ArgoEagle

You're right. Like it or not (and I don't), that's what recruiting is now everybody has to adjust including players, coaches & fans. A little bit of good news maybe; I want to remind everybody on this forum that we really didn't start cooking with our Top 10 Recruiting Class last year until around Big Cat Weekend. We still have the next Portal window coming up to get D-lineman, and then hopefully after Big Cat the 2025 commitments start pouring in like they did last year. Bottom line is we can't blow a gasket every time a player chooses someone else over us or decommits. Times have changed in recruiting. We will get our good share in the end.

I like the way we match up with SC better. Arky played some good bball at the end there. Had the turds beat on the road if not for a missed dunk.

Cole Cubelic misspoke on his show on JOX this morning saying Troy beat AU 8-2.

The refs helped, but what really lost Arky the game is their 6'9 or 10 (however tall he is) missed a 2 handed jam with around 15 seconds left that would have put them up by 2 possessions. In other words GAME OVER, but lucky Turds get another lucky gift handed to them. As to the OP: Players want to play for Nate bc of his style play. He only has 1 strategy & that is jack up as many 3's as possible. This is what attracts his scoring & he looks good when they are hitting them bc opposing coaches don't know the secret to beating them, which is don't let them have wide open 3's and push them around in the paint as much as possible, like BP figured out when we played them in the Jungle. When you play them to make them a 2 point shooting team, you've pretty much whipped them. Of course all teams don't have the horses to accomplish this, but us, UT and UF showed that we do. I think Bama will win their 1st game in the Big Dance, but will get bumped in the 2nd or 3rd game bc they will play a team with the horses to beat them then. And finally, NO! I don't see how anybody but that guys momma could possibly like him personally.

Yeah, I was specifically talking about how to beat Bama. They are a different animal than other teams. And yes, we have suffered from guard deficiency since 2019. The slight difference this year is this; Our guards are not as good as the upper tier teams' guards most of the time; BUT with the addition of CBM & Chaney this year who are both around 6'7" combined with our 3 big men we already had; 4 of the 5 of them can score and all 5 of them play way better than average defense so we have a distinct advantage over a bunch of tier 1 teams bc our bigs overcompensate for the guards deficiencies. If our guards don't turn the ball over, and contribute just between 3-5 3's per game, and our bigs are not just ice cold from the floor like they were against MSU (away) & UF, then we have a great chance of winning at least a couple of games in any tournament.

I just strongly believe Bama is over rated bc of their high scoring ability. Their whole rate of success depends on whether or not they get wide open looks at 3's & (IF) they are hitting those 3's. Bruce & Barnes both figured this out & ran defenses that (limited) Bama's 3 point attempts & makes & therefore you saw a low scoring performance in those games from Bama. In other words both of us cut off their fuel source. When other coaches see this & have the horses to stop it, their success rate goes way down. I'm not worried about them.

Well, keeping in mind this is just an educated guess & 1 bracket possibility We would draw the very toughest bracket bc of who our 1,2, and 3 seeds would be. Bama would be in the 2nd toughest bracket. And the easiest road to the Final Four would be the Midwest, with the West running a close 2nd easiest. But we still have this weekend's regular season finales & conference tourneys to go, so I'm pretty sure there will be several shakeups in the seedings between now & selection Sunday.

All right! We'll take it, but if S-G only scores 6 points tonight our girls might as well have their bags packed.

Yes! I feel like with a little polishing, Cardwell could be our next 3 point weapon next season.

WELL SAID!

I thought our Oline was much improved last year from 2022. Seemed they gave PT adequate time to find an open receiver (most of the time.) Problem was our receivers were piss poor at getting separation, so the opposing defenses just stacked the box on us making it very difficult for us to run, which in turn made our Oline look like they couldn't run block very well. I believe we get a better gauge on how good our Oline is if we have a much better passing game this year. If not, it's not going to matter. It's going to look the same as last year.

Boy, it sure would be nice to click on the Micah Debose Thread & see news on him instead of another raging debate about NIL money. Sarcasm intended.

Jump on them early & SQUASH any hope they may have. That's how you beat a huge underdog. If we let them hang around into the 2nd half & we are cold from the floor, then watch out!

He definitely looks the part more than any of them, with Hank running a close 2nd. But, in all the excitement we have to remember that there is more to being the QB than who looks the best throwing the ball. I know you and most posters on here know this, but we need to be reminded once in a while, right?

That team had a couple of things this team doesn't. They were fearless & never played timid. They had that Killer Instinct in my opinion from the start of the game until the end. Our guys play in spurts this year. We had a couple of short spurts against UK Saturday, but they fizzled out too quickly.

I agree Mikey. Battie reminds me of Ontario a few years back. Fast, but can't really run him inside the hashes bc he goes down fairly easily. He is more of a toss sweep, jet sweep, screen pass back to me.

They left the letters tic off the end of your last name🙂

Looking at the scoring you just posted, 69 of their 75 points were scored by 4 players. I like the sound of that as opposed to our scoring distribution. If you can shut their 4 scorers down, or hold them in check, they have nobody to take up the slack. We have a number of players who can take up our 2 main scorers slack if they have a bad game. I like our chances better with our scenario.

Does this look familiar? Tonight we were the team that couldn't miss. SC took our place from Saturday. Like I stated in my posts after the UF game. These games happen all year to different teams; tonight we were on the right end of the spectrum. No need to jump off the ledge.

I think they will try to use a strategy like UF did. They have good size with their bigs & I think they try to pound our bigs inside & make us try to hit 3's. Our outside shooting better be waaaaay better than it was against UF. I think we need to hit at least 8 3's to win this game. Not just the extra 8 points, but to not let them just pack the lane on defense and focus on stopping our bigs and also being able to stop drives to the basket by our guards.

That is correct Mikey. You also have to know that when you are out there running your butt off, defending like crazy, rebounding and all the other aspects of the game, that when you shoot time after time and you see the ball not go in time after time. You look up at the scoreboard & you have scored 4 points in 8 minutes of play (pathetic I know) it affects every other aspect of your game, it deflates you, and you press every time you bring the ball down on offense.. This is one of those games you flush, you don't watch the game again, and you try to recapture that excellent level of play that you had before this game.

This is what I tried to explain to the fans you are referring to who only watch AU play, or they just read the boxscores & see where we were ranked & how bad we were outscored, etc. I call these fans rah rah fans & we have a bunch of them on this site. Whatever level you are playing on (College, Pro, Church League, High School) there is going to come a game where your team just can't hit an ox in the butt with the bball & the opposing team just can't miss for some reason. It has nothing to do with effort or desire or execution. We had a bunch of wide open looks against UF, both 3's & 2's and just could not make the shots. This is 100% going to happen in bball, and you can't explain it. You just hope you are the team making everything you throw at the goal, and not the other team. We did not look good shooting at Turdtown, but then 2 weeks later we score 99, and could easily have hit triple digits. I will be totally shocked, if we don't put up a bunch of points on S.C. Wed. night. As far as trying to get the rah rah fans off the ledge; Good luck with that. r

That doesn't apply to this game. As I said, this type game happens to every team that plays basketball at some point. Y'all can shove your thumbs down.

Wrooooong!

Don't panic everybody. Anybody that's ever played bball on any level knows you are going to have an occasional game where 1 team (UF today) is going to hit every shot they throw up & the other team (AU today) can't throw it in the ocean. In this type game you enjoy if you're the 1st situation & flush it if you're in AU's spot.