Abysmal Basketball Blue Blood teams this season
The Basketball Blue Bloods are pretty much all doing peculiarly bad this season, considering their elite coaches and the caliber of players you’d assume make up their rosters.
Watching some of this North Carolina-Florida State game getting ready for the Michigan game and it’s like night and day seeing how organized Juwan has the boys playing. This game is just street ball with superb athletes. (Side note: Hunter D. looks like a seasoned NBA vet compared to a seemingly more athletic Walker Kessler)
Seems like all the Top Coaches and perennial top teams are just phoning it in this season.
With Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, Carolina, and others all with 3 and 4 losses already, some to usually subpar teams, I wonder if there’s any rhyme or reason to these anomalies all happening in one season?
Easy answer could just be Covid limiting preparation or something, but Basketball is a sport where talent can usually overcome that type of thing.
I’ll say it has pretty much kept all those NCAA sanction (paying Zion) type talks quiet, with them all being out of the limelight, where they’re usually showing off their fancy new recruits.
They’ll all probably end up being 8 seeds or lower in the tournament, one’ll make the Final Four, and you’ll hear how good of a coaching job they did helping their 5*s “find that extra gear”.
I say all that to highlight how well Juwan has the boys playing in just his second year.
They look like how those old well-coached Duke teams used to look when they were seemingly just toying with their opponents. Plus, you can see the development shining through with most. Have yet to see a sign of timidity from any player this season.
We got a Great one!
Go Blue!
January 16th, 2021 at 2:00 PM ^
Blue bloods are usually young teams with few starters staying 3-4 years. Its got to be missed coaching and practice. Would be interesting to compare total years college experiemce of the blue bloods to the current top 5. I would think the blue bloods are much younger.
January 16th, 2021 at 2:02 PM ^
You could add State to your list.
January 16th, 2021 at 2:30 PM ^
nah, incluing them would really depreciate the term 'blue blood'.
January 16th, 2021 at 2:33 PM ^
Had them, but erased them. Didn’t wanna give them the respect of being a Blue Blood, even though it would’ve been talking about their early stumbles out the gate.
They know. haha
January 16th, 2021 at 2:34 PM ^
Theirs was expected but Kentucky starting 0-3 then continuing to lose had me befuddled.
January 16th, 2021 at 2:02 PM ^
missing practice time due to covid for the one and done factories could definitely play a factor.
January 16th, 2021 at 2:33 PM ^
I’m guessing the Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina quartet not having the benefit of Adidas and Nike funneling specific players every year is starting to expose the true coaching acumen of those long established coaches who have not had to really work hard for the past few decades. Could see some retirements coming up soon.
January 16th, 2021 at 3:25 PM ^
The changing of the guard... the sleeping giant Michigan is returning back to blue blood status, and Gonzaga is entering fray, and maybe Villanova.
January 16th, 2021 at 3:47 PM ^
Can you return back to something that you never were? UM has had some great teams no doubt, hopefully this team stays focused the rest of the season, but they’re not a “blue blood” in college basketball...
January 16th, 2021 at 5:28 PM ^
Not in terms of championships or decades of dominance but I'd say UM's image in the 1980s and 90s was of a program with tons of elite athletes and a lot of hype around it. The sad Ellerbe/Amaker years and then JB"s rebuild into a solid, Wisconsin-esque midwestern program have obscured the fact that UM was once the dominant basketball brand in the state and maybe the Big Ten. With Juwan Howard at the helm, it could happen again.
January 16th, 2021 at 8:11 PM ^
Not disagreeing with your thoughts on the history of the program, but it still doesn’t make us a “blue blood” program unfortunately...
January 16th, 2021 at 8:40 PM ^
Apparently you aren't aware of the period where there was us and UCLA and a few others.
January 16th, 2021 at 3:44 PM ^
This thread didn’t age well
January 16th, 2021 at 3:51 PM ^
About as well as ESPNs article 1 day ago asking if anyone could slow Michigan down...Going undefeated wasn’t going to happen, hopefully they bounce back well after a poor showing today...Gotta give the Gophers credit, they came ready to play...Just shows how tough the B1G is, trounce a team in the first matchup and then get trounced in the next meeting.
January 16th, 2021 at 3:54 PM ^
? Thought about the jinx factor when I posted it.
But it’s only one loss with a key starter out. Still have some cushion from 2nd place.
They still looked organized, just weren’t hitting shots.
January 16th, 2021 at 4:02 PM ^
With like 20 turnovers I’d say they looked less than organized...Don’t think today is anything other than a blip on the radar...
January 16th, 2021 at 5:43 PM ^
But you could at least see what they were trying to do. They were trying to fit the ball in tight places instead of the easy pass, driving expecting a whistle, or just making lazy entry passes.
Carolina was just standing around and doing one on one moves with no passing. And if the person got jammed up and had to pass that next guy was shooting no matter where he was. If they tried to feed the ball down low at any time, I missed it. Just super athletic wings and cold guards playing sloppy hero ball.
January 16th, 2021 at 4:05 PM ^
UK is in absolute turmoil. The fanbase is calling for Cals head, and rightfully so. The shit he is saying about the fans is unacceptable. He plays a 5 star top 10 pick over the SECs leading 3 pt shooter and leading scorer. Lol. You can only assume one thing there. It’s a complete meltdown in the bluegrass nation currently.
January 16th, 2021 at 5:31 PM ^
I think he is being exposed as a below-average Xs and Os coach, among other things.
January 16th, 2021 at 10:52 PM ^
Absolutely. Relies too much on talent. The talent they got this year have been a massive miss. It seems incredibly odd to be playing a top 5 recruit over a player that is an excellent scorer...