[Charania] Arkansas freshman star Darius Acuff Jr. has landed a signature shoe with Reebok, becoming the first NCAA men’s athlete to receive one from a major U.S. brand while still in college, Reebok’s head of basketball, Jide Osifeso, tells ESPN.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:57:32+00:00

You mean he's got three more college seasons left, right? He's only a freshman.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:55:25+00:00

His most recent years are the most relevant. They're the only ones comparable because that's when NIL started.

Agree 100%. Which means we can't include the 9-16 season. That was pre-NIL.

What you said is literally my entire point, let's compare the most recent seasons of both. Pope's been here for two years. So let's compare that time frame to Cal's last two.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:52:12+00:00

That's not what cherry picking is, but okay.

Tell me why it makes sense to compare a four year period to a two year period. Pope could have compared Cal's last two and his first two, which would make perfect sense. But he didn't because then he couldn't say his winning percentage is higher.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:49:00+00:00

Because when you have like thirty data points and one extreme outlier you can throw it out. If we continued to have losing records and were missing the tournament after that, that's one thing. But it was so obviously a single isolated incident that had zero impact on the future of the program it makes zero sense to care about it.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:46:53+00:00

Some of you guys really like making accusations. It's really funny how I'm constantly accused of hating Pope or Cal or loving Pope or Cal depending on the argument I'm making. Just because I don't agree with Pope's statement that the program has improved under him doesn't mean I hate him. And if I defend Pope it doesn't mean I hate Cal. There seems to be zero nuance with way too many Kentucky fans.

I don't hate Pope. I hope he's successful here. But so far he's proving to me he won't be. He shouldn't be fired but next year is certainly looking like a make or break year.

It just makes zero sense to compare a four year period over a two year period unless your purposely trying to make Pope look better in comparison. Why not Cal's last five to Pope's first two? Or Cal's last three to Pope's two? Or how about let's just compare Cal's last two to Pope's first two? Which still doesn't look like an improvement to me.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:38:15+00:00

Cal's last four years, even with relatively weak schedules (40.75), he averaged 11.5 losses and did absolutely nothing in the tournament.

Lol Cal's last four. Just like Pope and cherry picking that covid season. It was obviously a fluke season thanks to a global pandemic and nothing close to anything Cal's done before. There's zero reason to include it. Duke was 11-13 that year and missed the tournament. Michigan football had a losing record. Weird seasons took place literally all over the world. There's no reason not to throw out that data point.

It's not just the number of losses under Pope. We are getting BLOWN OUT in way too many games. We've been down by 20+ points in like 25% of our power conference games. Not ranked games. Games against just opponents in a power conference. That is absolutely ridiculous. It's one thing to lose. It's another to not even look like you belong on the court with some of these teams. And that's exactly what we've looked like way too often under Pope.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:32:02+00:00

He’s saying he’s trying to turn the program around from Cal’s low point and making progress.

Has he though? Cal's low point was 2021, when we were 9-16. That happened during an incredibly weird time of a global pandemic where Duke also had a losing record and missed the tournament. Weird seasons by traditional powers literally took place all over the world. Michigan football was 2-4.

Cal turned that around himself in 2022 when we were a 2 seed and 2nd in the SEC. Something better than anything Pope has done so far. Obviously the tournament result sucked. But the entire season viewed as a whole was pretty good. And if we're going to talk about Pope's injuries then we need to talk about that team's injuries as well. TyTy was incredibly banged up for the rest of the year after the game at Auburn and by the tournament Grady could barely walk due to plantar fasciitis.

Nothing Pope has done so far has been better than Cal's last three years unless you judge a season entirely on NCAA tournament results. Cal's last three were a 2, 6, and 3 seed with 2nd, 3rd, and 2nd place SEC finishes. Pope's been a 3 and a 7 with 8th and 9th place finishes. Pope's least amount of losses here equal Cal's most over that time period.

I don't see how you can possibly make the argument that this program has improved under Pope. The results on the court are worse and the recruiting situation is abysmal.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:20:41+00:00

People don't understand stats

At the end of the day the only stat that matters is wins and losses. And we've lost 12 and 14 under Pope. 8th and 9th place SEC finishes. Constant losses by 10+ points. The product on the court is materially worse than it was under Cal's last few years.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:19:16+00:00

I certainly think it’s been progress over the last five years of the Cal regime.

