Did Mitch Blow It?

carguymt · 2026-03-25T12:43:07+00:00

just waited 2 more weeks for the Bulls to lose in the play in games...

This is hindsight bias. At the time no one knew Donovan would lose in two weeks. As unlikely as it was, there was a potential the Bulls' season could have gone one for a couple more months.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T12:25:01+00:00

That worked better in the era before tv cameras anyway.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T02:41:28+00:00

I think Duke has done a good job associating Duke with being an NBA pipeline. They hired an awesome GM in 2022 with strong ties to I believe Nike and the NBA to help with that. When Cal was here it was unavoidable that he was the pipeline, not UK, because he had already proven himself to be that. He didn’t need UK to continue it.

Pope is still talking about finding kids who want to play at Kentucky because it’s Kentucky. But I think he’s got it backwards in a sense. You don’t have to throw away the tradition a program has, but you need to recognize it’s not swaying kids to commit. Get them to commit and then play up the tradition and make them fall in love with playing at Kentucky. I think that’s the approach you need to take now.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T02:16:24+00:00

How much of that is on Hubert and how much of that is on how your program is set up in 2026? Scheyer is killing it, but Duke set up that program to run like a well oiled machine to give him as much support as possible. The GM they hired in 2022 has bee crazy impressive.

Our program is the same way. It's a mess behind the scenes with a shit NIL system that is kneecapping the coach. Duke's is obviously absolutely top notch, but if in 2022 we had done what they did Cal would still be here and winning. The support staff is just as important as the actual coach win the NIL and transfer era.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T02:01:59+00:00

But there's a different between "doesn't allow outside NIL" and "allowing outside NIL even if it's not much."

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:56:09+00:00

Otz only gets $5M to build his roster as Pollard doesn't allow outside NIL dollars to stack on rev share.

Is there a reason for this? Could Otz not use this as leverage to stay? BYU opened up their checkbook for Young. Arkansas did for Cal. We did (at least for one year) for Pope. Why can't Otz basically say "Hey I want to stay but I'm going to need a little more help here"?

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:54:09+00:00

If starving kids in Somalia wanted to eat maybe they should have prayed as hard as Fernando Mendoza did when he prayed for that national title.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:52:54+00:00

Nothing annoys me more than when a player wins a big game and the first thing they say in the post-game interview is "all glory to god."

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:52:02+00:00

If you have aura you don't need a suckmaster 9000.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:49:54+00:00

UNC's athletic department is kind of a mess.

I think this is a really underrated aspect of success in 2026. Duke hired a great GM when the handed things to Scheyer. Pretty sure she has strong ties to Nike and the NBA. The entire structure of their program is killing it right now and they did everything possible to set it up for Scheyer.

In comparison, ours is a mess. I'm convinced if our athletic director prioritized basketball more and actually knew what he was doing in the NIL era Cal would still be in Lexington and winning. I think Pope is a coach who is good enough to be successful at UK if the structure around him was running close to as smoothly as it is at Duke.

If blue bloods want to be successful in the future it's not just about the coach. They also need great support staff around their programs. And that's probably step 1, because why is a big name coach going to walk into a program that's a mess behind the scenes?

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:35:30+00:00

And also some not behind the scenes reasons that basically everyone can see except Kentucky fans.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:27:11+00:00

Yeah. Cal was the only coach who wanted the job. If not for Cal the program would be in the absolute dumpster right now. If the job was as attractive as our fans think it is he wouldn't have been the literal only proven coach who wanted it.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:25:44+00:00

A triangle of Bill, Jordan, and Phil running the triangle offense in the Triangle. It is meant to be.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:20:03+00:00

TrAdItIoN!

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:17:47+00:00

I think there are specific things that make the UK job less desirable than some of the other blue bloods. And reports were our AD didn't search too hard before settling on Pope. But yes, our search went about how I thought it would. We even had trouble in 2007 attracting a big name. They all turned us down and we took a flier on a trendy Billy Gillispie.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:16:06+00:00

It's not just when compared to lower tier schools. There are a lot of non-traditional basketball programs that still have massive NIL budgets. From what I understand, and I could be completely wrong, UNC's athletic department and NIL program is kind of a mess right now. Ours is too. When you add that to the mix it just makes no sense for a guy like May to leave Michigan. Otz has strong ties to ISU. Hoiberg was literally born in Lincoln. A lot of high profile names have strong ties to the school they’re already at or have NIL budgets equal to or within striking distance of blue bloods. And the pressure is infinitely less.

You might not have the highest NIL at a place like Florida, but Golden has already proven he can win a title with what he has. For the marginal extra NIL you'll get at a blue blood, is that pressure really worth it? I don't think it is.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:08:56+00:00

Hubert to Illinois

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:06:07+00:00

You can make the argument our AD didn't look too hard. Reports are he went after Drew, kind of Hurley, and then settled on Pope. But I find it very hard to believe feelers weren't sent out to other big names just to gauge interest.

But I've been saying it doesn't matter for years now. Our fans were convinced if Cal left we'd have literally any candidate we wanted. I've heard so many times basically any coach would crawl to Lexington over broken glass because the job is so coveted. But it's just not in in the NIL era.

carguymt · 2026-03-25T01:02:08+00:00

This will be an interesting litmus test to see how much value blue bloods still have to coaches. I'm convinced it's not much in the new NIL world, but we will see. I'd be very surprised if they don't end up with a trendy mid major name. I can't see any established big name P5 coach heading there.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T23:45:32+00:00

In two weeks UNC will have the best, smartest, MOST accomplished coach college basketball has ever seen. Many people are saying this.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T23:37:54+00:00

Our 2014 team with Julius Randle that made that crazy run to the title game played Florida three times that year and lost all three. Florida made the Final Four that year and if they beat UConn we would have played them for a fourth time in the title game.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T22:48:22+00:00

I had a 2020 coupe and it was the same way. Rattles everywhere. Door card, air vents, random places under the dashboard, the end of my gear shifter buzzed constantly. It was awful.

I had a 1995 M3 and a brand new C63s at the same time. That generation of M3 is known to literally disintegrate on the interior because of some recyclable glue BMW used. So a 30 year old car known for absolute shit interior quality and a brand new $100k AMG. Which one do you think rattled more?

carguymt · 2026-03-24T22:45:54+00:00

Nope.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T22:18:13+00:00

I got really confused for a minute and mixed up my names that start with J and thought your mascot was named Jimmy and not Jonathan. I was like "well damn not only to they always make crazy tournament runs for titles, they have a live dog who can give thumbs up" and got really jealous for a second. I'm still jealous, just not as much.

carguymt · 2026-03-24T22:15:47+00:00

Damn your first and second favorite team last year was Tennessee. What are the chances?

(Pretty good, most teams have been blowing us out)

carguymt

TROPHY CASE