Bull94

I don't think it was TO's. we only had 3 more than them. We were definitely gassed though and their zone in the 2nd half was suffocating. They also shot 60% in the 2nd half. That being said, we hung with them for 30 minutes. I still believe Mattis picking up a phantom 4th at the 9 minute mark was the turning point in the game. If it had gone on their big man, which replays clearly show it should have, he would have been on the bench instead of Mattis. they ate us alive in the paint late.

Ever get the thought that we might be being outcoached a bit? When one half, or the other, is so crushing (e.g. 20+ point margins) you have to believe that a) if the first half is a rout, the better coaching staff gameplanned better before the game and the other team never adjusted on the fly, having to wait until halftime to regroup or if the second half is a rout, the better coaching staff adjusted better at halftime to the first half trends, OR c) if the second half is a rout, the losing team is either out of shape or thinly benched (e.g. poor recruiting, poor roster management or injury). Bring it on, Apologists, this was a bad loss... yeah who would think a guy that has coached at his school for 31 years, won a N.C., been to 25 NCAA tourneys, has national top recruits begging to go there and gets paid multiple times as much as the lowest paid coach in his conference to be a better game planner?? you're a bright one. If you think this all falls on the coach then you are a bit naive. Tell that to the guy who left and now has a vtech team ranked in the top 25. I believe he was the one that said kids don't dream of being a Bull. Maybe it's the program that is terrible and not necessarily the coach?

they may not have determined the outcome of the game but the phantom 4th foul on Mattis ( he didn't even touch the guy) when we were down by 4 with 9 minutes left definitely shifted the momentum of the game. If it was called properly (Cann took the charge but drew a no call on their big man right before they called Mattis' 4th) things may have been different. Down 4 with the ball and their big man on the bench instead of down 6 +1 with our best defender on the bench.We need things to go our way in order to win games like these.

Welcome to BE basketball. You have to beat teams you're supposed to beat on a fairly consistent basis if you want to keep your job. St Johns was winnable but not a gimme up there. [highlight]Wins over Wake, Cincy, Rutgers and Notre Dame have proved we have a different team now. I really am surprised you keep bringing that up[/highlight]. Just yesterday you were trying to convince me this is a "different" team than earlier in the year.  How are we supposed to buy that line with a loos to a bad SJU team? No spin, please. the same SJU team that beat ND at home??? or the one that beat SU at home?? maybe the one that beat DePaul at home?? when did the #9 team in the BE start being considered "bad"??? When expectations are raised because of certain fans saying how much improvement we've made, and how McCullum deserves to come back, etc. You can't say a win vs. Notre Dame means he should come back, and then ignore a loss against a team pretty much everybody admits you should have beaten. You guys are victims of your own foolish words. who is everybody? las vegas didn't seem to think so. possible yes. not probable. I think you need to temper your expectations. we have the lowest funded program with the lowest paid coach and the worst fan base in the conference and nobody to blame but ourselves(the fans). I believe RMC will have exceeded expectations if he can get this abysmal program to finish any higher than 16th. Obviously all of the experts would agree considering they picked us to finish 16th again. That being said, I think he has us headed in the right direction. I still believe we can reach MSG and the NIT this year. I'm hopeful for the future as well. I like who we have coming in and the core guys coming back. Anybody who thinks we should be lighting the world on fire with our BBall team has no idea where we have come from and how we got here.

critical game as in USC losing to UCLA for the right to play for a national title?? that kind of critical game?? hardly

Welcome to BE basketball. You have to beat teams you're supposed to beat on a fairly consistent basis if you want to keep your job. St Johns was winnable but not a gimme up there. [highlight]Wins over Wake, Cincy, Rutgers and Notre Dame have proved we have a different team now. I really am surprised you keep bringing that up[/highlight]. Just yesterday you were trying to convince me this is a "different" team than earlier in the year.  How are we supposed to buy that line with a loos to a bad SJU team? No spin, please. the same SJU team that beat ND at home??? or the one that beat SU at home?? maybe the one that beat DePaul at home?? when did the #9 team in the BE start being considered "bad"???

how about giving him 1/2 of a year? Have you ever blown out a knee? were you back to full speed in 6 months? the kid is LEADING the BE in assits per game as a freshman who blew out a knee 2 years in a row and you are criticizing him?? we rely on him to play the point because he was recruited too. Rusty or not he still leads the BE in APG. cut the kid some slack.

