Mid season College Basketball final four picks🔥 pic.twitter.com/NVvXwfhY6o

— Parker Hamann (@CBKReport) February 5, 2023

I'll Go with Danny's picks

I know Purdue just lost but man, they look really good and poised for a final four run. This season is still as open as it was from the beginning.

Those 3 picks by Nick would have city of Austin in a tizzy.

Off topic sorta. But has anyone started blasting the March Madness theme song at work? Once February hit I started blasting it during the work day

IowaBear said:

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Off topic sorta. But has anyone started blasting the March Madness theme song at work? Once February hit I started blasting it during the work day

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Metallica's Roam? I'm known to blast it at anytime!

Yup! Could listen to it 24/7 and never get tired of hearing it

I hear you. But I do prefer One Shining Moment, especially the Baylor version.



I kinda wish we had one like this for the natty year.

Creghton and Purdue are a stretch after what I saw this weekend....

Only three failed to include a Big 12 team.

Two of those included future-Big 12 Houston.

The other was the Gonzaga cloner.

I don't see any B1G team getting past the second weekend.

Not even Purdue?

Purdue is definitely good enough to get to the F4. Rutgers is capable of the S16 and that's about it for the B10.

Purdue going to be good enough to get there, but a guard heavy team is going to try to give Eddy the Drew Timme treatment. Just iso him to death.

Purdue also plays way slow. One of the slowest play styles in the country. Check their adjusted tempo on KenPom. It would be interesting to see what happens with a team that tries to turn a game against Purdue into a track meet. The usual recipe for an upset in the tournament is to slow down play, minimize possessions and try to see some randomness that is in your favor come into play. If I were game planning, I'd invert against Purdue and try to really push pace.

Not for nothing, they're probably playing slow to protect Eddy, but even with Eddy off the floor, im not sure they have the horses to win.

Im not saying Purdue gets knocked out in the first round, but their style of play is very similar to Tony Bennet at UVa and what led to they disaster against UMBC.

Bennett also turned around and won a Natty the following year. Not sure VA is a fair comparison as Purdue can score with just about anyone. They are young at the guard position but they are pretty damn talented at guard. Edey is a beast he's getting his regardless. Key to beating them is to limit the guards which is easier said than done

IowaBear said:

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Bennett also turned around and won a Natty the following year. Not sure VA is a fair comparison as Purdue can score with just about anyone. They are young at the guard position but they are pretty damn talented at guard. Edey is a beast he's getting his regardless. Key to beating them is to limit the guards which is easier said than done

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You're too bullish on Purdue. And I say that with a tremendous amount of respect for Matt Painter. High school players LOVE him on the recruiting trail. We're very fortunate that Painter's staff misevaluated Cryer and we got LJ.

Tempo can be a funky thing to evaluate without access to some advanced metrics. Slow Tempo *CAN* be a function of a lockdown defense that makes your opponents go deep into the shot clock (thereby cutting down on number of possessions).

It can also be a function of your offense being slow.

Purdue isn't quite a lock down defensive team and from the handful of games I've watched they are slowing down tempo more to protect their offense.

When UVa won it all with a super slow tempo they also had a true lock down defense (and needed a huge break against Auburn in the F4).

I get what Painter is doing. You go to war with the Army you have. But I think your prognosis is completely wrong. If you focus on defending their guards then you're leaving your frontline exposed to Edey and that will be a disaster for you.

You can't go heads up with Purdue. That's playing into their roster. The guards look so good because once the ball gets to Edey it is collapsing the defense. You end up with the same exact problem if your defense is focused on taking away the guards.

Instead, you need to drag Edey out of the paint when you're on offense and you need to run him off the floor by breaking at every opportunity. Put pressure on the ball to try to make the entry pass as tough as possible, but the game plan needs to be what Drew did to Gonzaga: force them completely out of position and to play an unfamiliar style.

historian said:

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Not even Perdue?

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Based upon recent B1G performances in the tournament.....No. B1G MBB suffers from the same ailment as B1G football, junk calorie wins against soft competition in the league leads to an inflated sense of how good they are. They aren't prepared for the grind and it shows in the Dance.

