Wild that Bama has more Sweet 16s than Illinois.
Nate Oats has to either LOVE it there or will absolutely be able to name his own price anywhere now.
***Official 2026 NCAA Tournament Thread***
- Thread starter ClonesTwenty1
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Wild that Bama has more Sweet 16s than Illinois.
Nate Oats has to either LOVE it there or will absolutely be able to name his own price anywhere now.
That had to be a tough sell to Duke fans at that time to hire the Army Coach coming off a 9-17 season and was just 14-11 the year before. Different times for sure.
Seems like it. He also didn't produce much his first few seasons at Duke, reached NIT then no postseason two straight years, then 2-and-out twice. A bit uncertain/shaky. I think he was at risk of dismissal. Then things got, shall we say, quite a bit better for quite a while.
Yeah I watched a doc on his early days at Duke. Pretty much Johnny Dawkins saved his job. Tommy Amaker, Mark Alarie, David Henderson & Bilas helped too.
Also Duke was already decent when he got there and coming off an Elite Eight (32 teams I think but still, that's really good) so there was a foundation to build from.
My favorite part about this tourney is Nebraska fans acting like they are these fantastic fans. Ummm you have not supported your team for 50 years. I remember taking over Nebraskas old stadium when I was younger because nobody bought tickets and you could get them cheap. Now they get one good team, show out a little, and declare themselves the best fans. It's like Iowa mens basketball team basically in the same boat. half empty Carver and now they all of the sudden care. Also, it's not because they were not good. We have had plenty of bad teams and our fans still showed up.
It was an ESPN documentary, 30 for 30 or the like. Saw it and the names Bigj4cy posted very likely saved him.
Agreed on the expectations. Multiple high seeds the last decade. One immutable law of the NCAA tourney is that getting out of the 1st weekend is fan bliss. You get a solid 2-3 days of sports talk gushing over your team. I totally love it.
ISU not getting past this round of 16 the last decade has really left a sour taste in my mouth. It's kinda mind boggling that they couldn't win at least 1 of them. ISU has dudes, so I feel decent about them winning on Friday despite the injury, but the ghost of NCAA past is renting space in my brain. For me thats been a major deterent for expectation and being in this spot in the tourney again.
Wild that ISU only has more tourney appearances than Nebraska out of that group. Even with as much as ISU has been in the tourney in the 2000s, shows how bad things were before then
Yep, I won't take frequent Sweet 16 appearances for granted (and extended consecutive tournament bids is cool), but have to break the ceiling at least occasionally. Even with generally favorable seeding, that won't happen every time, but get at least a few.
Until we start advancing to the Elite Eight regularly, then the Sweet Sixteen is always special. Kansas has only been to one since 2018.
Even after he made multiple final fours, there was still talk about how he could not win the big one. What is funny is the year they finally broke through, they were HUGE underdogs to UNLV. Everyone said that it was a formality that UNLV would win. That game against UNLV was one of the few times I actually rooted for Duke.
My first thought when I saw this was "Is Fred really 53?". Then I realized that I was at ISU when Fred was and I am also 53.
