Rambling0101 wrote:
1st post so bear with me.
1) Kennedy is in the dog house until he quits having lapses on D. Porter is willing to sacrifice short term for the benefit of 28 minutes in March for Marquise.
2) Welch may never start at the 4. I would love to see it, but Porter's system is 4 out 1 in. He has been terrific this year, but right now he's in a backup roll at the 5 and we dont have a true 4 in this sytem.
3) P5 jobs and coaching. Tell me the last guy that one at BC. Its all about the players (see Illinois). Underwood is no incredible tactician, neither is Bill Self and maybe not Porter. But, our guy got to a final 4 by developing and recruiting underrated talent to fit his ideal system. I don't recall seeing P5 schools line up for Ingram or Krut, but they sure played like top level P5 guys. That's a huge part of coaching, it is not just in game tactics.
4) Last nights game is meaningless. A sweep by ISU would hurt though.
Welcome Rambling!
I agree that Kennedy is having lapses on D, but Hall and Norris have similar lapses more than regularly. If you're going to have a quick hook with Kennedy, it only seems fair to have a quick hook with the other two. Especially Hall who's a senior and should know the defense by now.
BC's previous coach Steve Donahue came from Cornell (who he took to the sweet 16 in 2010), lasted four years, was brutal, and was fired. The coach before that coach was Al Skinner. He made 7 NCAA tournaments in 13 seasons, including a sweet 16 run in 2006. I used BC as a specific example, but I think you could substitute 60% of P5 programs into that example instead.
You'll probably lose against the big boys in your conference (for example: ACC - Duke, UVA, Louisville, UNC, Florida St., Big 10 - Michigan St., Wisconsin, Michigan, OSU, Iowa this year, SEC - Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, LSU, etc.). At best, you steal a win from somebody. That math means you need to beat the bottom feeders of the conference plus not suffer bad losses in non-con. We didn't have those non-con losses this year, but this was a should win game that we choked up. We have a few of them every year.
Tonight's win was a good team win where we didn't make silly mistakes that cost us the game. Yesterday's loss though was really bad. As a mid major, we'll always be on the cusp of the bubble unless we start making it a habit to run roughshod over the league, especially against the worst teams in the league. That's how Butler, Wichita St., VCU, Dayton, Gonzaga, etc. made the tournament year in and year out. We could get away with losing games to high NET teams (Drake, Bradley, UNI in any other season), but InSU ain't it. Until then, these losses will be bad because the selection committee will hold it against us when filling out the bracket.