Safe to say the Big Ten was grossly overrated

#51
#51
Stopped reading after "I did not include Stackhouse." That was a great meal I had at that restaurant, except for the rat turd in my beer.

Are you including wins/tournament achievements from before they became an SEC coach? For example, are you counting Howland's 3 Final Fours from UCLA or Rick's Final Four from Texas? I mean, Howland has stunk at Miss St, but whatever makes your argument look better...
Yes I am. You can’t look at just one of their stops. They were coaches at D1 schools elsewhere too. The NCAAT is the same regardless. You have to win games and the current SEC coaches have proven they can do it. Either way the Big 10 is irrelevant without Tom Izzo’s resume. He’s the only great coach in that conference. Buzz Williams has stunk at A&M but he had plenty of success at Marquette and Virginia Tech. That doesn’t mean he’s not a good coach. The SEC is littered with good coaches.
 
#52
#52
Yes I am. You can’t look at just one of their stops. They were coaches at D1 schools elsewhere too. The NCAAT is the same regardless. You have to win games and the current SEC coaches have proven they can do it. Either way the Big 10 is irrelevant without Tom Izzo’s resume. He’s the only great coach in that conference. Buzz Williams has stunk at A&M but he had plenty of success at Marquette and Virginia Tech. That doesn’t mean he’s not a good coach. The SEC is littered with good coaches.
If the point of this exercise is to compare the relative strength of conferences in terms of coaches, wouldn't you agree that what they did at a previous stop outside of the conference is kind of irrelevant? Cal had a lot of success at UMass and Memphis. Would you still consider him a great coach if he was bad at Kentucky? "He's a great coach - he's just terrible at his current job" is kind of a weird argument.
 
#53
#53
Part of the problem is that North Carolina and Duke early in the season when both were highly rated were losing to Big Ten teams so the Big Ten got over rated.
I agree they are over rated. One National Championship (Michigan State) in the last 30 years.
 
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#54
#54
If the point of this exercise is to compare the relative strength of conferences in terms of coaches, wouldn't you agree that what they did at a previous stop outside of the conference is kind of irrelevant? Cal had a lot of success at UMass and Memphis. Would you still consider him a great coach if he was bad at Kentucky? "He's a great coach - he's just terrible at his current job" is kind of a weird argument.
Yes I would consider him a great coach regardless of what he’s done at Kentucky. He took freaking UMass to a Sweet 16, Elite 8 and Final 4 in different seasons. Then he went to Memphis and made them a national powerhouse. Amazingly enough, he has a better winning percentage at Kentucky than either of his stops at UMass and Memphis. Those two places alone made him a great coach and Kentucky is just icing on the cake for him. I don’t like the guy but he’s a proven winner everywhere he’s been in college.

My point is that if the conference has more quality coaches, someone or even multiple coaches are mathematically going to be the odd man/men. You can’t have 12 teams being successful in the same conference so even though the SEC is littered with good coaches, some are going to naturally not make it because that’s the nature of the beast. Just because they don’t pan out in the SEC doesn’t mean they aren’t good coaches.

Howland is a prime example. If you go to 3 consecutive Final Fours, that makes you a good coach. That’s not luck. UCLA just has some extremely high expectations. It’s not very often that a guy gets fired after a 25 win season and finished 1st in the conference but that’s exactly what happened and they haven’t really been the same until this season. He has only made one tournament at Miss St but he was tied for 4th last year and then Covid happened. He actually had 3 consecutive 20 win seasons up until this year. Miss St isn’t a basketball power and I find that pretty impressive.
 
#56
#56
Part of the problem is that North Carolina and Duke early in the season when both were highly rated were losing to Big Ten teams so the Big Ten got over rated.
I agree they are over rated. One National Championship (Michigan State) in the last 30 years.
Great point. And what hurt the SEC is Bama dominated in conference but went 6-4 out of conference. Most of it was early but not that OU loss.
 
#60
#60
This year by the hoop experts. All we heard was how good that league was

Much St-gone
Ohio St-gone
Purdue-gone
Illinois-gone
Rutgers-gone

All but Mich st & Rutgers to lower seeds.
Yes it was; just like the SEC was overrated in the women's tournament.
 
#61
#61
Nah, I’d say most people would anoint the ACC king.
ACC basketball has an SEC football quality based on the # of championships, the traditions, the coaches, the # of professional superstars and the # of teams that have won titles or gone to Final 4’s dating back to the early 80s and even earlier. It certainly wasn’t a good year for the ACC competitively in any of the $ sports, despite getting “2 teams” in the CFP .
 

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