People hate oscar. He's a dorky guy with lots of weird quirks and was a questionable hire. Losing the first round game last year was terrible and a wasted opportunity with a decent seed. This year has been a roller coaster. I get it.
However, when I look at the state of the program I don't think we're in trouble. The trajectory based on my expectations when oscar was hired is a positive one, IMHO. My hope for this team was to be in the tornament and not the NIT and we are in. This team toyed with finishing 2nd in the league and had plenty of frustrating losses, but in a major year of transition for this program I can live with that. Here are my two main reasons for having a somewhat positive outlook.
First, we have a 2nd team all league player coming back who will probably be 1st team all league going into next year. We have other candidates that should have a shot at 3rd/2nd team next year, especially Gipson, but I'd give a shot to Westicles with good development. Edwards could be an all newcomer team player and maybe Hurt. I don't think the talent level is dropping, though I want to see recruiting improve to the point that we land more Top 150 level players. Foster was a lucky break, but that happens. He can be oscar's Pullen; ie. a guy that performs better than his recruiting ranking that can be the face of the program for 3 more seasons. Westicles, Johnson, Thomas, Johnson, Edwards, Bolden, Hurt etc. must develop with him and at least a couple must become 2nd/3rd team level over the next several seasons. Recruiting is my biggest question mark right now long term, but I think we have the talent to be upper half Big 12/NCAA tournament every year for the next several seasons.
Second, we've beat good teams this year and its the reason we're not really even a bubble team. We've got 7 wins over Top 50 teams (kenpom) and 11 vs the Top 100. Only Frank's teams from Jake's JR/SR seasons did better than that since Huggins got here. (Wooly had 10 Top 50 wins in 6 seasons, so that comparison is laughable.) The 2 terrible losses to UNC and Charlotte early in the year likely dropped us at least one seed and that's disappointing no matter how much we lost from last year's team. However, the team recovered nicely, still got some nice OOC wins, and won some nice games in the Big 12 with wins over teams that will likely be seeded 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10 in the NCAA tournament. You can't win tournament games (which is the ultimate goal in college basketball) if you don't prove you can beat good teams and this team did that, even if it wasn't quite as consistent as I would like.
