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Seriously? Oats didn't address his team in person before he boarded that private jet? I'm really surprised by this. That's the least you can do to your players.

I think best case scenario is to take Oat's salary and divide it amongst Whitesell and Hodgson. Whitesell - $500k, Hodgson, $300k. Whitesell takes over and grooms Hodgson to succeed him. Not sure what kind of relationship the two have together, but ... Whitesell is 59. So he's still got a good 5 years left. Now will Hodgson wait 5 years for his chance? Might be worth it if he's associate HC. At Alabama, he's going to have to be the 3rd or 4th coach. Do stuff like videos and recruiting. Oats needs to hire some big guns if he's going to succeed. For Hodgson, it actually might be his best chance to land a head coaching job at a decent D1 school.

Talk about money, but man. They flew a private jet to pick up Oats. How can you compete with that? So it's not just the salary, but everything is going to be first class. Facilities, perks, shoes, meals, hotels, travel, ... I guess we're all human after all.

That sucks.

I never understood football school or basketball school. Look if you have the name, money, fans and prestige, it’s a good job. I honestly think Bama is a perfect job for an up and comer like Oats. He will do well. He’s a great coach. He’s a great guy too. I voted option 1 because I think the program will be in the top 25 each year. Maybe not national title, but I can see something like Virginia in five years.

I like Hodgson, but he has no experience running a program. I think if we stay within Whitesell is the better choice. I hope Hodgson will stay but there is no way we can compete with Bama. Hodgson might be too much of a risk. I read up on Pat Belein. He looks like a good choice on paper. One positive is that Buffalo is a much better job than 4 years ago when Hurley left.

Just read the letter. Says Whitesell is the interim head coach. That’s nice of Whitesell. Hope he and Hogson can both stay.

I think this is an amazing opportunity. He can make Bama basketball a national power. Sad to hear he’s leaving. I will be rooting for Bama basketball. Hope he wins a national championship.

Guys, I think we are jumping the gun about wanting a midrange jump shooter. I thought we could have used one against Tech but let’s not get carried away. That’s still an inefficient shot. It does come in handy when a play breaks down and there is no time on the clock but other than that, I don’t think we change our offense. Wes was allowed to do it because well it was Wes. For next year: the most important guy is Nate Oats. - This guy turned Blake Hamilton into a star. - As good as CJ was, I’m not sure he gets to MAC player of the year without Oats. - Caruthers became a MAC defensive player of the year. The kid was just a volume scorer before Oats. - Perkins I won’t mention since he was a good recruit. Anyway my point is that Oats has done far more with far less. He has s system and it works. Is he the next Popovich? Heck why not. He’s that good.

So I had to hit rewind and watch the tape. Here’s what I saw. First play of the game. CJ gets a contested layup. Gets bumped before the shot. No foul. Ball bounces off. I think this is important. Sets the tone for the night. CJ is going to have a rough night. Refs are not going help. Perkins stabilizes this team. Without him keeping it together, game would have been over in the first half. Wasn’t sure when I watched this live but Jordan had a really good game. He had some big buckets and was very active on offense. I hate to point out one player but watching the video, I couldn’t help but notice how bad Harris was. He took some bad shots. But I can live with his offense cause we all know he can explode but the issue really was his defense and lack of effort. He was constantly getting beat by his man. And when he helped, it was a lazy help. And then to top it off, he didn’t box out which led to many offensive rebounds for Tech. He usually plays very casually but he was noticeably out of it on rewind. CJ was off. I can’t explain it. But when your best player is off like that it makes it almost impossible to win against a top ten team. I’ve rarely seen him have a bad game but it might actually be the worst I’ve seen him play. I think the crowd was a factor. We played in a hostile setting. We have not played in a setting like this in the ncaas. In the beginning of the game when TT hit some really tough shots. Some of it was their athleticism but still... I doubt they make those shots on a regular basis. We played tough D and we were definitely unlucky with some bounces on rebounds. Caruthers is the one player who got the brunt of TTs length. He got blocked a lot. We took the lead 26-25. We won that stretch by sheer will. It was not pretty. It goes to show how tough our team was this year. We didn’t win but I commend the players for that stretch. It gave us a chance. At the same time TT played absolutely horrible during that stretch. It was some ugly basketball. They did not look like a top team. We did not play bad to close out the half but TT got some freebies at the line and they converted. We didn’t. Perkins missed a front end of a 1 and 1. In a game like this those misses are magnified. Jordan makes a great drive to the basket but the ball doesn’t fall Second half, TT again makes incredible shots. Everything is falling. I think mentally this was the tough part. We had clawed our way back and then to just have the lead expand that easily. Then I think the cliche of the wheels coming off is the only way I can describe it. Everything went wrong at this point. With the crowd going nuts, the opposing players feeling invincible, the game gets out of hand quickly. Credit goes to Coach Beard. I think he knew our team tendency and attacked it. One thing I noticed was how there were always 2 or 3 guys on our penetration. He did not give up anything easy at the rim. I had to think about this but I don’t think we had a player who plays the midrange game this year. I know that’s the most inefficient shot in the game today and it is probably by design but perhaps one can counter the analytics based team by playing only the 3 point line and the paint. Wes Clark would have done well on Sunday cause the midrange jumper was sorely needed. overall, it was ugly but I don’t think it was as bad as it looked. Some of it was that it was not our day but I don’t think the issue was the talent gap which most would automatically conclude. Some of it really was scheme and some the emotion of an ncaa game. We had a rough night. It happens. We will be back. Coach Oats is good. He will be hungry to bring another group back soon. I am pretty sure of it. Some of the way he generates offense is really innovative. He will make the next group shine. He always does. He knows what he’s doing.