Buckley is 3rd overall in 3 pointers in the BE. I'd say that constitutes an outside scoring threat. Howard leads the conference in assits per game as a freshman. He wasn't able to pad those stats early on either. Do you think he might be a little slow because of his  knee injuries? I've heard it takes at least a year before you can expect to be up to full speed. The guy wasn't even supposed to play this year. When did he hurt his knee for the 2nd time?? I expected Jesus to be a more prolific scorer. I'm disappointed in him. I agree we do need more scoring. Bring in Holmes next year and I think we'll have a pretty solid team. Why are you always living in the past? Can't you see the light at the end of the tunnel? We were a middle of the road team in CUSA. Never any better then that. Did you expect us to make the move to the BE and dominate in our 2nd year?

Lutz coaches at his alma mater. Probably gets paid a boat load more than our coach. again why would he come here?

He already turned the job down once. doesn't anybody remember him taking his name off of our consideration list the last time we were hiring? That was when he was an assistant none-the-less. he knows this is a job to nowhere. terrible pay, terrible facilities and an impossible conference to compete in. He gets paid more at his current job. Why in the world would he want to come here???

The sole basis of the 5th game was to allow a non-auto (all conferences are BCS now) team into the picture without losing a at large spot for any of the big 6 conferences. These plans were announced on the heels of Congress and Tulane threating an antitrust investigation/suit. With only 8 spots in the playoffs, again, your going to have a REALLY hard time explaining to Wisconsin or LSU that they aren't in the playoff (making 15M+) because Boise State, who either team would streamroll through their schedule, deserved a shot. The BCS and any playoff is about money. Boise State is a great story, but the teams that get the ratings and draw the fans are the Wisconsins and LSUs of football. The difference between th 66th team complaining in Basketball and the 9th team complaining in football would be about 6-7 Million dollars. The NCAA basketball tournament makes at times less than 1/10th of what the BCS makes for teams. There will never be a NCAA sanctioned playoff in the "Bowl Division" as a result, money will ALWAYS be the factor blocking a major playoff. Now as far as a plus one game. You may see it one day. In fact if Florida wasn't in the BCS Championship game you might see it as soon as 2009. That being said Florida's president Bernie Machen is still pushing for a playoff amongst presidents http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/sports/epaper/2007/01/04/a3c_uffoot_0104.html Who knows maybe he can get this going. Wisconsin didn't even get a BCS bowl let alone a shot at the NC game. They lost out on millions. LSU had 2 losses and they still played in a BCS game. How was it fair that Wisconsin was left out?? Shouldn't they have the same complaint now? Won't they have the same complaint when they get left out of the playoffs??They were left out of the BCS and LSU wasn't. There is no guarantee a non-BCS team would get in every year. They would have to be ranked so high just as they do now to get into a BCS game. When they do go to + one they are well on their way to going to an 8 team playoff. What happens when there are 4 bowl winners left who can say that they deserve to play for the title? Simple. They add another round. Read the article ET posted. The guy who runs the Big 10 and therefore the BCS says himself that there are no real arguements over going with a playoff. He wants his conference to be the power conference and the Rose Bowl to be the power bowl. So far he has positioned them to do this. They did a study that says adding a +1 game adds 10's of millions to the bowl system. You think adding 2 more games is going to hurt that? It will only make the pot growbigger.

