Early, yes. He was very consistent as a SR though, and not nearly as streaky as a JR.

I'd still like to kick the officials in the nuts for how they allowed Texas to literally beat him up on the court. That was some super dirty basketball.

I can't really agree with that. People seem to forget his clunkers because we won so much. No one remembers his dreadful SR year second round game against DePaul where he went 1-7 and we got bailed out by Dokes return. Or even the Duke game we won and he had all of 11 points but Newman stepped up. He shot 9-29 in the run to the final four excluding the 16 seed game. His JR year he had a 5 game conference stretch where he went 14-52 and lost to TCU in the first round of the big 12 tournament where he shot 2-10. I don't say all of this to bash the guy, I like him, he's just more volatile than people remember.

I definitely agree. Very good player but nowhere near on of the all-time greats. He was a TERRIBLE scorer efficiencywise on 2FG. Hes so bad at it he almost should just only shoot 3s which hes elite at.

It's a little remarkable Texas Southern started the season 0-7 with losses to Air Force and Louisiana State and then beat Florida in Gainsville for their first win of the year.

I should mention for old time's sake that we caught a bad draw in Texas Southern beating Texas A&M CC. They are a far better overall team than them (particularly defensively) and have one of the best shot blockers by block rate in the NCAA. We went from having by far the easiest opponent in the tournament (think 99% chance of winning) to only the easiest opponent in the tournament by a small amount (think 95-96% of winning). Need to be ready.

How are we feeling guys?

I haven’t watched much coverage, been working my ass off. Nonetheless I feel like nobody is giving us much of a shot (rightfully so - I’m not heaping expectations on this group). Hopefully that leads to playing loose with nothing to lose.

I think we played pretty good ball in the tournament. We laid some real stinkers in the regular season, but we won the toughest conference. We won the toughest conference tournament. You gotta like our chances, unless we draw a physically dominant team, which I think beats us regularly.

Maybe this is the year we surprise people.

Relatively low expectations, yet if they make it to the Elite Eight or beyond, I'd most likely feel as if they have just as good of a shot as anyone else... it doesn't seem like there's an goliath matchup waiting for them, but of course they have to get past the craziness of the first few rounds first.

I mean sure, I'll be fake terrified every time KCC tells us how every game is a goliath matchup and the worst possible team to play against ever, but I like the low expectation years (and as a 1 seed LMAO)... easier to just sit back, enjoy the wins, and laugh at the TV if they put up a stinker.

Same. We'll have a better idea after this weekend, but we should enjoy this weekend. This is THE best weekend for college basketball IMO. :popcorn:

Yep, today and tomorrow are the only days CBS can't possibly have all games at commercials at the same time, once it really gets going in a couple hours... even after all these years of watching the tournament it's still crazy to me that it goes from 64 teams today down to 16 by the end of the weekend.

And it always starts right as Arizona moves to Pacific time, so it starts at 9am here and the "late" game starts at 7. :D

Any guesses?

I’m going with Self being older.

Nope! Guess again!


My FF: Aub>Kent. (Tech, AZ)

You’d have to get pretty specific to know.

I like our draw. I like how we've been defending lately. I like that Martin looks healthy and that Bill was giving him some run in the Tourney title game.

I don't like that Ochai has been off from deep. Or that David McCormack can only defend bigs like him.