I still think Duke may have been the best team. They would have been tough to beat in a series rather than single elimination. Would have been interesting to see us play them. I thought Auburn also looked very good for most of the season, but seemed to lose their mojo in the last part of the season. (Edit: ...and after all, getting to the Final Four ain't too shabby.) But, I always liked our chances as well as we seemed to be built for a pretty good postseason run with all the options we had.
I like our chances again, but hope the fans can keep from panicking if we struggle at times. Sometimes it takes a while to gel.
Have they changed to rules about getting extra games if you travel to Alaska or Hawaii and how often you can have an overseas preseason trip for exhibition games? I don't keep up with those kind of things. Kind of made the Great Alaska Shootout a big deal way back then.
Duke may have been more talented, but they damn sure weren't the best team. In a clutch situation who do you have, Walter or Cooper? On the big stage Walter stepped up and made the play. Cooper couldn't even help his team maintain a double digit lead on a team that wasn't an even good scoring team, the very team that we did what Duke couldn't.
I frankly still can’t get over how clutch Walt was. I mean, we saw it in Rupp and against Col State in the tourney his first year, but his rub in the NCAAs was remarkable. Clutch shot after clutch shot. It didn’t matter if he was hot or cold, or how he was being defended. The threes to close out UConn and Texas Tech, the insane late drives against pressure and three point plays against Auburn and Houston, and just his ability to take and make big shots in the last 4-6 minutes of tight contests in the tourney was one of the best individual runs I can recall. Lots of great guard player over the years in March, but that was up there with the best (Alford, Walker, Napier).
Gators will have a bullseye on their back from the start this year. They flew under the radar most of last season and just kept getting better, then just refused to lose in the NCAA tournament. Very tight knit team. Still to be determined if this year's group will have that "it" factor to repeat. Even with the returning guys, we've lost a ton of our scoring, not to mention the intangibles of the 4 guards (Aberdeen included) having each other's backs and gelling as a cohesive unit. Amazing how expectations have changed from the beginning of last season until now.
If "clutch" means rising above your normal performance level during crunch time of a game, I'm of the opinion that "clutch" players are much, MUCH rarer than how often the term gets bandied about. But, at least for last season, I was convinced that Clayton did indeed have the very rare "clutch" gene working. But (to answer another poster), I'm also a big believer in what Donovan once said about how you could replay the tournament with the same teams and get a different result/champion. I'm not sure there's ever been a team (since the UCLA dynasty) that I would have taken even odds on to win the NCAA Tourney (against the field, but I haven't really thought about it that much - maybe there have been); I guess I might have come close to taking even odds on our repeat championship team back in 2007. Maybe I would have taken even odds on a couple of teams that didn't win: the Georgetown team that lost to Villanova and the Houston team that lost to NC State.
That 2nd Gator national title team was pretty close. They rolled through the NCAA tournament that year. Closest win was by 9 points, but none of those games were really in doubt.
Not sure he’s all there; put Georgia at 10! I don’t see Aubrin at 4 but sure Pearl picked up some talent.
He has UGA as a 10 seed which means they are one of the last 4 teams to get in. They are basically right on the tip top of the bubble and barely ahead of low ranked mid majors, so he probably has them perfectly slotted.
He has them at 10 in south region. So, wouldn’t there be 6 teams worse than them in South and other four regions? If so, does this translate to Georgia is supposedly better than 24 teams seeded? (6 teams x 4 regions) I have no idea why I care about something that is a pure guesstimate 9 months from now!