Houston and Purdue both play extremely slow and bank on sound play and crashing the glass. They play the grinding game on you and college level teams usually can't handle it.

If you have high level guards with physical active bigs you can speed teams like that up and they tend to not be able to win that type of scoring game. Takes high level performances to do it but good athletic teams can typically pull it off. Grinding type teams that are sound and take care of the basketball can also do it.

DallasBear9902 said:

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IowaBear said:

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Bennett also turned around and won a Natty the following year. Not sure VA is a fair comparison as Purdue can score with just about anyone. They are young at the guard position but they are pretty damn talented at guard. Edey is a beast he's getting his regardless. Key to beating them is to limit the guards which is easier said than done

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You're too bullish on Purdue. And I say that with a tremendous amount of respect for Matt Painter. High school players LOVE him on the recruiting trail. We're very fortunate that Painter's staff misevaluated Cryer and we got LJ.

Tempo can be a funky thing to evaluate without access to some advanced metrics. Slow Tempo *CAN* be a function of a lockdown defense that makes your opponents go deep into the shot clock (thereby cutting down on number of possessions).

It can also be a function of your offense being slow.

Purdue isn't quite a lock down defensive team and from the handful of games I've watched they are slowing down tempo more to protect their offense.

When UVa won it all with a super slow tempo they also had a true lock down defense (and needed a huge break against Auburn in the F4).

I get what Painter is doing. You go to war with the Army you have. But I think your prognosis is completely wrong. If you focus on defending their guards then you're leaving your frontline exposed to Edey and that will be a disaster for you.

You can't go heads up with Purdue. That's playing into their roster. The guards look so good because once the ball gets to Edey it is collapsing the defense. You end up with the same exact problem if your defense is focused on taking away the guards.

Instead, you need to drag Edey out of the paint when you're on offense and you need to run him off the floor by breaking at every opportunity. Put pressure on the ball to try to make the entry pass as tough as possible, but the game plan needs to be what Drew did to Gonzaga: force them completely out of position and to play an unfamiliar style.

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I know basketball! Check out the dates on my posts. Upthread I even mentioned UVa/UMBC.

DallasBear9902 said:

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DallasBear9902 said:

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IowaBear said:

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Bennett also turned around and won a Natty the following year. Not sure VA is a fair comparison as Purdue can score with just about anyone. They are young at the guard position but they are pretty damn talented at guard. Edey is a beast he's getting his regardless. Key to beating them is to limit the guards which is easier said than done

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You're too bullish on Purdue. And I say that with a tremendous amount of respect for Matt Painter. High school players LOVE him on the recruiting trail. We're very fortunate that Painter's staff misevaluated Cryer and we got LJ.

Tempo can be a funky thing to evaluate without access to some advanced metrics. Slow Tempo *CAN* be a function of a lockdown defense that makes your opponents go deep into the shot clock (thereby cutting down on number of possessions).

It can also be a function of your offense being slow.

Purdue isn't quite a lock down defensive team and from the handful of games I've watched they are slowing down tempo more to protect their offense.

When UVa won it all with a super slow tempo they also had a true lock down defense (and needed a huge break against Auburn in the F4).

I get what Painter is doing. You go to war with the Army you have. But I think your prognosis is completely wrong. If you focus on defending their guards then you're leaving your frontline exposed to Edey and that will be a disaster for you.

You can't go heads up with Purdue. That's playing into their roster. The guards look so good because once the ball gets to Edey it is collapsing the defense. You end up with the same exact problem if your defense is focused on taking away the guards.

Instead, you need to drag Edey out of the paint when you're on offense and you need to run him off the floor by breaking at every opportunity. Put pressure on the ball to try to make the entry pass as tough as possible, but the game plan needs to be what Drew did to Gonzaga: force them completely out of position and to play an unfamiliar style.

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I know basketball! Check out the dates on my posts. Upthread I even mentioned UVa/UMBC.

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Look at me Louie!