Have you ever seen a CB team this deep?

L

Longhorn01

500+ Posts
Not just a Texas team, any team. This is ridiculous. The announcers called our substitutions hockey shifts last night. A pretty good analogy when you see three players come in at a time over and over again. At another point Pitman game in for Varez Ward. Lot of versatility with the players too.

Sloppy game offensively, but it looks like Barnes is going to use the depth to get after people with some high intensity "40 mins of hell" type defense.
 
Blessing and a curse. Chapman and Lucas weren't available yesterday, and we still had too many players for the minutes available. Gary Johnson, a veteran, was already talking about a lack of PT last night, and it's only the 2nd game. (Not a knock on Gary, just an observation from the post-game interview.)

It's going to be very tough to get guys enough minutes to grow as much as they're capable. Barnes has great talent, but a tough job ahead of him.
 
If Pittman, James, and Hamilton continue to play as sloppily or lethargically as they tended to last night, Johnson should get lots of minutes.
 
I wasn't intending that to be a comment that James, Pittman, or Hamilton are a detriment to the team. I just thought their play last night was not superior to Johnson's, and that included James.

Pittman wasn't doing nearly enough to establish position and keep defenders away from entry passes. I thought he was kind of lethargic.

Hamilton was jacking up shots and doing silly things on defense. I thought he was kind of sloppy.

James had several instances of losing control of the ball on drives or passes (both ends of passes, as I recall). While he was credited with only 3 turnovers, there were several plays in which his fumbles allowed the defense to collapse on the ball and prevent a score, even if no turnover resulted. So, yeah, I thought his play was kind of sloppy.

If everyone keeps playing as they did last night, Johnson would deserve minutes over all of them, even over James in spots.
 
1995-1996 Kentucky team? That team was the most loaded team I've ever seen. Antoine Walker, Derek Anderson, Ron Mercer, Walter McCarty, Tony Delk, Nazr Mohammed. That was a great team.
 
I agree with the sloppy comments - not that the comments are sloppy, but the subjects of those comments were extremely sloppy.

Sloppy play aside, after watching the misadventures at the line, I almost wish that Barnes would just play the five best FT shooters a significant amount of the time. Do we even have five decent FTers?
 
Sloppy basketball is expected early on in the CB season. Thats why early losses dont matter.

This team is built for the tournament. Which is exactly what we need.
 
...Any number of UCLA teams under the Wizard, and several UNC teams under the Dean. I seem to recall Tark's UNLV team was loaded top to bottom...but yep, UT's got the goods this year.
 
Lest I be accused of only providing criticism, let me now praise James for improvement at the line. It's only two games, but he's 13 for 16.

I think we'll be better than last year. Brown and Lucas will give us pretty good ft shooters from the guard spot. James looks more comfortable at the line. Hamilton should be better than average. I hate seeing Ward and Bradley each start 2 for 6, even if that's 2 makes more for Ward to start the year than he had last year.
 
The 1993-94 UNC Tarheels. This was the year after winning the national title vs. Michigan. The Tarheels had 8 McDonald All-Americans on the team (returning players: Eric Montross, Derrick Phelps, Brian Reese, Donald Williams; incoming freshman: Jeff McInnis, Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse, Serge Swikker). Also on that team was Dante Calabria and Kevin Savadori. Unbelievably, that team lost seven games including the shocker to BC in the NCAA tourney.
 
Another thing to remember is that right now, Barnes is tinkering with different combinations to see what works. At a certain point, he'll try to settle on a core group, with the others not getting much PT. There had been some speculation that Chapman could shirt and have a chance to put some meat on his bones, but I haven't heard anything more on the topic. Seems like a decent idea to me, especially since we don't seem to have had much luck recruiting bigs lately.
 
There have been tons of talented, deep teams over the years. This thread just reinforces to me that most UT fans have a very over-inflated view of how historically talented this team is. Compare our team to last year's National Champion UNC team :)

UNC had 11 players that were in the national top-100 out of high school. They had two top-5 players, 4 top-10, and 6 top-20 players. Not only that, the majority of them were juniors and seniors.

#4 - Tyler Hansbrough - Sr
#5 - Tywon Lawson - Jr
#8 - Wayne Ellington - Jr
#9 - Ed Davis - Fr
#17 - Bobby Frasor - Sr
#18 - Tyler Zeller - Fr
#31 - Marcus Ginyard - Sr
#42 - Danny Green - Sr
#43 - Deon Thompson - Jr
#45 - Larry Drew - Fr
#79 - William Graves - Jr


Compare to Texas this year.
#4 - Avery Bradley - Fr
#15 - Damion James - Sr
#22 - Jordan Hamilton - Fr
#25 - Gary Johnson - Jr
#32 - Jai Lucas - So?
#55 - Shawn Williams - Fr
#59 - J’Covan Brown - Fr
#75 - Clint Chapman - Jr
#82 - Dexter Pittman - Sr

Only one top-10 player. Only 5 top-50 players (as opposed to 10 top-50 players for UNC last year). Put DJ Augustine and Kevin Durant on our team this year, and you start to have a team that looks like UNC’s last year.

The only reason we have so much substitution (aka ‘depth’) is because there isn’t much separation between our starters and our bench. How many of our starters would have started for UNC last year?
 
Well maybe that's it. There may have been deeper teams, but the parity on our roster is ridiculous. It's like we have 15 guys who are all interchangeable.
 
LazyEngineer-
I absolutely agree that our talent has been overrated or overestimated the past few years, but NOT this year. We are loaded. Absolutely loaded.
 
This is the most talent Texas has ever had.
John Wooden had 4 teams go 30-0 in a 6 year span, so if we go at least 30-0 this year, I'll change my answer to maybe not, but until then....
Uh,..yes, I have.

HOOK 'EM,
Texdoc
smile.gif
 
yeah. this is a great team, really deep. but it is not the deepest team of all time. several UNC teams. some UK teams. there were one or two MSU teams that had at least 10 really good players.
 
show me the chemistry all year, finish the games with no mercy, dominate every night. Let's see it.
 
Didn't the '02 Texas team go 10 deep? I remember that FF squad throwing quality, experienced bodies on the floor constantly.

Thomas
Erskin
Mouton
Ivey
Ford

Paulino
Harris
Boddicker
Buckman
Klotz

Was Kenny Taylor also on that team? Solid group.
 
Kenny Taylor came later... transferred from Baylor out of the Bliss mess.

You are right, that's the last team that had this kind of depth. These are better players, though.
 
The Wooden teams were back in the day when there was very little exposure to other universities so recruiting was like cherry picking for him. I doubt that Wooden would be able to do that today, so kudos to Barnes for bringing this group together.
 
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