running back LaMichael James pled guilty to misdemeanor harassment in connection with a Feb.16 domestic dispute. He will serve 24 months probation.

On the same night that Masoli and Embry were accused of theft, kickers Rob Beard and Mike Bowlin were injured in an unrelated brawl. Beard was charged with assaulting a woman, pled guilty to a lesser charge of physical harassment and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. Beard remains on the team, but Bowlin has since left it.

That’s just part of what Oregon football coach Chip Kelly has had to deal with. Linebacker Kiko Alonso pled not guilty to drunken driving charges. Kelly suspended Alonso for the 2010 season upon learning of the arrest.

Kelly booted defensive end Matt Simms off the team after he was arrested on assault charges last month. Simms pled guilty to physical harassment for striking a man he thought had beaten Beard.

Receiver Jamere Holland was dismissed from the team by Kelly after posting vulgar comments and criticizing Kelly on his Facebook page.

Now Mike Bellotti has decided to leave all this behind so he can work with Craig James, Lou Holtz and the rest of the ESPN College Football gang.

Today
#5 Texas A&M 69 #12 Utah State 53

#10 Missouri 86 #7 Clemson 78

Early in the 2nd half #7 seed Oklahoma State and #10 seed Ga. Tech are toed 39-39

So the Big 12 is currently 5-1 in first round games, and should the Cowboys hold on only one Big 12 team would have failed to make it to the second round, and we know who you are.

Nothing particularly excites me about the late night schedule, except to watch “Tournament” Tom Penders Houston squad go against Maryland.

Texas lost to Wake Forest in the first round last night. Trips Right somehow found the inner strength to do a final post-mortem where he also prescribes a month of defensive drills for baby 2010-11 Texas basketball in order to foster its development into a team that can at least dribble towards the basket.

PeterBean was reflective as well and deals with the future of Barnes at Texas. He concludes, with fairly strong reasoning and some good examination, that Barnes is still the answer at Texas. I think he overlooks the possibility of finding an up and coming coach rather than trying to steal a known commodity. However, and I’m pretty young if this wasn’t already obvious, Rick Barnes is the only coach I’ve ever known at Texas and I deeply appreciate and respect him.

PB draws the obvious parallel to the 2007 team that sucked out loud most of the season and only took to overhauling the team’s identity, philosophy, after a 2nd consecutive loss to Texas A&M. Mack, privately (and once publicly during the Ok. St. game) was seething about what the team had become and started taking names and kicking ass in the off-season to make things change.

Can Barnes do this in the off-season? One of PB’s finest points was this; all coaches will have their weaknesses and if Barnes is here to stay than a more worthwhile pursuit is finding answers for those weaknesses rather than a new coach who may or may not be able to take the program to the next level. Like for Mack, one answer seems to be at the assistant level. If these guys are able to counterbalance Barnes and offer value it hasn’t been apparent from the product. Excepting Todd Wright, of course, who has stepped up more on the basketball side, is like an HR rep for the players, and continues to build well-conditioned athletes.

Bradley and Hamilton both can make a lot of money for themselves just with another year of Todd Wright strength and conditioning, besides the likely opportunities to run the team and not having to focus on feeding Dexter Pittman or Damion James on certain parts of the floor, and the likely improvements on defense from angry-Barnes offseason. We’ll get back to them tomorrow though.

When Wake Forest was up by nine in the 2nd half I was ready to answer the question I’ve been asking myself the last few months…is this my least favorite Texas basketball team of all time? The box score from this game tells a gruesome tale but it’s not even close to as ugly as the actual game we witnessed. I became convinced with 2 minutes left that the real contest would be who could choke the game away. The answer being, of course, whoever held the lead.

The rebound deal, a solid 59-36 victory for Wake, was horrendous as Texas failed to defeat even the spectre of Tim Duncan on the boards. James was completely outclassed by someone named Faroug and the stoic Gary Johnson had both hands firmly around the throat in the final 7 minutes attempting to dunk a potential game winner from 5 feet out before missing 2 free throws badly in OT.

Dexter Pittman was always a great story at Texas but he never finished the book. He was content to draw impressed quotes from Jay Bilas about how he could palm the ball so effortlessly before bricking free throws and point-blank FG attempts. I wish him the best in the NBA where he’ll have better offensive schemes to grow in but he needs to get tough mentally or it will never happen.

