We seem to get one impact player each year ( Haggerty and Odom) but it takes at least three to be really competitive.
But are we REALLY playing good basketball? Our wins are the product of beating terrible teams...and playing not to lose at the end which is just pathetic.
The win at Temple was completely unexpected. Temple hadn't lost at home all year. True about most of Tulsa's wins. TU is playing better. But, obviously, not where the program should be.
We are in purgatory. A change must be made...if we don't make a change after the season it's very concerning.
I hear you, Larry. Sometimes you have to meet life where you find it. Like your sweet but dumb friend gets promoted to assistant manager at Starbucks. You're happy for them, not bagging on them for not being a VP. That's this team. Short term, it's nice to see the team do a little better. Long term, we're 11-15. Sneaking a few unexpected wins will be fun and won't have any impact on what happens after the season. Either the admin is going to make a move everyone knows needs to be made or they're not. Not like they'll say "we got to 14-16, guess Konkol is a keeper!".
Yes, It has changed from kids going to blue blood schools (Kansas) to whatever school has the largest donor NIL pool. The kids take the bigger money and know that the NBA will take kids from any school now unlike olden days when smaller schools had no television exposure. Teams like SMU, Memphis, and UAB can now compete with Kansas for players.
Konkol will be gone this year or next. If they give Konkol another year it will be some combination of the following:
But i'm not sure facts support this. Look at the 33 teams that got more than 1 vote in the top 25 this week. I don't know really, but do we think that Iowa St., St. John's, Marquette, Louisville, New Mexico, St. Mary's, Creighton, and George Mason are in the top 33 largest NIL budgets? I think NIL has dislodged prior powers but I'm not sure it's replaced them only with giant NIL teams. The correlation between NIL budget and ranking seems not to be as strong as we give it credit for.
You list a lot of smaller schools. But few know if they have huge alumni donors who are filling NIL buckets. It is not a recordable category at most schools. There is no way to tell except when you see kids sign with those schools instead of Kansas and North Carolina. Even then the power schools can soon use their own money 20 million a year toward NIL instead of the collectives so the large schools from the SEC and Big 10 still have an advantage.
The Googles have some info on NIL budgets but totally agree that it's hard to know. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's true to say the only reason someone would sign at some place like St. John's is bc they got paid a lot more. We have no more info on that than on the overall NIL budgets. I'm sure Marquette and St. John's have good NIL budgets but I'd be surprised if they're top 10 in the country. You probably need to be in the ballpark but some players seem willing to take less from a school they really like. Maybe I'm wrong but that just seems to support the results that we actually see.
I agree C&L..... I do know that if we don't sign about 3 starting impact players out of the portal, we are toast again next year in the AAC. You have to keep signing All-Conference players from lower conferences who are Seniors or Graduates in the portal. Odom was a perfect example. But it takes at least three each year in basketball who can be instant starters if you are to compete for the top spots.
