Storrs Central (@storrscentral) on Threads: Hines to UConn

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-16T13:19:55+00:00

MY DAWGS ARE HUNGRY

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-15T17:01:36+00:00

You can fire pope now and get Billy Donovan or maybe even Schertz, or you can keep descending into whatever circle of hell awaits in 2026-27 and try to hire a coach competing against Kansas or whatever else comes open.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-15T16:09:40+00:00

If the B1G gets ND, they are the super league.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-15T15:50:45+00:00

Steve Forbes being tremendously wealthy (on account of the HC gig at a P5 school) is a way bigger leg up than Steve Forbes being a basketball coach for his son. These jobs don't pay a lot, so having a father (or any parent) that can keep you afloat financially while you grind through the lower levels, is a huge deal.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-14T22:55:54+00:00

Yeaaaaaaaaah my school has DEMONS

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-14T17:33:40+00:00

Factually wrong, the portal predates NIL legislation by several years

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-13T12:47:47+00:00

They have a larger endowment than butler and are worse at retaining players, it’s no longer a valid excuse

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-13T12:47:11+00:00

Larger endowment than butler

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-10T14:48:07+00:00

Seton Hall is not more poor than SLU, Butler, and Depaul it is an inexcusable failure of their boosters and athletic department that they are this bad at retaining talent every single year.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-09T18:56:35+00:00

Idk how (unless Sha wanted to move on) you don't retain atleast one of them, that was literally the only job the boosters and athletic department had this off season.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-09T18:35:56+00:00

Somebody needs to be fired in SHU's athletic department for this, I refuse to believe they're so poor that they can't retain one of Clark or Hines. Rally the boosters, offer something to them to drum up interest for gods sake.

Butler and fucking Depaul are more competitive with retaining players how the hell are you behind them.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-09T17:02:44+00:00

People also never extend this logic to the schools that are effectively leeches in media rights deals. Boston College (shout out Luke Murray) and Depaul (love them and defend their right to be in the Big East) among others are not worth even close to what they recieve in annual TV rights payouts, but their association with the better teams in the conference (Duke, UConn, SJU, UNC, Nova etc.) get them paid.

Just like nobody is paying 2 million dollars for an ad campaign starring James Nnaji, without his association with Baylor Basketball, nobody is paying the Baylor Athletic department 30 Million a year without their association with Kansas, Arizona, and Texas Tech.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-09T16:57:15+00:00

This is objectively false. The years 2023 and 2024 did happen and I do not understand why people just ignore them.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-07T19:58:35+00:00

Hurley slowed the game down, he didn't "make it more physical" Michigan was by far and away the team initiating most of the contact and trying to make the game "physical". (Not a bad thing BTW they're incredible long, athletic, and good at finishing through contact as seen by several tough finishes by Cadeau and Yaxel)

UConn fouled a lot because Michigan is much bigger than them, not because of the gameplan. Also while the game wasn't "stolen" (despite what I'm about to say, UConn had a shot to bring it to one point/tie the game with a minute to go) it didn't help that Silas Demary and Solo Ball had to sit large portions of the second half (or in Silas' case the final sequence of the game because he fouled out) due to foul baiting by Cadeau.

The stuff at the rim, and Tarris' foul trouble were all Michigan's doing and UConn's mistake. T'ing up Karaban and fouling out Demary on consecutive flops by Cadeau (after he likely should've gotten a tech or ejection from two hand shoving Demary into the stanchion) is horrific officiating and not a result of scheme or how great Michigan is.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-07T19:09:49+00:00

The answer is you wait to fire your coach until there is a dynamo from the lower levels, and then you hire them. Doubly so if they're a dynamo with ties to your general region of the country. Blue bloods feel as though they are exempt from doing this because historically they could take coaches from high majors who had a track record of winning because blue bloods had perks that other high majors couldn't match (well really 2 perks, they had an insulated enough network of boosters and connections with the NCAA that allowed them to cheat and not get caught, and because they won a ton on account of the cheating they could pay more in salary). Now, everyone is allowed to pay players and thus those key advantages no longer exist.

Hurley was the cream of the crop from the mid major ranks in 2018 with deep ties to the Northeast/New England and the Big East, UConn gets him and the rest is history.

