Discussion about this post

User's avatar
wseitz's avatar

I know championships are all that matters, but after a decade+ of mediocrity (outside of one year) and unlikeable coaches, it's just nice to see them in national conversation all year long. Most of the season in the top 10, all in the top 15, no sweating out selection Sunday, beating all of the nonconference teams they're supposed to beat, handily for the most part, and a successful but tough conference season. That's not a lot to ask for, but more than has been provided for a long time. It's nice to be able to look forward to the next season again.

So I evaluate the season based on whether I received entertainment and enjoyment commensurate with the level of my expectations, and whether they were worth the time I spent watching and reading about them, then for me it was a successful season.

Expand full comment
gbruin's avatar

Great article, DD. I agree the season was largely successful, and at the same time I agree they could have achieved more. The basic problem with this team to me was inconsistency and the inability to avoid the awful floor moments, which was puzzling given the veteran players with deep Tourney experience who you would imagine would be regularly reliable and immune to laying an egg. The same Bruins that made a FF4 run last year and which beat a FF team in Nova and a 1 seed in Az this year was the same team that lost at ASU and Oregon twice and wasn't competitive with Gonzaga, 4 games with a better performance could have earned the Bruins a 3 or even 2 seed and a better run through this year's tourney. Even with the 4 seed and second place P-12 finish, we made a huge leap from last year's play-in status, Tyger and Jaquez made really big improvements, and we had a pathway to the FF4 in our hands. This big difference this time was that we didn't have Johnny Juzang playing at (or beyond?) his absolute peak for 5 games to make up for the other areas of inconsistency/injury/unlucky bounces/hot opponents. In the end, we still basically outplayed or were even with UNC for just over 38 minutes, and then a minute and a half of execution issues and a poor defensive scheme ended our season, otherwise that could very well have been us playing Kansas tonight instead of the Tar Heels. Certainly Cronin needs to improve in areas of personnel usage. Retaining Jaquez, Clark, and Payton (Juzang would be a bonus but I'm not expecting it) is key going forward and will show us a lot about what next season might bring.

Expand full comment
57 more comments...

No posts