Congrats

[Octavian]

Good win tonight for your kids and Barnes.


I'm more proud of OU in tonight's loss than I have been in many of their earlier wins this season. Losing Blake and still fighting to the end against a talented team on the road goes a long with me.


But Texas had a good gameplan even before Blake's injury....Barnes had his kids playing hard and AJ put in his best game of the year. This will ensure your bid to the big dance.


Just a good hard fought basketball game between rivals. Tip of the hat to ya...congrats.

 

[busterbrown16]

This could have been the best thing to happen to OU. Losing BGriffin allowed WW to step up and he proved he can carry the load. Guys won't be afraid to pass it to him when they need a bucket or the game is on the line. They are going to need that come tournament time. I really thought OU would have a tough time making it to the Final 4, but I think their chances improved somewhat after this game.

 

[Mr. Longhorn]

I stated earlier that OU can take a positive out of this loss. This is probably what they needed. How many teams go into
the tourney ranked #1 and win it all? All you have to do is make it to have a chance to win it. They will be just fine but I would have loved to have seen what would have happened if he would have been in the game all night. Barnes had a great gameplan and it worked. OU then learned that they can stay afloat withouth Blake.

Even with this loss, if they beat Kansas, which I think they will, they will be a no1 seed, knowing that they can score without Blake. They should be ok.

 

[GoHornsGo90]

Sad to think that UT finished just out of it for the nation's 3 top freshmen. Second for Warren, second for Evans, and third/fourth for Monroe. Those two guards, or even one of them, would have put us completely over the top...J'Covan's loss hurt us more than anybody could have thought possible.

 

[Mr. Longhorn]

They next recruiting classes will make us forget about this...really quick. If we can keep everyone from going one and done next year......"Hang on to yer butts".....

Tristan Thompson will be Kevin Durant Jr.

 

[SL Xpress]

Uh, Texas didn't finish 2nd for Warren, whatever was said publicly.

Kansas had a better shot at him than Texas did.

With Tyreke Evans, I still am not convinced it wasn't going to be Memphis the whole way. Calipari and Co. just had to follow through on their promises. Once they did, it was over.

Greg Monroe didn't even ever make it to campus. I have a rough time saying Texas truly finished in any kind of order without having a visit to campus.

The main thing for me is that this year's team should be better than they are. I don't think they should be a dominating team or anything, but the season's results have been subpar, IMO, compared to what they should be.

But now they're going to make it into the tournament, and that's all I really care about at this point. And shoot, anything can happen once they're there, although I'm assuming a first round loss.

 

[GoHornsGo90]

Well, not knowing Warren personally, I don't actually know whether he lied to the public and actually liked KU more than UT. All I have to go on is, well, everybody else in the country. Evans was at UT if Rose for some reason stayed, so I don't know where you get the idea that he was Memphis bound all along because Derrick was nowhere near as gone as he was after he exploded in the tournament. Monroe, like I said, had UT third or fourth behind (obviously) GT, Duke, and LSU.

And yes, I'm also looking forward to our class next year, but I still like thinking about where we could have been this year with some help.

Oh, and Tristan Thompson is definitely NOT the second coming of Kevin Durant. He is highly ranked, but there's no comparison between the two other than projected position in the NBA and body type.

 

[SL Xpress]

GoHornsGo90,

Warren never made an official visit to Texas. It's not a matter of knowing Warren. There are all kinds of players who list Texas as a possibility with no real intention of going there. Warren was one of them. To say Texas came in second is to propagate something that's patently untrue.

Tyreke Evans may or may not have gone to Texas if Rose had stayed. However, Rose didn't stay. Players tend NOT to stay at Memphis. Rose went to Memphis with the intention of being a one and done player. I'm not as convinced as you are regarding Rose staying another year if his performance in the tournament had been a little less spectacular. He wouldn't have gone quite so high in the draft, but he was still going to be a top 10 type pick.

As far as Monroe, again, he never made it to campus. Okay, so he announced Texas as one of the 4 finalists. Big deal. When he didn't even make it to campus, how serious about Texas could he have been? Oh, and you need to add Georgetown to your list, since that's where he ended up.