Now, for me the main competition for “worst Rick Barnes team” comes from 2 other seasons. The 2004-05 team that was bounced in the first round of the tournament by Nevada and some skinny white center they called Fazekas, and last year’s 2007-08 team that ran an offense that consisted of setting screens for Abrams until he could jack up a three and hope he made a few of them in the last few minutes.

2004-05

The case as worst team: They lost to Nick Fazekas in the first round of the NCAA tournament, last at Colorado despite a 20-20 by Brad Buckman, lost yet again to Colorado in the first round of the Big 12 tournament, defeated in the Erwin Center by Iowa State. By season’s end barely had 6 players who could come into a game and contribute anything.

The case against: It started off as a dangerous team ruined by most of the guards playing with injuries, Daniel Gibson carrying the load as an unnatural Point Guard and wearing down, the loss of P.J. Tucker to academics and a season-ending injury to LaMarcus Aldridge at mid-season. Also, they won at then no. 8 Oklahoma State to secure their tournament bid 74-73.

Overall it was a team that gave a lot of effort. Brad Buckman came off a sophomore slump to provide a lot of heroic efforts and the late victory at OSU saved the season. Considering the injuries and how the team persevered to reach the tournament before collapsing immediately after that accomplishment it was still something that could be celebrated.

2008-09

The case for: They started the current 4-game losing streak to Baylor, lost in the 2nd round of the tournament failing to reach the all-important Sweet Sixteen, couldn’t win on the road, and had a brutal offense to try and watch.

The case against: Not a supremely talented team as it quickly became apparent that players like Atchley and Abrams had been carried by DJ Augustin so the failings were not totally inexcusable. They defeated good UCLA and OU teams at home and Wisconsin on the road. The 2nd round loss to Duke was hard-fought even if it fairly well encompassed the failings of the teams.

Overall: I often hated watching this team and couldn’t wait for the departure of Abrams so the team could run real offense…but they showed some flashes of overcoming late including the improvement by Dexter Pittman that had everyone so excited and the arrival of Varez Ward to the field in the 2nd half of the Duke game. There was reason to hope afterwards that better personnel could result in a strong team the next year.

2009-10

The case for: Lost in the first round of the tournament to a poor Wake Forest team on a last second overtime shot after holding an 8 point lead in that same overtime period, brutal to watch on offense, lost 3 times to Baylor, ended the home-winning streak against Kansas (the only thing Texas has had to cling to in that rivalry), loss to Baylor in the Erwin Center, finished as an 8-seed after once being considered a certain no. 1, dunked on like a Harlem Globetrotters opponent in virtually every contest.

The case against: They went 17-0 to begin the season, defeated Michigan State and Pittsburgh, featured 3 seniors in prominent roles and lots of talented young talent. Perhaps most talented team Barnes has had, lost 2 point guards to season ending knee injuries.

Overall: Obviously the fact that this team was so talented is part of what made this such a terrible season. It was hard to reach a point of acceptance where small victories could be enjoyed like in 2006 and 2009 because there was always the chance the team put it together. Instead they actively regressed on defense and submitted probably their worst game, from a fundamentals perspective, of the season in the final and most important game.

Perhaps the most damning element of this season was the feeling of relief I had after watching the squad lose to Wake Forest in such a terrible fashion. Did anyone feel as remotely bad as they did about the National Championship game? The stabbing was finally over, even though the last plunge was about as bad as might have been predicted. The other 2 seasons were followed by a lot of hope for the upcoming season, this team was the hoped-for squad that was going to take Texas at least back to the heights that had been enjoyed in the finer seasons of the decade.

It could be years before Texas rebuilds to another season of opportunity like this one unless Hamilton and Bradley return and Tristan Thompson is immediately a force. Barring that outcome, this season could be the one that keeps on giving…

Just a few thoughts on the game. I’ll do a season wrap up and preliminary preview in the next few days to tie everything in.

First off, it’s a challenge to continue to write these and not repeat what’s already been said. If you’ve read one of these post game summaries after January 1st, I’m sorry to admit, you’ve read them all. The nuances of the story change, but the theme remains the same.

