Au contraire, the Tournament expansion makes it much harder to not face a good team in the Dance along with the introduction of seeding. Back in Guy’s day, few members of any conference made it in, including only 1 until 1975. Along with the fact seeding wasn’t weighing the bracket down, this meant although it was possible to play good teams in the early rounds, you were more likely to get a tomato can, depending on your regional, which varied by strength (another thing seeding made better). Lewis didn’t even have a first round game some years, including advancements automatically to the regional semi-finals.
While the Tournament is much easier to make today, it’s also harder to reach the Final Four because you’re but guaranteed a team receiving votes for at least 3 of 4 rounds, if not all 4 and a bad day or bad luck is all that’s needed to send you on way.
All that and they make the Tournament every single year. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR (except Covid). Even with fewer Final Fours, it’s at least as impressive as what Lewis did. At least…
The ‘67 final four team played #1 UCLA, #3 Kansas, and #4 UNC as well as UR SMU and NM. The ‘68 final four team played #2 UCLA and #9 Louisville as well as UR Ohio St, TCU, and Loyola. ‘82 final four team played #10 Tulsa, #5 Mizzou, and #1 UNC as well as UR Alcorn St and BC. ‘83 final four team played #17 Memphis, #13 Nova, #2 Louisville, #16 NCST as well as UR Maryland. ‘84 final four team played #16 Memphis, #19 WF, #2 Georgetown, as well as UR LT and Virginia.
Gonzaga’s ‘17 final four team played #13 WVU and #6 UNC as well as UR South Dakota St, NW, X, and South Carolina. Their ‘21 final four team played #19 Creighton, #24 USC, and #3 Baylor, as well as UR Norfolk, OU, and UCLA.
So I’d say the competition level we faced wasn’t any easier than what Gonzaga has seen. Again props to them for making the tourney every year. But as I’ve noted that’s easier to do for them because of the overall strength of their league and the expanded field.
I said, and I quote, “We were never dominant a program,” talking about the old days before Sampson. I mean in more of a long term sense. We had some decent, certainly eye-catching and legendary runs but not annually elite for any sustained amount of time. Never a decade straight, not even four years straight for PSJ. What we’ve done under Sampson is unprecedented in UH history. 7 straight years of a top 25 caliber team. Never been done before.
Meanwhile, 7 years of top 25 to elite basketball is old hat for most of the Blue Bloods and some Johnny Come Latlies like Michigan State (yes I’m aware of the title 45 years ago) and Gonzaga or one that’s kinda between those two ('Nova).
Old days before Lewis? The programs first season was 45-46. Lewis was hired in ‘56. So you were talking about the first 11 seasons the program existed.
Well yah no **** we weren’t dominant then. Lmao
But your original comment didn’t specify that at all. So it sounds more like you just stepped in it and are trying to back track .
5 final fours in 17 years. Thats not dominant? Wow. For reference only 21 programs have made that many final fours. 10 of which have matched or exceeded that feat (counting us).
18 seasons. Again, we had peaks and valleys. All of those Final Fours came in two different runs of consecutive appearances.
Now would I say we were never dominant at all? Of course not, if we routinely made the Dance for almost a decade when it was much harder to make it, we had some dominance. If we had years of consecutive FF appearances, including two straight title games during a 3 year run of FF appearances, we had some dominance.
But consistency and longevity is my point. It’s something we haven’t had until now. And even this run is only nearly identical to the 1966-73 run. We, de facto, have had as many NCAA Tournament appearances as that span in fewer years but that era had more FF appearances, so it evens out. And again, it was much harder to make the Tournament back then.
Yeah, if you take every word literally or as absolute. I could say Nebraska never makes the NCAA Tournament or that we never made the Tournament between Foster and Sampson. I’d hope you’d get the point even though we know it’s not technically/totally true.
