commavegarage {l Wrote}:twballgame9 {l Wrote}:Depends on what happens. For BC, they have been, for the most part. GT (national runners up), #1 seed Nova (Elite Eight) and #2 seed G'Town (Final Four) in the three seasons where I think BC actually had a team that was good enough to even contend for the Sweet 16 or Elite 8.
So please justify how having three teams in 13 years in the ACC that are good enough to make the Sweet 16 is acceptable?
I really want Al to do great; it's nights like this that make him incredibly hard to root for him.
Well the first two years he had no players thanks to Jim O'Brien (Dwayne Pina anyone?). So it is really 11 seasons. In those 11 seasons, he has been to the tourney 8 or 9 times. That means, ignoring the auto bids from small conferences, his teams have been in the top 35 teams in the country in all but 2 season once he got his recruits on campus.
It is acceptable because even in years when he doesn't have tourney talent, he makes the tourney. Think about the Bell teams with Harley, Agbai, Singletary, Beerbohm. Terrible. Last year's team fought to a tourney bid.
Now count what has actually happened - who they have actually played in their good years. Don't just set an amorphous goal like "they should make the Elite Eight"; is that true if they have to go through the #1 team in the country to get there? The hottest team? Should we presume that they will automatically knock off a 1 or 2 seed? That Al is required to make BC a 1 or 2 seed while playing an ACC schedule?
He won 2 regular season BE titles, and one BE tourney with relatively weak teams in a watered down league. In his first year in the ACC, he brought his best team to the final game of the ACC tourney, knocked off UNC twice on the way, and lost a title in one of the most epic title games the ACC has seen, and then went to the Sweet Sixteen. Every year teams look at his players and pick him to finish 10-15, every year he finishes in the top 5-6 teams.
Now look around Conte forum. No one shows. UNC and Kentucky recruits aren't coming here. Fans that don't go to games scream bloody murder. Yet Al brings in Bell, Smith, Dudley, Williams, Sanders, Jackson. Al chases Brandon Roy and Andre Iguodola when no one wants them.
Guy is a great coach overall. He is not great at Xs and Os, but neither are most head coaches. That stuff is usually left to assistants.
"We remind everyone that Boston College fired a perfectly good coach because he went on a job interview, and deserves all of this." Spencer Hall