The current antitrust issues were cleared by adding that 5th game, you're suggesting that we get rid of it. Yes but if you allow one team in that hasn't won their conference you cannot leave another one out without hearing them *****. For example if you worked this years, how could you tell Wiconsin (who is now 12-1; lone loss to Michigan with the 80th ranked schedule) or LSU (whose 2 losses are to Florida and #10 Auburn with a the 11th ranked schedule) that one is worthy and the other isn't. Of course they are going to say that, it's a good argument as to why Michigan shouldn't have been in the title game and I cannot think of one other school that WOULDN'T have made that argument if it came down to them as a conference champ or another 1 loss team that wasn't a conference champ. Agreed here. Somebody is always going to *****. There are teams that ***** about getting left out of the top 65 hoops teams. Many can make an arguement for being in before some small conference champ but the fact is if they want in without a doubt then they need to win their conference. Can't get around that but instead of leaving an undefeated SEC Champ (Auburn) out of the NC picture you're leaving a 2 loss team that didn't even play in their conference championship game out. If Wisconsin or LSU wanted to assure themselves of a shot then they needed to win their conference. Plain and simple. I'm not sure adding the 5th game did anything for the antitrust suit. Allowing non-BCS teams the ability to qualify for them did. So would allowing them to qualify for the playoffs if they were able by the same guidelines. BSU probably earned the right to make the playoffs this year by being undefeated and ranked in the top 12. Unfortunately there is no perfect system. This way 8 teams have a legit shot at it. The BCS way screws teams 3-8.

it's the same way they determine BCS teams now. 6 conference champs and 4 atlarge. instead of 4 at large there would be 2. if they are any anti-trust issues with a playoff then there are the same issues with the current BCS. LSU or BSU may have a complaint but now instead of teams 3-8 having a complaint it would be teams 9 and higher. not realistic for them to expect a shot at NC if they couldn't win their conference. same arguement team #66 has for basketball/. I believe it was all the Uf fans that said UM didn't deserve a shot because they didn't win their conference. If there is a case where 2 Big 10 teams were tied with 12-0 records I think one would easily qualify for the at large while the other goes because of conference title.

They don't. Every conference receives a cut from the BCS now and they allowed the non-autobid to be easier reached for non auto BCS teams. Thus every team now has access to a BCS bid. This was the result of the antitrust lawsuit that Tulane was going to bring against the BCS. In stead of going to court the BCS included the little conferemce. Last year Boise would not have been in a BCS game because they finished 9th in the BCS standings not in the top 6 which was formerly required. they could do the same thing with an 8 team playoff. 6 BCS conference winners + 2 at large from any of the top 119 as long as they are in the top 9. wouldn't be difficult to get around.

you should have come forward then and ponied up the extra $800,000+ a year for huggins and the money to buy out RMC if you felt this strongly about it. Bill "freaking " Walker will be at KSU for half a season. good luck with that.

The fact that you even brought up race makes no sense... and kinda makes me wonder.  What does high profile have to do with race?  : Anyway... you guys just keep speculating as to the reasons assistants have left or players have not worked out.  It really shows a lot of ignorance to bash someone based on things that you have no clue about. Please enlighten me and anyone else who is not on the McCullum bandwagon, why these losing seasons, loss of players, lack of quality recruits, etc, etc. have nothing to do with the head coach.  Why is McCullum immune from criticism based upon the current condition of USF Basketball. I'm all ears. the current condition is a 4 - 0 record. how is this an indication of a bad team? sportsline has us at a 32 RPI. why is everyone living in the past? get over it. I find it hilarious that people actually don't know anything about college basketball and yet come on here and criticize our team and coaches for the past. There are so called USF fans that actually picked richmond in the contest. Tell me, would you pick a 3-3 team that is a 9.5 point underdog, starts 4 freshmen, is 0 - 3 ATS,  with losses against Marist and Radford at home to beat a team that is 4 - 0 , 2 - 0 ATS, and playing at home??? no wonder vegas has the money to build billion dollar hotels. Ask them if they looked at this objectively if they would make the same picks. you people are living in the past. we are 4 games into THIS season and 4 -0. Can we please enjoy it BEFORE we actually quit on this team as fans??? I know there are plenty including Herm, sportsfan, jewbull etc that would rather be proven correct then have the Bulls have a successful season. Pretty sad if you ask me. 3 more games and we get some reinforcements.

