Quote from: Zog from Margo on December 03, 2025, 06:10:13 PMI'm surprised you cannot see how much Hamilton has progressed since first arriving at MU. He's not a good player but he's a lot better than he was. Contrast that with Owens who has regressed and Parham and Lowery who are not playing any better than they did a year ago. Did you see Norman's 3 attempt last night? I actually laughed.

I'm sure Hamilton has progressed and worked hard, but this isn't summer camp or middle school house league. Improving from a 0 star recruit to a low-major college basketball player is great, but just improving is not good enough to play almost 20 minutes a night at a program with Marquette's aspirations. It's not Caedin's fault. He's been put in a no-win situation by his coaches.

As for Tre, he's not good either. But he's getting half the time, in sheltered minutes, and at least brings some defensive value to the court.

QuoteI'm sure you and others want Shaka to run Hamilton and Clark after the season. Look on the bright side. Maybe he will.

Meh. Don't really care one way or the other if they stay or go. But there's really no incentive for them to leave, if MU's NIL structure is as has been reported. Get paid for sitting on the bench at MU or get peanuts for playing time in the Big South?
I just want Shaka to recruit more based on talent than traits.

Quote from: The Sultan on December 03, 2025, 04:19:34 PMAt this point, trading him probably makes the most sense. I just don't trust the people doing it.

Wait, you don't trust a Jimmy Haslam owned team?!?

Quote from: wisblue on Today at 07:35:50 AMFor reasons that I gave when you said this on another thread, it would be MUCH crazier.

It wouldn't be.

If you go through T-Rank, Marquette was playing like the #16 team in the country to that point of the 2023 season, Wisconsin was playing like the #55 team in the country. It isn't quite apples to apples, but when current #56 Butler plays at #15 St. John's this year, T-Rank has Butler as a +12.2 point underdog with a 14% chance to win.

Currently, T-Rank has us as a +10.4 underdog with an 18% chance to win. That's using preseason data. If you filter it to just this year, we are ranked #112 and Wisconsin is #35. If you look at when current #112 DePaul plays at current #38 Creighton, they are +11.4 with a 15% chance to win.

The spread was likely lower at the time because Vegas was factoring in preseason expectations that had us ranked #32 in kenpom and Wisconsin just slightly behind at #47, but we all know the gap in reality was much larger between those two teams. Any way you split it, the probabilities would be within a few points on either spreads or percentages.

Quote from: reinko on November 20, 2025, 08:44:51 AMThe fam booked a Spring break trip to the Florida Keys (AirBnb is just north of Key Largo).

Any must see towns (or skippable), landmarks, parks, beaches, touristy cool stuff (will have an 11 year old with us).

Is your AirBnb at Manatee Cove?

Key West was great.  Stayed at Southernmost Point resort.  Great spot for kids (couple of pools plus a beach).  Ate a ton of good food in KW.  Blue Heaven, Half Shell Raw Bar, Kaya Island Eats, Moondog Cafe, Frenchies, Banana Cafe, La Grignote, Abbondanza... Good drinks at First Flight (original location of PanAm HQ), Waterfront brewery, Tony's, Sloppy Joes (would skip next time), and especially General Horseplay.  Checked out the Fort and State Park, Hemmingway's House, Butterfly conservatory (gem), cemetery, marina, various beaches, parks, and piers.  Great place to go, relax, enjoy the weather, and food.

In transit we checked out Blue Hole.  Kind of interesting, not sure it was worth the extra drive, but we didn't have anything else to do.

Key Largo area wasn't as great.  Had mostly good food.  Recommend Lorelei, Florida Keys Brewing, Islamorada Brewing (both breweries had fantastic outdoor areas that kids can run around or play games at), Wahoo's, Hobo Cafe, Blonde Giraffe Key Lime Pie... all really good.  Some decent places, Buzzards Roost, Gilberts Resort (amazing potential here, the sunset views were great).  Also, HIGHLY recommend Alabama Jacks on the way down.  If you head there from Hwy 1 you don't have to pay the toll to cross the bridge since the restaurant is just before the toll.  Great conch!

I recommend getting a pound of stone crab claws from https://www.keylargofisheries.com/ Go inside to the fish market to the left of the bar/restaurant and order a pound to take home.  Have them crack the claws for you.  They're incredible right now. 

