UConn...
- Thread starter Protes
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It's going to be very hard to imagine anyone beating UConn. Even Purdue won't stay within 10 points of them.
LOL. No they can’t/wont. And no to the second piece.
Any team hoping to hang with UConn is going to have to slow the game down and muck it up. Probably need to keep it in the 60s and get Clingan in some early foul trouble.
Shooting well is a given. It would also help (a lot) if UConn doesn't bring their A-game.
Every player they have is either a 4* or 5*. They basically are getting any player they want. Can only assume bottomless NIL pockets. And they have a really good coach.
They arent getting the 1 and dones though. They are recruiting guys who need to stay a few years. This is what Calipari needs to do instead of loading up on babies who cant win in March vs 24 year olds.
UCoNN is the only team I am seeing that Pitt couldn’t stay with. Tennessee and Purdue each have a great player but neither has our backcourt depth combined with Hinson.This is crazy. 27-0 run and counting. More than doubled them up from the 23-23 tie. Pitching a shutout in the 2nd half. Never seen anything like this.
Duke is the second worst matchup as we know.
Purdue at least is eliminating Tennessee so we don’t have to stomach 2 SEC teams. I like Painter as a coach.
UCONN will crush Bama. I expect Duke to win today and lose to Purdue.
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Purdue vs Uconn will be the final. Uconn beats Purdue because Clingan can play Edey 1 on 1
UCONN beats whoever because they’re just that much better than everyone else.
Just out of curiosity, how many point do we think Edey would score against our centers. 30? 40? 50?
He had 40 and 16 today. He could go for 50 and 20 against our centers and foul both of them out, and it wouldn't surprise anyone. We'd have to hit a boatload of threes just to have a chance to stay in the game against them.
Now sometimes this season we did hit a boatload of threes, so I'm not saying it's impossible. It would just be really, really unlikely.
Pitt when they were on could beat all but a small handful of teams. When off they could lose to all but a small handful.
The way a few of these better teams defend, Pitt would have a great deal of trouble finding any space to shoot or score and realistically couldn’t beat them.
For example, if Pitt played Tennessee or a fully healthy Houston, do you think they’d realistically stand any chance? Pitt doesn’t see any teams that defend that way, and there are none in the ACC.
And then there’s teams with a dominant big and a strong supporting cast, like Purdue. Or teams that are super long, talented and athletic all over the floor, like Bama. I don’t think Pitt could hang with those teams.
So I’ll just stick with the idea that Pitt absolutely deserved to be safely in the field of 64, probably as a 7-8 seed, and had a good enough team to win a couple of games.
Tennessee didn’t impress me outside of Knecht. State jumping back into the game vs Duke. If State wins and plays Purdue I guess we will see since we know Pitt can play with NC State.
i think it’s pretty obvious that NCSU has been a very different team since postseason play than the one Pitt beat.
On Feb 7, Pitt won at State 67-64. Do you think State improved that much more than Pitt since Feb 7th?
This blows away the argument people make that expanding the tournament isn’t necessary because the final 4 teams never are the last ones in.
If RJ Davis doesn’t go 0 for 9, State probably isn’t even in the tournament.
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Yeah, but NC State has something to play against Purdue that we don't. A 300-plus pound center that Edey won't be able to bully on the offensive end. If we had DJ Burns this year instead of Federiko Federiko I'd say we'd be right there with Purdue. Hell, we might have been better than them.
But we didn't.
Tennessee needed to try and front Edey. Playing behind him and letting him get the ball 4-6 feet from the basket was a useless strategy.
All this does is reinforce the fact that the #4 team in the ACC or any of the other 3 power leagues should always make the field of 64 without any drama about it, regardless of who they played in the OOC.
NCSU is on a helluva run. They are playing at a different level than they were in Feb without a doubt. They won the AC tour tournament the hard way, no byes or any other advantages. They had an advantageous bracket placement and frankly got lucky to draw Oakland in the 2nd round. But they have been very impressive, they have met every challenge, they are playing high level basketball with a lot of enthusiasm, and they don’t look anything like the team that went limping into the ACC tournament with a coach who was all but fired.
They do, but that won’t be enough. State has had an amazing run but it’s over. And I’d be surprised if it’s close when the final buzzer sounds. Purdue has a much better team than you’re giving them credit for. Pitt had one lights out shooter, they have about 4-5 who can all be the guy that kills you on any given night. They have an excellent PG, Pitt had a combo guard running PG. And they are locked in right now.
We offered more for Hurley than UConn though.
He decided he'd rather be at a school where it's easier to recruit 4, 5 star recruits. Hard to blame him it seems.
Burns isnt very good defensively. He just hasnt gone up against a lot of quality bigs. You actually may see more of Middlebrooks Saturday.
I think Pitt could beat state for a third time If they played this week. I also think Pitt given State’s draw, would have been playing today.
State was tied with Louisville late, hit a big break when Clemson decided not to show up against BC and didn’t play that well against UVa and UNC shot much worse against State as Davis was 0-9 shooting 3s. I give them all the credit in the world but they played well in stretches, especially at home, all year. It’s not like Horne and Burns weren’t good all year. In the Feb 7 game at State, Burns has 19 and Horne 25 and Pitt still won.
They beat UVa by 16 in January and also beat Wake and Clemson. They just weren’t consistent. When FSU hung 90 on them, they had little to play for in the regular season and finished poorly but the ACCT gave them one last shot. But the talent was there and I was very concerned they could beat us in the last game of the season.
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