I think most people are pretty reasonable about their expectations and the difficulty of our level of competition at the national scale and in the conference. I think most people probably remember the dark days of the late Morgan and the whole McDermontt era, too, and not only were we (1) bad we were (2) boring. Even the "bad" Fred team the first year was fun to watch, and, heck, he took the leftovers of the last McD year and got to 0.500 with it. There's just a few mal-contents around these boards and otherwise that seem "late to the party" and think this is football or something where a Top 25 team and national title contender can't lose practically any games.
It's basketball. It ain't like that. Get hot at the right time for single-elimination tournaments that are AWFUL ways to pick the best team, statistically, but a heck of a lot of fun. UConn was mediocre most of last year and look what happened when Shabazz started draining threes.
This is still a hoot, and always will be with Fred around. Cherish it, people. He's going to have plenty of options now and down the road--I'd imagine most NBA teams would be glad to have him, wouldn't surprise me if some college programs would think about him, too. UK tried to hire Izzo at one point. The KU boards have discussed him as a long-term successor to Self. That one tool in Alabama said they should hire him away from us, blissfully unaware of basically anything. It's really hard to be competitive in this conference and to bring people to Ames.
Baylor is a really good team and getting better of late. Hitting 5/5 on contested threes when shooting for your life on the road is pretty impressive. I will say that I do wish Fred would have called a time out to break their momentum on this one. Yes, I think this is one rare instance where he got out-coached for being too conservative with that. But it's hard to argue with the body of work, and this team still has all the potential in the world over the next month.
The two best ISU teams of all-time, to me, are pretty clearly the Fizer/Tinsley year and the Kane/Ejim year. Rare you get solid teams with two AAs to headline things. I don't think this team has that kind of "top-end" talent on it. Niang has been inconsistent this year, and he's our best bet for it next year probably, but, yeah. I do think we've got a deeper roster of good or very good players, but not really anything transcendent. It is more of a team thing at the moment. It's a team that's plenty good enough, however, to do well in Kansas City and make a run in the NCAA tournament. I'd hope Fred could get out of the first weekend considering we're probably playing a lower-conference automatic bid in the first game and a #6 seed in game two, which is a lower-level-but-still-made-it major conference team (like an OSU) that I hope we can handle. Anything past that? Just bonus. Enjoy the ride. How they do in that "stream" of things is going to determine their place in the pantheon relative to Fizer/Tinsley and Ejim/Kane and, probably my #3, the Dedric/Cato team that got to the Sweet Sixteen and won in KC.
I know Fred and the team talked things up. CW was a personified hype train this off-season. But take it all in stride and have some context to it. This is great.
I do feel like the French defenders with shellshock at the Battle of Verdun after the artillery barrage Baylor put on us last night, though.
