Baker is just south of Death Valley, the hottest place on the planet.
2 Likes
It also has a great greek restaurant.
3 Likes
Yah, as others have said, it’s just south of Death Valley, so if you’re not expecting extraordinary hot/dry conditions, it’s probably your first trip through the area. It’s actually on the sort of northwestern portion of the Mohave Desert.
I have a younger brother who has lived in a Phoenix suburb, for his entire adult/married life, who has a summer home in Mohave, Arizona, on the eastern end of that great desert. I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen lots of photos and my usual unasked question is, "why would you leave the relative comfort of Phoenix, for something close to Death Valley, IN THE SUMMER? Perhaps you have to be there to understand.
But then I go out of my way to enjoy XC skiing in northern Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana in the Winter, so what do I know.
3 Likes
You can dress for the cold, you can XC and get warm.
Down in the oven, if you lose the AC, you’re (literally) toast.
Read an article about the impact of AC on the development of the west: Before it emerged, Vegas and Phoenix were really small settlements.
4 Likes
But the need for cold beer created that refrigeration that lets them live there.
#HowBeerSavedtheWorld
4 Likes
Listened to the 1st half at Baylor in the car. Ugh. Twin of last Tuesday night. Alex had Huang in out of desperation to get effort. Traore throwing the ball all a we the gym. Now watching at home and using it as an excuse to have a beer.
3 Likes
Looks like the whole team could use multiple beers.
2 Likes
Or already had some.
Seydou Traore had better not be back next year. I really try hard not to rip in any individual we’ve ever had, but for him I’ll make an exception. Haven’t disliked a guy’s game this much since Jake Schmidt.
5 Likes
Utes shooting 60% and down by 30
2 Likes
What a miserable season. Worse than I thought it would be. I have said all season that Jensen deserves pass, but this was just terrible. Second-worst season of my lifetime, 2011-12 being worse.
2 Likes
Fans clamored for Alex for 10+ years. I thought 4 conference wins was floor and 8 was probably the season. For me it isn’t the record but more the team quitting the past few games. The guys gave more effort last year after Smith was canned.
2 Likes
As I left the gymnastics meet yesterday I saw Jacob Patrick walking confirming what I have thought since he stopped playing. Preserve redshirt and transfer. My guess is that now that agents are involved they are have been contacting teams for a couple months about their guys leaving.
2 Likes
How many more games could we have won? Definitely 3, maybe up to 5. We were in some close games, but when it came to crunch time, the other team had a serious physical advantage and/or we choked.
You can see Alex had an imprint on this group, and there were stretches where we played credible basketball… and then frustrating breakdowns, and the losses & frustration had a cumulative corrosive effect, clearly. They were mailing it in the last 4 games, at least.
Loved some of our players and I hope a few are back for next year, but we were physically outmatched in every league game.
This is the $1M question for this offseason. A year of a staff in place, some seemingly promising assistants, GM Wes Wilcox from the NBA… we should see a significant uptick from the first year where a roster was thrown together long after the high-value transfers were situated.
Bottom line: No margin for error + a proclivity for error made this first season in league play a serious uphill climb.
Year 2 will be pivotal.
4 Likes
If Utah doesn’t have significant improvement next season, I just don’t know if I can stomach spending more time following the program. For 21 seasons now, Utah has made just three NCAA Tournament appearances, and none for the last nine seasons (taking away 2020). There have been a few other decent seasons, but for the most part, the program has been bad and sometimes awful. It’s so hard to swallow.
3 Likes
So in our wishful thinking of who we’d hope to have back next year, who do people like? Just spitballing I’d say Dawes, Sanders, Hayes (assuming he can beef up some), and Brown, although his D commitment needs to improve. Can’t tell enough about Langarita since he didn’t play much. Not sure there’s anyone else. Definitely not Seydou Traore. Abbey is underwhelming. I. Traore? Didn’t see him much.
Other thoughts?
Just based on my time watching way too much football practice, I think there’s a lot we just don’t know.