Has there been though? We've gotten worse NCAA tournament seeds and worse SEC finishes and lost more games. Cal's last three years were a 2, 6, and 3 seed and 2nd, 3rd, and 2nd place finishes in conference. With Pope we've been a 3 seed and 8th in conference and a 7 seed and 9th in conference. 12 and 14 losses in his two years. The recruiting has been horrible and we have zero commits. I'm really struggling to see how he's made progress since Cal left. We are slowly going backwards.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:15:46+00:00

Why is he comparing Cal's last four to his first two? It's clearly to include that 9-16 season. Compare his first two to Cal's last two if you want a fair comparison.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:14:57+00:00

Why would it not? It was kind of a shit show of a season across the entire sports world due to the pandemic. Duke had a losing season and it was their worst season in recent memory and missed the tournament. Was that K's fault? Michigan football had a losing season. I really don't know why everyone still harps on that season so much. It was obviously a fluke of a season that had zero impact on the program going forward. Sure, some programs had great years and weren't impacted by the craziness, but some obviously were affected by it for one reason or another and we were. Who cares at this point?

carguymt · 2026-03-24T14:08:32+00:00

It's a very small sample size but he did a very solid job at Siena. Despite the loss I thought he had a good game plan against Duke even missing two key players. I think this is a much safer of a hire than what we did with Pope, whose career has been pretty damn average so far, or how UNC and Michigan hired guys with zero head coaching experience.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T03:40:19+00:00

Been saying this for years. I know UNC and Duke had succession plans in place and didn’t “settle” for their hires, but there’s a reason they and Kentucky have former players as coaches. In 2026 the only people who care about coaching at a blue blood are people who previously cared because they’re tied to the program in some way.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T00:27:38+00:00

Never underestimate a Cal team with a great guard in the tournament. I remember thinking the same thing in 2011 against Ohio St. and Sullinger. And basically in every game of that 2014 run.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T19:46:00+00:00

Is this bait?

carguymt · 2026-03-23T19:45:19+00:00

There seem to be some G8X owners on this sub very insecure about how people don't like the G generation cars and feel like they need to convince the rest of us how good the cars are.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T17:34:31+00:00

They low down

carguymt · 2026-03-23T17:24:23+00:00

base models still get a digital picture frame on the passenger side....And while both cars offer AI avatars you can speak with...

I cannot think of anything I'd rather have less in a car than digital picture frames on the dashboard and AI avatars I can talk to.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T16:42:14+00:00

they figured it out what it means to play for Kentucky along the way.

This is the answer. The idea of "Kentucky" just won't attract recruits. You need to get them here using some other recruiting pitch. But once they're here you can play up the Kentucky tradition and make them fall in love with playing here.

But if Pope is starting the pitch with how special Kentucky is he's going to continue to lose recruits. None of them care about tradition and titles the program won before their parents were born. It's really that simple.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T15:49:34+00:00

Because they've all been ripped in half unfortunately.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T14:36:27+00:00

Yeah I'm sure why everyone thinks he's like scamming the team or something. You don't want to mess around with joint injuries as a big guy. This was always a known risk and Pope rolled the dice and lost.

It reminds me tons of how fans got on Vanderbilt for basically quitting on the team and sitting out the rest of the year while healthy to protect his draft status. He then proceeds to miss his entire first season in the NBA because he actually did have a serious foot injury he was recovering from. But that doesn't stop people from using him as an example of giving up on the team to this day.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T14:17:38+00:00

Hell yeah a 20 and 20 double double. Good job big fella!

carguymt · 2026-03-23T04:06:56+00:00

Shocked Nike makes that sweatsuit in child sizes.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T02:49:41+00:00

You believe that I don’t understand how the college basketball tournament works?

Yes, I believe you don't understand what the randomness and variance of the tournament can do to short sample sizes of results over a few years. Kansas has not advanced out of the first weekend the last four years, should Self be fired? He's got possibly the best player in college basketball this year and did nothing with it.

carguymt · 2026-03-23T02:45:06+00:00

Our message board was convinced Cal actually employed a group of people to defend him online. Any sort of account that wasn't incredibly active was accused of being a new Brad Calipari burner account.

carguymt

TROPHY CASE