For things to do, we fed the fish at Robbies (probably as far South as you will want to go unless you are planning on going to Key West), watched a bunch of sunsets, Rain Barrel Village to check out some art as well as the giant spiny lobster, the Wild Bird Sanctuary, John Pennekamp State Park.  Don't expect any true beaches in the Key Largo area.  They're all man made and frankly, calling them a beach is a stretch.  We didn't do Theater of the Seas (have seen that sort of thing more than a few times) or go out on a boat ($800 for 4 hours of fishing felt excessive).  We felt like we did everything there was to do and see in the upper keys in our 5 days, though you have kids so there may be a few more things for you guys to find.  We also spent most of one day fishing from the pier of the airbnb, but didn't have much luck.  Couple of small fish.  If I had one more day I'd probably have taken out the kayak, but every day aside from our last day was too windy.

If you're flying in and out of Miami and have to make your flight out early in the morning remember that driving in Miami is awful.  Traffic, terrible drivers, and nonsense street design will delay you more than you think.  It took us almost an extra hour to get from the upper keys to Miami than it did to go South.

We saw lemon sharks, nurse sharks, dolphins, manatees (delicious!), tarpon, a ton of birds, iguanas (invasive), and Key Deer... and about a million wild chickens.

Overall, we had a great time.  The food was really good overall, but be warned the portions are HUGE everywhere, and there was enough for us to enjoy for the ten days we were there.  Thank you everyone for your recommendations!

Enjoy your trip, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Quote from: MuggsyB on December 03, 2025, 10:07:19 PMForce Boyd right.  Make the concerted effort.   As for Blackwell?  He's capable of going off but is definitely streaky.  The glass is our biggest issue.   

Shooting,lack of in our case, is our biggest issue.

Quote from: GoldenEagles03 on December 03, 2025, 02:01:29 PMAdrien looked great in his minutes. It is rather concerning that our Freshman are much better than our Sophomores and Juniors.

That is it in a nutshell. Al use to say the best thing about freshmen is they become sophomores. There has been very little, if any, improvement with the sophomores and juniors. That is very concerning. Early indicators are several of the players are looking like big recruiting misses. Hope I am wrong.

Quote from: JWags85 on December 03, 2025, 08:13:03 PMYea, there is a big fall off from B10 to B12 and then an even bigger one to the ACC.  I'd be pretty comfortable saying any of the top 4 teams in the American (UNT, Tulane, USF, Navy) would finish top 5 in the ACC this year easily.

Speaking of the ACC, kind of funky that neither team in the ACC Championship game played, much less beat, Miami this year.  And Duke, who didn't beat a team in the top 40 all season and didn't beat a team with a winning record in the ACC, wins the tiebreak on "conference opponent win percentage" cause their mediocre opponents were slightly less mediocre.  Funny enough, not playing FSU helped Duke's SOS.

They really should use a CFP ranking tie breaker instead. Miami and Virginia guarantees an ACC team in the playoffs. A Duke win may keep the conference out - which is pretty embarrassing.

Quote from: The_Blaze on December 03, 2025, 08:21:03 PMSomething more may be going on. Owens is playing but only a few minutes a game so he is not hurt which held him back last season - or at least I have not heard Shaka say he has a nagging injury that is holding back his minutes now.  He has averaged 3 minutes a game the past 4 games and he did not play at all against OK and we needed his athleticism that game.

Owen's ceiling is huge.  I didn't expect him to hit it this season but I did expect him to be in the primary rotation once the Big East games started - not just because of his potential and hype coming out of high school but also because his distinct skills, athleticism and size is something MU needs help with now on the court.

The only thing "going on" is that he isn't playing basketball very well when he is on the floor.

Quote from: brewcity77 on Today at 07:55:00 AMWe didn't necessarily need a star, we needed serviceable. If you want to make these lists, look around the Big East. We needed a second scoring option and a big man. A proven point wouldn't have hurt, but the expectations for Sean were that he'd be that, so I get where we are.

Scorers: Jaylin Sellers (Providence), Bryce Lindsay (Villanova), Michael Ajayi (Butler)
Bigs: Vince Iwuchukwu (Georgetown), Stephon Payne (Seton Hall), Duke Brennan (Villanova)

There are many more guys out there, but we certainly could've competed for this level of player. All would be improvements to our current roster. Give us one from each list and we're 8-1 and comfortably in the bubble (at worst) conversation.

And I think any of those guys are well within our NIL budget.

Quote from: The Sultan on Today at 07:57:20 AMWonder what Tony Candelino is up to these days...

According to a Google search, he's coaching basketball in Florida.

https://www.fieldlevel.com/app/coach-profile/anthony.candelino