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The Islanders are going dancing! A likely repeat Play-In 16 seed. Arizona had a lot of difficulty with this team in the first half. This was one of the signals early on that made it clear Arizona was one of the worst defensive Power teams that will be in the Big Dance. The first major signal was Cincinnati torching us at the Maui.

Unironically, I believe Gonzaga is within a few ranks of Arizona defensively too.

It is also of my opinion that Arizona has no excuse to not cut down the nets in Las Vegas this week.

Keeping track the teams Arizona has faced that are going dancing as Conference Champions; I believe the more of these that pop up in the Dance or at least make it to the Finals of their tournaments adds some clout to Arizona's OOC Slate.

Montana State is playing Northern Arizona tonight for the Big Sky Championship
San Diego St is favored to win the Mountain West Tournament

Southern is the 4 in the SWAC Tournament
Morgan St is the 5 in the MEAC

Creighton, Indiana, Tennessee have chances and are worth keeping an eye on.

Giving up 34 in a half is "having difficulty" against a tournament team?  The Cats held them to 30% from the field and 61 total points (in a 38 point win).

To quote you..."we ran them out of the gym".

Quote from: KansasCityCats on March 08, 2023, 05:49:55 PM
Giving up 34 in a half is "having difficulty" against a tournament team?  The Cats held them to 30% from the field and 61 total points (in a 38 point win).

To quote you..."we ran them out of the gym".

They hung around far longer than they should have. Teams like this usually lose by 50+ in the 1st round to 1 seeds. Arizona had issues stopping them. It was a warning sign. You just need to keep your eyes open and be willing to see there is quite a bit of lipstick on the pig here.

Montana State is going dancing after their win over NAU in the Big Sky Championship.

Another team that we had trouble with and showed how terrible our defense is before they ran out of steam on their own.

People must remember 1 thing about these OOC Games. Tommy was actually utilizing the bench. He was wearing teams down by virtue of throwing fresh bodies at the under-manned opponents. Even the Power 5 teams were undermanned against what we had thrown at them in the OOC slate. Tommy has completely backtracked from all of our talent and advantages and left things in the hands of refs to keep us out of foul trouble and relying on on/off shooting nights. Because our Defense is one of the worst that will be represented in the Dance in our seeding range.

But next up to keep an eye on

Morgan State
Southern
SDSU
Creighton
Tennessee
Indiana

Quote from: arxpert on March 08, 2023, 05:13:47 PM
The Islanders are going dancing! A likely repeat Play-In 16 seed. Arizona had a lot of difficulty with this team in the first half. This was one of the signals early on that made it clear Arizona was one of the worst defensive Power teams that will be in the Big Dance. The first major signal was Cincinnati torching us at the Maui.

Unironically, I believe Gonzaga is within a few ranks of Arizona defensively too.

It is also of my opinion that Arizona has no excuse to not cut down the nets in Las Vegas this week.

Keeping track the teams Arizona has faced that are going dancing as Conference Champions; I believe the more of these that pop up in the Dance or at least make it to the Finals of their tournaments adds some clout to Arizona's OOC Slate.

Montana State is playing Northern Arizona tonight for the Big Sky Championship
San Diego St is favored to win the Mountain West Tournament

Southern is the 4 in the SWAC Tournament
Morgan St is the 5 in the MEAC

Creighton, Indiana, Tennessee have chances and are worth keeping an eye on.

Wins over SDSU, Montana St, and TXA&M-CC. 3 Conference Champions. Avenged all losses that were taken this season. No one swept us. Very important to understand the Stanford win mattered a lot to this team as well as revenge on ASU and UCLA. The Win over the Pac12 Champion for the Pac12 Tournament AQ means a lot to the Stature of the program going forward. Undefeated OOC.

Arizona fulfilled their expectation of cutting down the nets (which was of my opinion to be mandatory as a season goal, not having anything to do with seeding). There will be a thread regarding this on the other section.