The guys you should think about regarding Texas this year are players like Sylvan Landesberg, who is doing good things for Virginia, Jeff Taylor at Vanderbilt, and Anthony Jones. I think it can clearly be argued Landesberg in particular could have helped this team, but I don't think he makes them a contender or anything, and getting Landesberg would have made it a lot more difficult to land Bradley --- and we're going to LOVE Bradley.

 

[GoHornsGo90]

*sigh*

As deadly efficient as usual, SL. Believe me, I spend many an hour thinking about the effects that Landesburg would have had on this team...he has had a wonderful season this year at Virginia. I never really understood why we let him go, it seemed like we were right there. I remember the mention that there would be better players that could be recruited than him last year, but I know that Bradley wasn't nearly as much on our radar back then. Was there another reason we let him go?

 

[SL Xpress]

The word I heard is that he wasn't considered "tough enough" whatever that means. skymonkeyhorn had a great post to me where he openly wondered how someone's toughness can be questioned when he's considered the best player in the New York City Catholic league? Search me.

What I do know is that after one look at Avery Bradley there was no question about his toughness. I just think they've gotten to the point where the staff thinks they're going to hit a bunch of home runs, so don't take players early who aren't home runs. Given the signings of Bradley/Hamilton, and even Williams, and the commitments from Thompson, Bejarano, and Kabongo, and I have to say I think they have a legitimate point of view.

It doesn't mean you and I can't get frustrated at the "what might have beens" of recruiting, but there is something of a zero sum game that's played, and while they weren't heavily after Bradley specifically, I think they felt that he was the type of player they wanted if they could just find him and get in on him, as opposed to Landesberg, who while good, wasn't what they were looking for in all aspects of the game.

 

[GoHornsGo90]

Another question, SL. We are very inside oriented this year, with guys like GJ, Dex, and Damion to an extent. But we aren't really recruiting any inside guy for the next few years. Johnson will be a junior, Dex a senior, and I really don't want to rely on Chapman and Hill. Wangmene will be a sophomore, I guess, because of the shirt, but he's no stud inside offensively. We have Thompson coming in, but he's a multi-faceted, talent-rich guy who isn't a prototypical inside guy. Who are we looking to bring in to fill the need of a big man role when guys like Bejarano and Kabongo are running the guard spots?

 

[SL Xpress]

Josh Smith is their main 2009 target. That will be a tough one. I bet he ends up at UCLA.

After that, they're still evaluating. It won't be a big name, but it will be someone. No idea who it would be.

As far as it goes, I don't even have any kind of good feel for what they're doing regarding scholarships, honestly. The staff insists they're still trying to bring in J'Covan Brown, and Damien James is making noise like he wants to come back (although I'm not convinced that's the best decision). Barnes must think scholarships are like fishes and loaves.

So to answer your question, I have no idea what they're doing about big men at this point.

 

[skymonkeyhorn]

SLX, man you have got me started again about Landsberg. I thought that I had put him away as another RB mistakes but NOOO.....

RB is a great coach and decent recruiter but I do think with all due respect that Slyvan would have provided the scoring ,ballhandling, defense from the 2 spot that we do not have. Playing off of Dog and SL would be even better then he is at Virgina, and he is avg. around 17-18 pts per game. A Big Mac's AA player if I am not mistaken and we say no to him??? He really wanted to be part of UT.

By the way you are right about Evens, Monroe,Warren they did not want to come to UT, we never had a chance with them.
Avery B. would have come to UT even if SL was here playing great. He wanted to taste the waters at different schools but mom wanted him in TX.

As a program that wants to be on the elite level UT has to recuite at least one quality player per year to get to that level. RB gets a lot of players then mold them to his system(?) but at times moves away from the players strengths to play his system. Why not recruit the player that has the skill sets that he wants and plug them into the system (?)
.
Dog is an example of letting the kid play to his skill set and improving his mid-range jump shot. We should recruite BB players that play smart, can score, manage a pushing offense, plays defense, and fits UT.

RB is going to run his program as he sees fit and that is the way it should be, at times I think his"my way or the highway" is a little too much at times. Like last season and this season.

 

[GoHornsGo90]

Hmmm, Josh Smith's highlight videos remind me exactly of Dexter Pittman. They are the same height, Pitt may be a little taller and bigger. I know he's very highly ranked, but is this the kind of guy we want with uptempo players like Bejarano, Thompson, and Bradley coming in and the way we have seemingly succeeded more in the past with the sped up game?