Dawes really progressed and is a legit B12 4. Hopefully we pay him and he wants to be part of next season. He still has upside, IMO.
Hayes was supposed to redshirt. Brown could score less points next season but be a better player if he doesn’t have to try and carry the load, with the right mix around him, if he can pick his spots to strike… and get tougher, defensively.
The Big-12 is full of quality athletes and most teams can switch 1-4 pretty effectively, so TB needs to put on 10 lbs of muscle and really commit. He’s seen what it’s like at this level… I’d like to see him back because he’s good, has heart and I like redemption stories.
I like Sanders, just a teenager, seems to have upside & I think he’ll benefit from his experience this year. Complimentary player, effective on the corner 3s, I think he’ll grow. Ibrahim Traore wasn’t much of a factor, Abbey played a lot of minutes, ran the offense effectively and handled the ball well, but no threat on the J makes it tough. He’s not Brandon Taylor, but hard to say exactly how good BT would be in the B12, either. The game changes so much as you go up levels - good players become irrelevant, great players struggle. Ask Jimmer. Ha!
Langarita we barely saw, but he has really good vision, great passer, hit a long 3 to signal he can shoot. Might be a great complimentary player, but also might be a defensive issue. Seydou Traore has an NBA body and had his moments as a lock down defender, was super streaky offensively, but not a consistent knock down shooter and too many head scratcher mistakes like throwing the ball into backcourt. (When other teams applied pressure we just didn’t look great.)
These guys would all look different with a different cast of characters around them, a different course of the season.
The part we just don’t know is what exactly happened with the team chemistry and how these guys fit into that. It was a really tough season, metric tons of reasons for morale problems, but there’s some things we don’t know, so I’m hesitant to try and judge or expect too much. Some guys will want to get away from what happened, some may have made it worse, chemistry with the coaches may have worn thin. Just don’t know.
Really hope it’s not a start-from-scratch season, those are a real challenge even in the NIL era. Hope some of the guys are back and we get an injection of difference makers.
3 Likes
Thought the team was gradually making a bit of progress, peaking on the Cincy/WV trip but the last few weeks the bottom fell out, in particular defensively, like we ran out of gas.
Hopefully can rebuild in the offseason and head back in the right direction.
1 Like
Someone posted on another webiste that Alex has been having conversations with players for several weeks about who he wants back (not very many) and who should look elsewhere. If true, I would guess that has a big effect on motivation and effort.
6 Likes
From what I’ve read here, this sounds highly plausible. From far away, and not watching closely it sure did seem that the team, as a whole, did not have much motivation to improve or at least try.
An analogy of sorts, you see it in bike races where a break gets away, and has enough riders to fill the podium and most of the money slots. The main group (peloton) suddenly sits up and is now on a training ride because they have nothing left to race for. So, maybe the team saw that they were going nowhere and stop caring. Whether that was due to talks with Alex, or they just thought that they were not really competitive so why try.
Something I like to ask the kids at races who have been dropped or just non-competitive and they look dejected, is “did you do your best?”. If they say yes, then I tell them to be proud of themselves for doing their best and maybe next race will go their way. Most of them perk up after realizing that they really did do a good job by giving their best effort.
1 Like
I believe that intelligent people change their minds and I retain an open mind about Alex. But I have to say, his first season realized my worst fears about hiring him. I’ve followed college basketball for a while. What I’ve learned is successful college basketball coaches are a special breed. They are like Holy Fools, regarding their jobs as a calling. Alex was well positioned to be a young college head coach. But his passion for the college game was such that he spent decades in the decadence of an NBA assistant job—until he was 49. I’d never hire an NBA assistant to coach a college team; maybe Alex is the exception, because of his original mentor. But I just don’t see the waste away and wear out your life passion that being a great college basketball coach requires. I thought Craig Smith was a great hire and Alex would have been a mistake. I was wrong about Smith. I hope ultimately I’m wrong about Alex.
2 Likes