Honest assessment of UT B-ball

#1
atlantavol62

atlantavol62

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#1
I can't claim to be a basketball guru and can tell you definitively that we deserved to be in the NCAA or not. Having said that, I am amazed that Coach Martin seems to have no doubt that we should have been in and that obviously impacted last night's performance by the team. I don't see anything in either the record or the team makeup that deserved such certainty. 20 wins is not such a big deal when they include games against Victory (?), Presbyterian, Western Carolina and Kennesaw State and an especially down year for the conference in general.

I'm hopeful for the future but if this is the bar for our team, consider me unimpressed.
 
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#2
#2
atlantavol62 said:
I can't claim to be a basketball guru and can tell you definitively that we deserved to be in the NCAA or not. Having said that, I am amazed that Coach Martin seems to have no doubt that we should have been in and that obviously impacted last night's performance by the team. I don't see anything in either the record or the team makeup that deserved such certainty. 20 wins is not such a big deal when they include games against Victory (?), Presbyterian, Western Carolina and Kennesaw State and an especially down year for the conference in general.

I'm hopeful for the future but if this is the bar for our team, consider me unimpressed.
Click to expand...
You should have stopped at the first 8 words of your paragraph and ended it there.
 
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#3
#3
An honest assessment of the team shouldn't include an evaluation of last nights game. I understand it's hard to ignore that performance; but in my mind, the team exceeded expectations on the year, especially after the way the season and conference play started.

Next year, if everybody comes back, we'll be preseason top 25 (Maymon, Stokes, Hubbs, Golden, & McRae)
 
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#4
#4
We earned 20 wins without our best player. We beat Wichita State, UF, UK, Mizzou, and won a 4OT game on the road. Our chances of making the tournament on Sunday were about 50/50. We didn't make it, tough luck.

Honest assessment is that we won more games than last year and lost less. We improved despite not having our most productive and efficient player. We were playing like sh!t in the middle of the season, and it would be very alarming had we not shown some fire and resilience.

Bottom line is that you have to judge for yourself. If not firing Martin before next season breaks your boner, you are being pretty unreasonable. To say that is going to take us to the top is also unreasonable at this point. What's not unreasonable is seeing the pool of talent coming back for next season, the return of Maymon, Hubbs/Davis/Landry/possiblyThompson, and expect some more improvement. Like all the reasonable posters have said for months and months and months, if we struggle next season and miss the tourney, Martin will most likely be gone, but it's much more likely that we will be a very good team all season, and we won't be anywhere near the bubble.

Again, the choice is yours.
 
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#5
#5
atlantavol62 said:
I can't claim to be a basketball guru and can tell you definitively that we deserved to be in the NCAA or not. Having said that, I am amazed that Coach Martin seems to have no doubt that we should have been in and that obviously impacted last night's performance by the team. I don't see anything in either the record or the team makeup that deserved such certainty. 20 wins is not such a big deal when they include games against Victory (?), Presbyterian, Western Carolina and Kennesaw State and an especially down year for the conference in general.

I'm hopeful for the future but if this is the bar for our team, consider me unimpressed.
Click to expand...

Fail. Double fail to the person who liked it. Victory didn't count towards our win total. We played one of the strongest OOC schedules in the conference.
 
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#7
#7
We may be preseason top 25 but unless we have a great 3 point shooter we will be out of that top 25 quickly because that is all the offensive scheme I have seen from CCM. He has yet to show me he can coach when the 3's aren't falling. Anyone can coach a team who has most of there prayers answered. when that don't is when CCM is supposed to earn his money and that hasn't happened 2 years.
Majorvol23 said:
An honest assessment of the team shouldn't include an evaluation of last nights game. I understand it's hard to ignore that performance; but in my mind, the team exceeded expectations on the year, especially after the way the season and conference play started.

Next year, if everybody comes back, we'll be preseason top 25 (Maymon, Stokes, Hubbs, Golden, & McRae)
Click to expand...
 
#8
#8
Chris4Vols22 said:
We earned 20 wins without our best player. We beat Wichita State, UF, UK, Mizzou, and won a 4OT game on the road. Our chances of making the tournament on Sunday were about 50/50. We didn't make it, tough luck.

Honest assessment is that we won more games than last year and lost less. We improved despite not having our most productive and efficient player. We were playing like sh!t in the middle of the season, and it would be very alarming had we not shown some fire and resilience.

Bottom line is that you have to judge for yourself. If not firing Martin before next season breaks your boner, you are being pretty unreasonable. To say that is going to take us to the top is also unreasonable at this point. What's not unreasonable is seeing the pool of talent coming back for next season, the return of Maymon, Hubbs/Davis/Landry/possiblyThompson, and expect some more improvement. Like all the reasonable posters have said for months and months and months, if we struggle next season and miss the tourney, Martin will most likely be gone, but it's much more likely that we will be a very good team all season, and we won't be anywhere near the bubble.

Again, the choice is yours.
Click to expand...

Perfect answer
 
#9
#9
Like we said last year in football, no more excuses. Put up or shutup time come November. We have talent and experience now go get it done.
 
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#10
#10
Chris4Vols22 said:
We earned 20 wins without our best player. We beat Wichita State, UF, UK, Mizzou, and won a 4OT game on the road. Our chances of making the tournament on Sunday were about 50/50. We didn't make it, tough luck.

Honest assessment is that we won more games than last year and lost less. We improved despite not having our most productive and efficient player. We were playing like sh!t in the middle of the season, and it would be very alarming had we not shown some fire and resilience.