Wow Oats turned down double his salary. Amazing! We need to build and work on getting him a raise for next year again. That might mean higher ticket prices.

Yeah, Villanova shot lights out in those games. Again, I'm not saying I have the solution. It's a coaching dilemma. I just looked at Davonta Jordan's numbers. He actually shot 48% from 3 last year. He didn't shoot bad this year, but he has the potential to be a good 3 point shooter. Now how does someone have about the same 3point and FT percentage. That's totally inexplicable. With 3s, I think our whole team was just not consistent this year. It's amazing how good we were despite not shooting it that well from deep.

This is something my eye tells me every year when we face the Power 5 conferences, but we need to upgrade our frontcourt players. Perkins was a beast, but he really was the only one there. Perhaps having Smart yesterday would have helped. These P5 programs just have bigger guys and more of them. It made sense to run 4 guards this year because of our personnel. You play your best team, but in the future we might consider going with a more traditional big. Harris was our starting 4, but he's really a 3. We can win in the MAC with 4 guards, but facing these trees in the tournament is really tough unless you're shooting lights out from deep. It's a tough predicament for the coaching staff. Playing 4 guards still might be our best shot with our inability to recruit dominant bigs. We should be right there again. We might not be an at large again next year, but we have enough to get us back to being MAC champions. Winning that thing as everyone knows is not easy, but I think we should have the best chance. If there are let's say 4 teams with equal chance and we are favored, it's still only slightly higher than 25% to win the MAC. It's really tough to win.

How about programs that sent both teams to round of 32 for 2 straight years. From that list, we can knock ASU, Syracuse, (since they both lost their first game) so I'm assuming it's only. UB, FSU, Gonzaga and Tennessee.

I was thoroughly impressed by UCF. They have some athletes. One bad bounce.

Tough day for Buffalo. For whatever reason, outside of Perkins who was a beast again, we just didn’t have it. Texas Tech had a lot to do with it. Somehow we clawed our way back but we just could not score in the second half. I have to watch the tape but that traveling call in the first half I though was pretty ridiculous. Could not score after that play. Min the end, Texas looked like they had the better team. They packed it in the middle and made it hard for us to score inside. We could have really used a outside shooting specialist today. Unfortunately we don’t have one although CJ is pretty close. i honestly think if we played again our team would fare better. It’s unfortunate that we played one of our worst offensive game to end the season but that is sports. Nothing seemed to go right today and it was one of those days. It was the worst loss for UB at the NCAAs. WVU, Miami, Kentucky, we had our chances in those games. It didn’t feel that way today. This team has put UB on the map. We will be back. We are knocking on the door. We’ve won two games in the NCAA in the last two years. That is an amazing feat.

Press conference good read. its going to be a battle today. Sounds like a physical team. https://www.google.com/amp/s/247sports.com/college/texas-tech/LongFormArticle/Texas-Tech-Chris-Beard-press-conference-quotes-NCAA-tournament-130437063/Amp/

Team is playing amazing. Perkins is a triple threat. Outside, driving in and postup.

Just listened to Steve Smith and Andy Katz. Katz has us beating Texas Tech. He thinks we are due for a breakthrough. He has us falling to Michigan. Is anyone else a little uncomfortable with all the love from the experts? Next thing we know Barkley is going to jump on the wagon.

Women are playing at the same time as the men? That’s a bummer.

Just finished listening on the Dakich and Greenberg podcast. Greenberg is really down on us. Here is his point, I can’t disagree completely. He has us losing to ASU but the bigger thing is he loves Texas tech - we play fast, but not sure we are good enough to play this speed - take too many bad shots. Too many 3s for a team that doesn’t shoot it well - we might be overrated at this point I honestly think he’s got some fair points. On us playing fast, I think we need to play this way taking too many bad shots. I do think at times we settle for a bad 3. Rece Davis however has us in the elite eight. Wow. Jay Bilas who we hated over the years is also very high on us. I think we all recognize that we are better this year, but we are missing one key piece. A bail out scorer in Wes Clark. I am not sure who that is this year. It could be Harris or CJ. I think our fate lies in the hands of how good Harris is. CJ will be consistently good. I think Perkins will be a factor. Now can Harris take over a game like he can? We need him to be that guy (against Zona, MAC finals this year) if we are to go beyond the first game.

More than Hurley vs Buffalo, it's Hurley vs Oats. Teacher vs Pupil. How much of their offense is the same? Oats must know Hurley's system. Is Oats running the same system or is it new? Players win the games, but this game will be a bigger chess match than most.

Right now Lunardi has us as a 6th seed against .… drum roll … ASU.

Fantastic

Great News!