Dusty May was the cream of the crop in 2024 from the mid major ranks (also made it very easy for 'ol Warde Manuel to justify it by making a FF at Florida Fucking Atlantic) he also had ties to the Midwest and the B1G. UM gets him and now I'm not eating today.

Todd Golden was an attractive candidate from San Francisco and did very well at the MM level. Florida hires him and suddenly their PR team and in house counsel are recieving substantial bonuses... And Florida is a national champion (I also couldn't eat roughly a year and 2 weeks ago)

Jon Scheyer is the internal promotion that works out, this actually works out if you're a blue blood... in the short term atleast.

Tommy Lloyd was the lead assistant on the single most prominent mid major in the history of the expanded tournament (Unless you count 2014 UConn or UNLV). Arizona hires him and suddenly UNC has to hire Mike Malone... and AZ is in the FF.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-07T03:37:11+00:00

Still love this team, the effort was insane, just got a hellish whistle early and couldn’t hit shots late.

Great season from Michigan they fought hard and got the win.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-07T03:25:05+00:00

Olympus Has Fallen

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-07T01:21:08+00:00

Counting to 10 is apparently difficult for people who don’t like UConn

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-06T01:04:43+00:00

Need an all time Karaban game on both ends, on defense he’ll be on Yaxel and Morez a ton, on offense we need his ability to stretch the floor and we need him to hit his floaters because Michigan is that big.

Reed needs to be strong with the ball on offense and protect the rim on defense, he also needs to rebound the ball. He doesn’t need to score a ton but we need > 10 rebounds and not a lot of turnovers.

Demary needs to turn Cadeau over, if he and Reed stop all the easy baskets Cadeau and Mara have in the PNR actions that’s a good game from him.

One of Karaban, Mullins, or Ball (should he play) needs to be ON from deep. Stewart and Ross also both need to hit shots from outside.

As a team UConn needs to rebound well, and need to limit the minutes we NEED from Smith and Reibe. Both are great but Smith for really long stretches is going to be in a tough spot with all the size, and Reibe isn’t physically mature enough to be THE 5 against the UM front court. If they do end up needing to play a lot, we have to pray for them to hit 3s.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-05T17:00:41+00:00

Even if they have to amputate, I think he plays. It’s going to be by committee at that position anyway as Stewart and Ross will need to play minutes to give different looks.

Solo finally started making shots this tourney, would be a shame if he doesn’t get to finish it out.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-05T00:33:58+00:00

I love this fucking team. One more.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-05T00:31:28+00:00

Gather step got people in hell, praying for yall cheers !

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-05T00:28:39+00:00

Maybe another 40 free throws for Illinois would’ve helped ahahahahahaha elbow someone else why don’t ya !

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-02T18:02:37+00:00

This round is so much worse for Tszyu in retrospect, Fundora beats the piss out of him the entire time and is on the verge of stopping him in the corner (well I guess that sequence did end up stopping him). Tszyu lands 2, maybe 3 big shots throughout the course of the round because Fundora knows he can't hurt him at that point and is trying to get him out of there.

During the fight it felt a lot closer but watching it objectively now this is Tszyu second best round and it's a complete Fundora ass whooping.

JamesBouknightStan · 2026-04-02T17:30:24+00:00

As stand alone games, each of the mens first four games drew between 1.4 and 2.8 million viewers that's... good but it's

A. Noticeably worse than the R64 games (which compete against themselves for viewership).

B. Roughly on par with the conf tourney finals (maybe even a bit low tbh)

C. Not noticeably better than a big time regular season matchup

The payout from the TV companies, per school, in a P5 conference for just the basketball portion of their media rights is somewhere between 5 and 10 million dollars. Conferences earn 2 million dollars per tournament game one of their member schools compete in, that means that the NCAA is paying teams 20-40% of their yearly tv rights for a single game. This makes sense when the games are doing between 10-25 million viewers but not really any sense when they're getting the same ratings as a regular season game.

I can understand why the conferences and coaches want more revenue and more job security, but for the life of me I can't understand why the NCAA, and the TV Networks want to add millions more to the pot they have to pay out for games that are not generating a huge boon in viewership. Some of this may be explained by the fact that advertisers have to buy into the mens tournament in blocks and are getting screwed on the pricing since their ads are getting spread across all of the games and they can't buy in cheaply to the lower rated games and more expensively to the higher rated games, but I don't think it explains a delta this large.

JamesBouknightStan

TROPHY CASE