Bottom line is that you have to judge for yourself. If not firing Martin before next season breaks your boner, you are being pretty unreasonable. To say that is going to take us to the top is also unreasonable at this point. What's not unreasonable is seeing the pool of talent coming back for next season, the return of Maymon, Hubbs/Davis/Landry/possiblyThompson, and expect some more improvement. Like all the reasonable posters have said for months and months and months, if we struggle next season and miss the tourney, Martin will most likely be gone, but it's much more likely that we will be a very good team all season, and we won't be anywhere near the bubble.

Again, the choice is yours.
Click to expand...

Can this just get stickied and auto response to all the dumba$$ posts we are seeing
 
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#11
#11
I'm not suggesting that a coaching change is needed. I'm merely observing what I thought of our team this year. I agree not having Maymon was big, but I had expected Stokes to have a bigger year. Yes, we had a few nice wins but it's my opinion that this year was mediocre. Not hating, not demanding a change.
 
#12
#12
atlantavol62 said:
I'm not suggesting that a coaching change is needed. I'm merely observing what I thought of our team this year. I agree not having Maymon was big, but I had expected Stokes to have a bigger year. Yes, we had a few nice wins but it's my opinion that this year was mediocre. Not hating, not demanding a change.
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Stokes averaged a double-double in conference. I don't know what else you were expecting. He was the least of our worries.
 
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#14
#14
Chris4Vols22 said:
We earned 20 wins without our best player. We beat Wichita State, UF, UK, Mizzou, and won a 4OT game on the road. Our chances of making the tournament on Sunday were about 50/50. We didn't make it, tough luck.

Honest assessment is that we won more games than last year and lost less. We improved despite not having our most productive and efficient player. We were playing like sh!t in the middle of the season, and it would be very alarming had we not shown some fire and resilience.

Bottom line is that you have to judge for yourself. If not firing Martin before next season breaks your boner, you are being pretty unreasonable. To say that is going to take us to the top is also unreasonable at this point. What's not unreasonable is seeing the pool of talent coming back for next season, the return of Maymon, Hubbs/Davis/Landry/possiblyThompson, and expect some more improvement. Like all the reasonable posters have said for months and months and months, if we struggle next season and miss the tourney, Martin will most likely be gone, but it's much more likely that we will be a very good team all season, and we won't be anywhere near the bubble.

Again, the choice is yours.
Click to expand...

Best post I've seen in a while!
 
#15
#15
tubuku said:
We may be preseason top 25 but unless we have a great 3 point shooter we will be out of that top 25 quickly because that is all the offensive scheme I have seen from CCM. He has yet to show me he can coach when the 3's aren't falling. Anyone can coach a team who has most of there prayers answered. when that don't is when CCM is supposed to earn his money and that hasn't happened 2 years.
Click to expand...
Hubbs and McRae
 
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#16
#16
It amazes me when people come on here and say they expected Stokes to have a"better" year. For Gods sake he averaged a double double on the season. Some of you are unreal.
 
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#18
#18
SouthKnoxVOL said:
It amazes me when people come on here and say they expected Stokes to have a"better" year. For Gods sake he averaged a double double on the season. Some of you are unreal.
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That's because I doubt many of these yahoos posting this stuff even watched much UT basketball this season.
 
#19
#19
tubuku said:
We may be preseason top 25 but unless we have a great 3 point shooter we will be out of that top 25 quickly because that is all the offensive scheme I have seen from CCM. He has yet to show me he can coach when the 3's aren't falling. Anyone can coach a team who has most of there prayers answered. when that don't is when CCM is supposed to earn his money and that hasn't happened 2 years.
Click to expand...

Bottom line is you need players. Why does Cal reload every year with the top talent? Because he wants the best players. Sure, scheme and some strategy can make a difference now and then (i.e. I would like to see CCM play zone more). But, it is funny that the ones that go in are "answered prayers." They are players making plays.

I have said it a thousand times and will keep saying it until something changes- guard play is important in college basketball. We had horrible guard play in the middle of our season. Trae Golden has to be playing well for us to succeed, and he is not a true PG.
 
#20
#20
Many of you are missing the point (not a shock). Yes, we didn't have Maymon, but can anyone honestly claim this was a good year???
 
#22
#22
The bottom line is that 20 wins wasn't good enough to get us in this year. If we would have beat Gtown and lost that 4 ot game vs T A&M we probably would of been in with 20 wins. I don't even understand what it takes to get in anymore. We schedule tough games yet teams that schedule way easier get in without beating good teams. I would love to be in that room with the committee and find out what the hell they look at because some of these teams schedule tough games but they don't beat these good teams so I guess they get rewarded for trying.
 
#23
#23
MrVol said:
Year 1: Martin exceeded expectations.

Year 2: Martin did not meet expectations.

Year 3: NCAA or fired.
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How do you not meet expectations when you improve your win total from Year 1 to Year 2 sans your most valuable player?

Oh yeah, the Tennessee fanbase's expectations are ignorant.

Year 3, I agree with, though I'd bet he still got another year for fiscal reasons within the AD.
 
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#25
#25
atlantavol62 said:
Many of you are missing the point (not a shock). Yes, we didn't have Maymon, but can anyone honestly claim this was a good year???
Click to expand...

I think it's commonly accepted that 20 wins is at least a decent season (granted we had 19 in the regular season). The wrench in the mix is that even though we earned 20, we were 11-10 at one point. I tend to agree with ZJC in saying that if you had to put just one word on it, it would be mediocre. But that's most certainly not to discount our accomplishments. We were a long ways from even sniffing the tournament in January. It is amazing that we got ourselves back in position. But as we all know, even though we played so hard and came so far, we couldn't put it together when it mattered the most - the last UGA and Bama games. To say that this team sucks is outright lie, you just have to keep things in perspective.
 
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