you mean our 4-0 basketball team that has a 34 sportsline rpi rating? they're terrible. yeah you know what your talking about, sure. http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/polls/rpi/index1

It was women's bball, and it was Thanksgiving weekend.  I doubt USF beats that. It was actually a men's game and it was against another top 25 program. I bet USF gets that easily. http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/boxscore?gid=200611250319

they are distributed to boosters first but they list a number you can call to preorder tickets through LSU in the paper. that was the reason they have sold 32,000. funny they get excited for 6500 to a basketball game when their team is top 10. I bet USF would blow that away if we had a top ten team.

Highly unlikely that ANYONE has the access through a single university to buy that number of tickets to a BCS bowl a year.  Believe me, it was tough getting a ticket to the Sugar Bowl when LSU won the national championship a couple years ago.  Demand heavily exceeded supply.  Between 150 and 250K fans tailgate each week at Tiger Stadium, which only holds 92K people.  There are some serious parties... I think it was more like 1500 and there was a big stink about it the year they went to the sugar bowl. he had some kind of connection through LSU though and had done it for years.

these tickets are available to the general public through LSU. Do you think any brokers are buying??? I guarantee most are brokers. I bet if USF sold rose bowl tickets to the public we could sell 32,000 too. Hell I would buy 100 to resell myself. I remeber the story of the guy from LSU who buys like 10,000 sugar bowl tickets a year through LSU. He resells them and makes like $200,000 a year doing it. They tried to stop him a couple of years ago. http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061129/SPORTS0202/311290013/1001

not true. rbs come in all the time and make an impact right away. maybe not qbs or wrs but rbs do it all the time. tomlinson had 1600 yards from scrimmage and 10 tds his first year. he was the #5 overall pick. IMHO you cannot judge any player accuratley till they have about 3 years in the league.  Players develop and become adjusted to the NFL at different speeds.  Imagine if you judged Tiki Barber, Shaun Alexander, or Larry Johnson by their first year in the league the way people are doing bush.  They would all look pretty foolish.  Lets not forget Johnson being called a baby by his head coach and that he needed to stop wearing the papers or something to that effect.  Also Tiki Barber was considered to be nothing more than a third down back who fumbles too much early in his career (gee that sounds familiar) and now has 6 (counting this year) 1000+ yd seasons to his credit.  How about he give the guy a couple years before we go screaming bust.  Now if you say he didnt live up to the hype that alot of people had for him going into THIS SEASON i would agree but to call him a bust is to say he wont do anything over the rest of his career, which it is WAY to early to make a judgement like that. I never said he was a bust. in fact in a previos post I said that only time will tell. He is overrated though. the guy has more commercials then tiki, lj, and tomlinson combined. If you watch any nfl analyst you may notice how great they make him out to be. just like they do with m vick. I almost have to turn the sound down when the falcons play because they never criticize vick. they only talk about him being such a great talent. there must be a league mandate not to say anything deragatory about him. just like they're not allowed to criticize officiating. by the way tiki was a 2nd rounder not #2 overall and his numbers are better than bush's his rookie year. LJ was 27th overall and played behind a stud in p holmes and alexander was 19th overall and he had 1600 total yards his 2nd year in the league. I was comparing bush to tomlinson because they were drafted similarly. one was #2 overall and the other #5 overall.

he's the 46th ranked rushing rb. he ranks behind 8 other rookies none of which start on their own team.

not true. rbs come in all the time and make an impact right away. maybe not qbs or wrs but rbs do it all the time. tomlinson had 1600 yards from scrimmage and 10 tds his first year. he was the #5 overall pick.

velcro I think Richmond is a home game. they're pretty young. they start 4 freshman. hopefully they get rattled on the road.