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My biggest question marks are more about the league than the teams, particularly how league games are officiated compared to the tournament. FYI, at times in the past, the tournament officials have not let stuff go the way officials have in league games. Three or four things really stand out that I’ve seen in a lot of league games. One is the shielding/leading of the off arm when going around a screen or driving into the lane. It’s technically illegal and gives the offensive player an advantage. Off the top of my head Shead does it (did it in the ISU game), Momcilovic does it (in particular when he’s in the lane), and McCullar does it to name a few. Then you have the Dickinson’s of the world that constantly hook with there off arm to get around 1 v 1 post defense. He also flairs his elbows and for as much as he does both he hardly ever gets called.
Moving screens (a lot of Houston screens were sloppy against ISU) are also something that’s poorly called in league games. As an ISU fan I’m extremely worried about our traps getting whistled consistently as we body the ever loving **** out of our opponents when we deploy them (the irritating part is it’s unnecessary and actually makes the trap less effective). Then there’s the 3 second violations but I’m pretty sure that is hardly called in college basketball. I know Edey could get dinged routinely but it’s rarely, if ever whistled.
Something the conference needs to do is review the NCAA tournament games and how they were/are officiated. Focus on the rules/calls that were enforced routinely and make it a point of emphasis with their own crews. The officals’ body of work should be constantly reviewed throughout the season, with some kind of merit/demerit system being created to reward the good ones and demand better perfomance from others. You suck? Your’re out, simple as that.
Houston and ISU in particular are teams that could be VERY susceptible to tournament officiating. They call it tight? It’s not going to help either team. If it is both better be able to adapt or they could be in trouble.
BTW none of the above comments were gripes about the game. We were outplayed and didn’t come close to what we needed to on the offensive end to match the defensive intensity that was brought. Just highlighting some observations that I’ve seen from games and some historical context from the league.
Oh, I forgot to put the Keshon Gilbert dramatics in there when talking about fouls. Even when he is fouled he should even get the call when he does that crap. At least half the time when he does it was either too weak for a call or there was no contact whatsoever. So tired of that crap (and he did it 2-3 times in the Houston game so I know you know what I’m talking about. ).
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I think the biggest issue in the league right now is the absolute mind boggling inconsistency from the officials not just game to game, that will happen with different crews, or even half to half. But play to play where one team down the floor gets hammered and no call then a really ticky tack call 5 seconds later. It goes both ways, but no team can adapt to rugby one second, and no contact the next second.
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EXACTLY!!!
Apparently we have about a thousand flaws but others are “flaw 
“ if you will.
Even the almighty UCONN is not without issues.
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I just hope they don’t call any games like that first game in Hilton…
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That’s why the league needs to have a committee and a standard for it’s officials. Grade them and set up a bonus payment system that rewards consistency in calls as well as performance. Officiating is an important part of the game and greatly affects it’s watchability. Investing in such a program is not only sensible it’s something that would pay for itself. Making your product more watchable will attract more eyeballs and more sponsorship $. It also increases the odds of your teams come tournament time.
It’s crazy to me that a league hasn’t started doing this already.
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To be clear, there are no “Big12 refs.” so not sure how exactly you would do that, but it would be great if they could.
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It’s usually the same thing every year for this message board
We swipe the non-conference schedule, and then we lose a few conference games
“We Suck”
“Season’s Over”
“We lose in the first round”
“We don’t have any good players”
etc. etc. etc… happens every year. UH doesn’t become UH until Jan-Feb, and then everyone hops the bandwagon!
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We are title contenders for sure. However, we will struggle to get past the Sweet 16 if we have long stretches of games where we go scoreless. It happens occasionally for us. If it happens at a bad time we are through. Need some luck in that regard. Hard to play well enough on offense for 6 straight games against increasingly tougher competition.
Which team does this not apply to? Or do you just think UH has a much greater propensity to scoring droughts than the other dozen or so teams that are contenders?
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If anything, in most cases, our defense makes it easier for us to “survive” a scoring drought. The biggest exception is when the other team is shooting 70% from the field the whole game.
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It can apply to any school really. However, I state that to highlight that there is certainly some variability in our outcome come NCAA time, but like I said, if things go right we could go all the way - we certainly have the talent. I’ve just seen it with Sampson now that we will get in scoring droughts deep in tournaments and the other team is making their shots and that 4-5 minute scoreless stretch that happens twice in a game ends up really costing us. No reason to think this team is necessarily any different. If we can hold onto a 1 seed you gotta think we have a chance to get further this year than last year which would break our trend of going 1 round less each year than the previous. Personally I’ll be disappointed if we don’t make the Elite 8 and fighting like dogs in our Elite 8 game to get a Final 4 bid but that just goes to show how far Sampson has taken us. Amazing really.
2021 - Final 4
2022 - Elite 8
2023 - Sweet 16
2024 - ???
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I said, unlike I had been posting all season, we’re realistic title contenders after saying all season we could hypothetically be a Final Four team as a ceiling but that’s it (that realistically, we shouldn’t expect more than that). Now I’m saying it’s realistic to expect a title from this group but I’m not expecting it. I didn’t say we can’t, that would be a contradiction. I just said I still don’t fully expect to win the national title, even though it’s certainly very possible.
That clear things up?
We’re really good. We just need our shooters to get hot at the right time.
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See a couple posts above.
There are 363 D1 teams. 4% make the Sweet 16 so it’s pretty fair to say everyone struggles to make it that far.
We are really good. Enjoy the ride.
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Nah I’m good Tyler. 
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“Do I think it will happen? DEFINITELY NOT”
You literally used the word DEFINATE.
Your entire post is mind numbing.
One of my favorite parts of your post was the following:
“But we’ll get favorable draws in the Tournament for the most part because of our seed and may even be favored to win it all. Even then, we’d still be no lower than a FOUR seed, so we’d just have to pull an UPSET or TWO”
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Hmm, I appear to have put the last sentence of your quote in the wrong spot. It was a late edit that was supposed to go at the very end and address the previous last sentence. Glad you pointed it out, as it’s not what I meant.
EDIT: I have edited it. Hope the last sentence makes a lot more sense now.