Thanks, Hoop. I need to respond to one item.HoopDreams said:
amazingly detailed response to my post. thank you
Just to clarify, most of what I'm sharing is my personal opinion, except for stats like KenPom. I'm not trying to present anything as fact.
On Randle I'm don't know how "close" his ball handling is compared to Curry, but I do see him as an elite ball handler, and Cal may not always land the prototypical 6'4"-6'5" point guards so he can really help us (he is a skills trainer). His ability to move from one action into a combo, and then smoothly transition into another combo is rare. Even strong ball handlers tend to reset or pick up the dribble. Randle teaches how to keep attacking through that.
Also, to be clear I didn't expect this to be a Tournament season, but was just hoping to see meaningful progress. A one-game improvement is a step forward, but a 34 game jump would've signaled that we're trending. That's why I mentioned free throws as getting to the line was part of our offensive game plan, so missed FTs mattered more for us in the bigger picture.
And for what it's worth, I didn't bring up the travel, nor the injuries to guys like Omot, Andrej, Wilkinson, and Blackshur not because they didn't matter, but because every team deals with injuries. I'm not trying to make excuses.
A one game (half a game really) improvement is not a step forward when it is combined with a major step back in conference play and no wins over quality opponents. Fundamentally, last year's team was clearly better when they were at the top of their game.
The difference between last year's team and this year's team was last year's team wet the bed out of the gate. I don't know why that happened, but they had 4 completely inexcusable losses out of conference. Madsen cleaned that up this year. We had no bad losses (bad loss being losing to someone who was obviously worse than we are). That is great and it is a measure of progress, but it is one with a ceiling. In my mind, last year's team was a 16-17 win team that just wasn't ready for whatever reason when the season started.
Honestly, last year about 3/4 of the way through the season I was pretty happy with the progress despite the horrible start. Conference record was a big improvement and they beat 3 really good teams. For whatever reason, the team seemed to lose motivation and tanked down the stretch (which goes to another myth in my opinion, that he is a great motivator, but I digress). So I dropped my analysis to "meets expectations". But regardless, our conference play last year was much better than this year even with the tanking at the end.
Bottom line is, if Cal basketball last year plays Cal basketball this year in a game and I have to bet my retirement fund on that game, I'm not hesitating who I'm taking. Last year all the way. If you tell me they are both equally motivated to win, I'm not even sweating it. The improvement in this year's team is they play to their reasonable ability every game. That just isn't that high. Or, by another measure, if I have to play a tournament quality team, this year's team has no shot. Last year's team has a shot.
