We've seen Calipari lead teams struggle in the types of games games that this team has really handled, where they've really just buried the other team. Doesn't that mean they have individual talent; that just they just can't/won't play as a team?
How can they still crush cupcakes and not be good?
- Thread starter KYAnywhereEverywhere
- Start date
Two things that stick out to me:
1 - The past games you are thinking of are against mid-majors ranked around the 100s and with a good shot of being an 11-13 seed type tourney team. The games this year are against 300s ranked low D1 teams that, if by some miracle went on a run in the conference tourney would be the play-in 16. Huge difference. None of Cal's bad teams struggled against the 300-caliber teams. If you remember, the 8-20 team demolished Morehead to start the season.
2 - This is just conjecture but I don't see the elite players getting up to play games against inferior competition. We needed a John Wall buzzer beater to beat Miami (OH). Clearly not a talent issue on that team.
TBQH, I have no idea what the point of these 300s type games are. I can't imagine anyone enjoys watching them? A scrimmage in practice is better competition. Clearly, success against these types of teams is not correlating to any success against actual teams this year.
1 - The past games you are thinking of are against mid-majors ranked around the 100s and with a good shot of being an 11-13 seed type tourney team. The games this year are against 300s ranked low D1 teams that, if by some miracle went on a run in the conference tourney would be the play-in 16. Huge difference. None of Cal's bad teams struggled against the 300-caliber teams. If you remember, the 8-20 team demolished Morehead to start the season.
2 - This is just conjecture but I don't see the elite players getting up to play games against inferior competition. We needed a John Wall buzzer beater to beat Miami (OH). Clearly not a talent issue on that team.
TBQH, I have no idea what the point of these 300s type games are. I can't imagine anyone enjoys watching them? A scrimmage in practice is better competition. Clearly, success against these types of teams is not correlating to any success against actual teams this year.
To answers the last part, it's to see individual plays and individual players doing really entertaining things. A lot of people like when the guys get to show off a little. People like to see things that usually don't/can't happen in more competitive games. Also, I do think there's talent on this team, maybe not as much as we hoped, but it's I think it's not talent that goes together; there's no fluidity at all.
Most of these cupcakes we’re beating are some of the worst teams in the country, teams ranked near the bottom in all of college basketball. They’re getting blown out even by other cupcakes. They’d probably lose to decent Division II or NAIA schools.
I wanted to come back to something. I'm just watching the most recent game now. Watching the opposing coaches of the bottom tier teams is always fun. They get so performative on this stage, like anything they say is really going to matter.
Even at that, our guys show how much better they are. You can see some real talent, and I think it's because of the talent gap.