Simply put, this team continues to not do the little things it takes to win basketball games.

Defensively, this has to be the worst team Barnes has ever fielded during his tenure at Texas. They’re horrible. They don’t stay in front of dribblers, they don’t play good positional defense off the ball, they don’t know how or when to help to penetration or step-in to stop drivers, they don’t rotate correctly, etc. and so forth.

If you see anything sound that Texas does on the defensive end, then I’m all ears.

If it were up to me, I’d have these guys do the four man defensive shell drill every day until October, practicing simple ball-you-man defense until it was second nature. I wouldn’t even introduce a post or the dribble penetration aspect of the drill for at least a month.

They’re that bad.

So bad, that it effects rebounding. Our lack of any kind of team defense kills the ability to board because our players are never in favorable position to rebound the ball. We have good athletes, size, and strength inside, all the ingredients needed to be a good rebounding team.

To that point, there’s no reason Wake Forest should be playing volleyball on the glass against us like we’re an Ivy League school. It’s pathetic, and, along with defense, the two go hand in hand in a pathetic marriage.

Offensively, we have virtually zero identity/system/sets, etc., to fall back on when we’re having a cold shooting night, or teams have figured us out as individuals.

Our offense last night consisted of Jordan Hamilton hitting deep three’s off of a modicum of dribble penetration, Damion James driving past a power forward 20 feet from the basket, or J’Covan Brown on a screen and roll. To score against solid defensive teams, we usually need heroic efforts; otherwise it looks like we’re swimming upstream.

Thank God Wake was as disinterested to guard anyone last night as we were. I shudder to think what Kentucky would have done to us.

As for situational specifics, I railed on Barnes in the Open Thread for not making it perfectly clear to Brown that, as the team’s best foul shooter, he’s not to give up the ball with under 15 seconds to play. When you break the huddle or dead ball, even the simplest things are repeated.

Shit like, hey we have a timeout left if you’re trapped, or we don’t have any timeouts so don’t Webber, or no three’s here, or don’t foul here, or don’t pass it to your 50% foul shooter, or hey, you can’t run the baseline here. Seriously these “little” things are emphasized in every game on every team at every level. You’d laugh at how much elementary stuff is repeated out of a timeout or dead ball.

Well, my apologies to Rick Barnes. In the post-game Barnes explained that he did remind Brown out of the dead ball to keep the rock and take the foul that Wake was certain to give.

Calling a spade a spade here, but that’s a total mental breakdown on Brown’s part if his coach truly told him, only seconds earlier, to hold on to the basketball and take the foul. What a mental rock to give the ball up in that situation after you’ve been reminded. And, yes, I get it, it was Gary’s fault for not hitting his foul shots. That’s not the point.

In the plus column, I was happy with the players’ efforts for most of the game. Rebounding is tough if you’re always out of position so it’s not necessarily an effort issue, but defensively, especially in the last part of the second half, I thought we played with an intensity and effort on defense that had been missing for about a month. We weren’t always sound, but we played hard and that can cover up some of those defensive warts.

There was a four or five possession stretch where we really got in their jerseys, harassed dribblers, and got into passing lanes. I’m mostly talking about Brown, Bradley, and Hamilton so I hope that carries over to next year.

Speaking of those three, if they can continue to build on the chemistry they showed flashes of last night, they’ll be a solid group next year and beyond. Brown showed some quickness off the dribble, Bradley attacked the rim better than he has all year, and Hamilton proved he’s not only unflappable on the big stage by shooting us back into the game in the first half, but he’s also mature enough to defer as he did for most of the second half.

These guys are going to be really good if they stay together for a year or two.

So, certainly a disappointing game to cap off a disappointing season, but there are some positives to take away from this performance. We’ll continue to be who we are, which is a top 25 team with a special run in the tournament every decade or so.

Unfortunately, any higher level of expectation or emotional involvement beyond that point is folly in my humble opinion. As a fan if you’re okay with that, then good for you, because that’s where we’ll continue to be as a basketball team. We’re not ever going to be bad, but after watching this season, it’s doubtful we can ever be consistently elite.

Hook ‘Em

Head over to March to March where all the cool kids and Vasherized are.