I’m torn on this. This year’s team has clearly improved. They have good fundamentals (except for a big man who can’t reliably shoot free throws) and they play very hard. But…can Craig continue on an upward path if the 2025 players who have improved are lured away for more money?
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One of the fundamentals that I have a problem with is too many of the players pick up their dribble way outside the 3 point line and then there is a scramble for someone to get open for them to pass it to. I noticed this a lot in the Kansas game.
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I yelled about that at the TV a lot the last two games. Don’t lose your motion option without a plan or you’re forced to. That’s JHS stuff.
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Is it still a Quad 1 win when the team you beat is getting trashed by 30 in Provo?
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Reference: ASU is going to be 3-12 after getting beat at home by Houston.
Bobby Hurley is going to be canned.
He will need extensive amounts of inpatient psychiatric treatment before he can show up to the Hurley home for Thanksgiving, is my guess. Bill Walton probably could have taken him on a few trips, instead, but that’s not an option.
This league is tough. He’s not Majerus, but I think Craig has done OK.
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that’s a shame…
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At some point does our win over TDS become a quad 1 win? Their $$$$$ players are starting to come together. Fortunate that our home game against them came early in the season.
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Its darn close. BYU moved up to 31 last night with the win and 30 is the benchmark for a home win.
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Who knows. I actually don’t think Kansas is very good. Self has got to be on the hot seat.
Remember last sesson when Utah beat UCLA at home by 50? Then UCLA ended up being pretty decent.
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Self purchased players who don’t mesh. In his postgame with the press he indicated the locker room was full of players who don’t like one another. Like most of the radio discussions today, they’ve won enough to get a bid but they won’t be making a run with this season’s team.
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So many players signing NIL deals for a new team every single season. Gone are the years where you have a handful of upper classmen who are in their 3rd/4th year together at the same school and developed some chemistry.
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kind of makes me sad that we quite likely wont see the tournament under gabe madsen, just like we didnt with BC. We were lucky to have such loyalty.
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I’ll bet this becomes a problem in most programs, NIL is going to make players jealous of what their teammates are being paid and more likely to leave to another school after just one year.
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So what you are saying is that he only has himSELF to blame. Buh-dum-tish! I’ll be here all week, try the veal.
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Sadly, college basketball is kaput, my friend. I’ve stopped watching it completely, and I used to be a big fan. If I want to watch pros play, I settle for the NBA.
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Indeed players won’t resent their teammates for getting more time on the floor but rather for getting a larger paycheck.
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And who could have seen this coming? (Answer: Just about anyone paying attention.)
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I actually still believe this (hope this?). We have WAAAY too many ingredients and resources to be a total lost cause.
The problem is that it HAS been so long since we have had any consistent success. No one under 40 can even remember mbb being a national contender on a consistent basis.
But I still buy in that we are closer to being a sleeping giant than a forever-dead program. If we end up as the latter it will have more to do with macro forces in collegiate sports, not decisions being made on the Hill.
At this point, there are two ways out of where we are:
-One is that Smith somehow figures it out and organically grows a strong program.
-The other is, and I hate putting it this way, but the BYU model: infuse the program with a splash HC hire, splash recruiting, and booster support all happening simultaneously.
I have my eye on BYU to see how this lasts. The AJD recruitment was more of a perfect storm than a perfect recruitment. Give them props for sealing the deal, but I don’t expect them to land players in his strata with any regularity. (Though I could see them pulling an Igor more regularly — a somewhat under the radar foreign kid with major upside. Heck, we already did the same with Poeltl and others. It’s a proven recipe for third-tier schools.)
Question is, will Coach Young be able to turn booster investment into expected results, and if not, will the money keep coming? It’ll be interesting to see. (For instance, as a fan or a booster, what’s the very least amount of success you’d expect if you had the nation’s #1 recruit on your team? What’s a success and what’s a letdown?). I think it’s more likely BYU comes short of the hype than matching it. (For reference, see the “Lone Peak 4” and all of the Final Fours they didn’t make as predicted by some of their faithful.) Their historical record doesn’t point to powerhouse potential. We’ll see. NIL and open transfer really do change the game.
Back to Utah, we’re not dead yet, but I would say our heart rate has steadily been dropping since 2016 and flatlining for the last four years. We need a jump soon, or we could be in trouble much longer term.
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For me, the question is whether someone or some group will want to donate (without a tax deduction) large amounts of money to pay the players.
It is one thing to donate money to put your name on something permanently, and substantially reduce tax burden through deduction. Everyone likes to feel as if they are making a legacy and everyone likes to pay less in taxes.
It is altogether different to give money to players where there will be no legacy, no one will remember you did it, and you still have to pay taxes on the money you are giving away. I suppose it helps to have so much money that 10mil doesn’t hurt- like a normal person splurging to go out and get ice cream for the family. There just are not that many people with that much money.
Obviously people around the country are doing it- BYU boosters are doing quite a lot of it. I can’t tell how much Utah boosters are doing it. Without this, I doubt Utah will get back to being a national contender.
The program used to be able to spot a diamond-in-the rough prospect and take a few years to develop him into a star for our system. By doing this, the program (Majerus) could outperform teams consisting of previously elite prospects. But this was a hard lift and even he could not do it every year. He could put together a good team every year but not an elite team every year. He almost never had elite prospects to start with.
Now, not only does Utah fail to get elite prospects, Utah can not even hold on to their starters. The team has outperformed expectations this year- how much better would they have been with Deivon Smith? I thought he was clearly our best player and we were unable to retain him. Without enough $ to keep our best players the program will never be elite.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer-
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And you find that diamond in the rough, develop the player into something very special, and in a couple of years another team comes in with a fistful of $$$$$ and takes him away.
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