AUght2win

No. That’s SO stupid. It’s written literally everywhere.

Oh my gosh I was right. I’m serious I’d pull the scholly. Just out of shock that a person could genuinely believe that. Like would bring a sailor on board that thinks he’s gonna be out on the “Specific Ocean”.

Does this kid seriously think it’s “Aurburn”? I saw recruit’s tweet earlier where it was spelled “Aurburn” too but figured it was a typo. If not I’d revoke the scholly immediately.

I guess this kid is our version of Roll Tide Willie?

Everybody could tell Cam was physically something different than we’d ever had.

Uh is Willie’s hand okay?

We had 4 consecutive trips down the court that ended in turnovers. Four. That’s hard to do. Bruce’s wild-horse, let the kids do whatever they want at all times is freeing to the players, I’m sure, but it drives me crazy and I’ve seen it lose us several ball games. KD literally ran across half-court and forgot the ball.

Literally YOU said it. “March is all about guard play”. If that was the case we never had a shot. Just sounds a lot like the “can’t win without an elite QB” argument. Which is, of course, wholly untrue. Yes - in a perfect world you have elite guards and elite QBs and they improve your odds immensely - but those are hard to find. We could have gone deep with this year’s team as-is. I put it entirely on the coaches (love Bruce but he deserves some flack for consistently losing to lesser talented teams in early rounds).

Always get a kick out of statements like these. I’ll say literally anything I choose, big fella. And I choose to say March being “all” about guard play is BS. Would it help? Sure. But we were one of 9 teams statistically eligible to win the title (top 15 offense, top 40 defense - no team has the won tourney in last 22 years without having both). Acting like this team had fundamentally no shot is untrue and gives the coaches a break they don’t deserve.

Then every last one of you should have openly said we had no shot. And the discussion nationally and in here shouldn’t have been - “how did Auburn not get a 3 seed?” - it should have been “Auburn is lucky to be in the field”. Because we haven’t had good guard play in 5 years. But of course that isn’t what anybody said or thought because it isn’t an actual hard rule - it’s people trying to do an oversimplified autopsy. There’s a reason a ton of pundits picked us for the final 4, all season long. We had the talent to go. As we had in previous years. We just didn’t perform.

Kentucky had 3 guards on the All-SEC 1st and 2nd team.

Yeah neither do you, fortunately. “March Madness is all about guard play.” Bout as banal as “defense wins championships”. Committee should just seed 1-16 based on the talent of the guards if your theory is correct. Oakland would have been a 2-3 and we would have been a 13-14.

Do they use a different kind of basketball in the tourney? If not, then this makes no sense. We just went 27-7 in supposedly one of the best conferences in the country, without good guard play. So I don’t buy the oversimplification.

What about the other 3 times? What about when we were a 2 seed and had the best offensive player AND the best defender in the country? I think we need to win games and stop using “they just were better on this particular day - it happens” logic.

With this loss is it fair to say we may have a Calipari-esque problem with the NCAA tourney? Bruce has taken us to 5, in 4 of them we haven’t gotten past the first weekend. We lost in 2nd round as a 2 and now 1st round as a 4. That has to be something related to our mental state/culture/coaching that has to get fixed.

Proud of our team today!!! Great win

Not really. But whatever you want to think boss.

You’re taking message boards waaaaay too deeply and the participation here incorrectly. I love AU and am happy when we win. I don’t feel a compulsion to post when we do. I just enjoy it. There’s nothing to process. When we lose it’s different. Look at it like Yelp or Lyft or Reddit reviews. People will give you 5 ⭐️/nothing and keep it moving if the service was great. It’s when things go bad that they write lengthy posts.

Posting “that was great” is kind of pointless. There’s only stuff to discuss when things aren’t going well and people want to know why/vent. That’s always been the nature of the internet.

Those were rankings at the times of the losses I believe. Huge sports fan. Football fanatic. Basketball is a little down on the list for me but have followed Auburn bball my whole life. Enough to know that legit D1 players aren’t leaving these arenas saying “my gosh I was so shook up!!!”. I mean, the first thing Jaylin (or whoever did the postgame interview) said after OM was how fun it was to play in that environment and how awesome the crowd was. Didn’t exactly sound like PTSD.

Road losses for past 10 NC winners: 2023 UConn - 5 (3 ranked) 2022 Kansas - 4 (3 ranked) 2021 Baylor - 1 (ranked) 2019 UVA - 1 (ranked) 2018 Nova - 3 2017 UNC - 5 (3 ranked) 2016 Nova - 2 (2 ranked) 2015 Duke - 2 (1 ranked) 2014 UConn - 4 (3 ranked) We’re currently at 4, all unranked losses, with 3 road games to play. I’m predicting a UT loss, leaving us with 5 (1 ranked). Doesn’t bode well for us when compared to the list above.

It’s a problem because you can look back at national title winners and no, they usually don’t struggle this mightily on the road. We are #12 in the country right and many have picked us for the final four this year. If you want to grade us against the standard of being an above average SEC team - then yeah, we’re right on schedule. But Bruce has elevated this program to championship expectations. Most of us are looking for signs as to whether this team can make a Final Four or win the SEC. And the signs aren’t good.

Nonsense. And no, I don’t think KD Johnson or Johni care what students are doing in the student section while they’re at the line. They’re freaking experienced D1 basketball players. It’s not about the visiting teams getting rattled - again, do you REALLY think Alabama’s players are affected by our fans booing them? Are they scared? Angry? Like how, exactly, would their mental state be altered? Aside from the goal familiarity, home court advantage works because it provides the home team energy - allowing them to play as the best version of themselves. But with the talent we have, we should be able to beat the best version of Mississippi State on any night. And we should never, even on their absolute best night, not get blown out by 30 by Florida. The bottomline is the drop off when we leave the confines of our arena should not be as dramatic as they are. It’s a bad sign. If we were a truly good team we would be able to acclimate better to other gyms. And that problem isn’t going anywhere in tourney time.

So you guys really believe Johni Broome and the gang struggled at Miss State because they were emotionally affected by their fans? You really think that?

Then explain why this doesn’t affect road SEC football teams NEARLY as much, despite it being 100k bearing down on you. I don’t buy for a second guys get rattled by going into the average SEC gym. They don’t care about opposing fans. Basketball is the only sport with a small fixed target, which heavily relies on hand-eye to hit it. You shoot better on your home goals - the ones your eyes are trained to hit from tens of thousands of practice shots. You get used to the arena lighting, depth perception in relation to the stands, different angles, etc. The reason road games are so hard is you aren’t trained to hit those goals and it’s hard to acclimate over the course of one game. This is true for neutral site games as well - just for both teams. It still doesn’t bode well for us and we’ve seen them play HORRIBLE on neutral sites over Bruce’s tenure. Look at our SEC tourney exits.