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This I agree with. However, I think the transfer portal has really affected basketball teams. They only have 13 scholarships, and it used to be difficult to plan for guys leaving unexpectedly. Now, it is very easy for teams to fill out entire rosters, and also very difficult to hold onto players for any length of time. Like the laws of thermodynamics - all the players more or less funnel to better situations and so all the teams end up much closer together than they used to be.

My first reaction was that I completely agreed with this, but then a thought hit me... haven't basketball coaches been facing that since the mid 2000's when the NBA changed their draft rules? THe portal is probably an additional layer and I guess it probably does impact fringe programs the most. The top tier bball schools have just grown accustomed to talent leaving and having to reload immediately with the best HS seniors in the country. 

BTW this would invalidate your argument excusing him for mediocre performance this year b/c he has a young team, i.e. 4 sophomores starting.

Especially since sophomores aren't that "young" in modern college basketball...

If the sophomores aren't good enough to start yet, it's a recruiting issue. And not bringing in more transfers to support them if you know they're not good enough yet is a failure of roster management. Especially since he's been there long enough to have "his" guys.

That isn't my point. My point is that "mediocre" is a pretty wide net now. OSU is sucking right now and has still been roughly the fifth best team in the Big Ten by advanced stats. Since it is so easy to fill rosters now, parity has increased quite a bit. Filling rosters used to a be a big challenge and the primary difference between the haves and have-nots. Now, every team can fill out a competent roster and every player can find a better situation.

Sort of like seeing the NFL playoffs where the Eagles and Cowboys (and Browns) get trounced by supposedly inferior teams. The NFL has become a coinflip league in a lot of ways and college basketball is looking like that too.

A "coin flip" league is one thing if you look at a single game sample size. But over a larger sample, if you're coming up tails more than heads too often relative to expectations, you're simply not performing. At some point it's not merely bad luck with the way the coin flipped.

I think Medina's point is that Holtmann is consistently underperforming expectations (program averages). I don't think he's basing this on individual games or even individual seasons.

Right, no argument there. My question is how do you compare the environment, right now, with the environment 10 or 20 or 50 years ago. 

A "coin flip" league is one thing if you look at a single game sample size. But over a larger sample, if you're coming up tails more than heads too often relative to expectations, you're simply not performing. At some point it's not merely bad luck with the way the coin flipped.

Exactly.  I'll add that randomness and parity are NOT exactly the same thing.  

As I said upthread, I think that the focus on 3pt shooting has increased randomness because even great shooters have off nights and even terrible shooters have good nights.  Ie, my example from above:
If @betarhoalphadelta is 6" taller than me and more athletic then I am basically never going to be better than him in the post.  Conversely, if @MaximumSam is a 35% 3pt shooter and I am a 25% 3pt shooter I will occasionally have nights where I shoot better than him.  

So random bad losses and even random bad seasons ARE going to happen and I'm not someone who thinks the coach should be fired over them.  I took the #2 seed loss to a #15 in stride in part because a lot of great coaches have had similar or worse losses.  That loss is one of the 13 worst losses in NCAA Tournament history, the other 12 coaches:

• Tony Bennett's UVA Cavaliers lost to a #16 as a #1 in 2018.  Bennett won the NC the next year and has six ACC Championships.  
• Matt Painter's PU Boilermakers lost to a #16 as a #1 seed last year.  Painter has four B1G titles.  
• Jim Boeheim's Syracuse Orange lost to a #15 as a #2 in 1991.  Boeheim has an NCAA title, five F4's, and 10 BigEast titles.  
• Lute Olson's Arizona Wildcats lost to a #15 as a #2 in 1993.  Olson has an NC, five F4's, 11 P10 titles, and one Big Ten title.  
• Eddie Fogler's USCe Gamecocks lost to a #15 as a #2 in 1997.  
• Larry Eustachy's ISU Cyclones lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2001.  Eustachy has two B12 titles.  
• Mike Krzyzewski's Duke Blue Devils lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2012.  Coach K has five NCAA titles, 13 F4's, and 13 ACC titles.  
• Frank Haith's Mizzou Tigers lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2012.  Haith has a B12 title.  
• John Thompson III's Gerogetown Hoyas lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2013.  Thompson has three BigEast titles.  
• Tom Izzo's MSU Spartans lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2016.  Izzo has an NC, eight F4's, and 10 league titles.  
• John Calipari's Kentucky Wildcats lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2022.  Calipari has an NC, six F4's, and six SEC titles.  
• Tommy Lloyd's Arizona Wildcats lost to a #15 as a #2 in 2023.  Lloyd has a P12 title.  

Losing as a #2 to a #15 or even as a #1 to a #16 isn't a firing offense because random stuff happens.  Bennett, Boeheim, Olson, Krzyzewski, Izzo, and Calipari are NC winning coaches and they did it.  

Similarly in looking at this season the losses to PSU, IU, and M were all bad losses but individually bad losses happen.  

Bad games and even bad seasons happen even to great coaches.  Great coaches offset bad losses and bad seasons with great wins and great seasons.  

This is Holtmann's SEVENTH year.  There have been no B1G titles.  The only year that was even close was his first year, with Matta's players.  There have been no F4's, there hasn't even been a S16.  

Trajectory:
Holtmann went 15-3 in the B1G in 2017/18 with Matta's players.  Since then he has gone 50-56 including 7-19 over the last two seasons with a road losing streak that is now into double digits.  

I was wondering how this thread would go. It has become a great topic and discussion. I think @medinabuckeye1 used data to best demonstrate a position so far. There's a difference between a 35% and 25% shooter and random nights happen. That's a great demonstration of his position on this topic and honestly was such a great moment of "wow" I get exactly what he's saying now. 

I was wondering how this thread would go. It has become a great topic and discussion. I think @medinabuckeye1 used data to best demonstrate a position so far. There's a difference between a 35% and 25% shooter and random nights happen. That's a great demonstration of his position on this topic and honestly was such a great moment of "wow" I get exactly what he's saying now.

That's what I've been saying is way more responsible for the randomness of college basketball than roster continuity all along.  The analytics support doing it, and that's where Beilein was ahead of the curve, but at the NBA level, the rates are WAY more predictable than in college.

As bad as the Pistons are this year, they tried to zig, while everyone else zagged.  Their core would be really good in 2007.  But they have a bunch of really talented, athletic wings, who can defend.  But they can't shoot.  And that's why they are 4-35 or whatever.

I personally hate it, I think it makes the game less watchable.  But I'm not sure what the fix is.  I think a start is to keep the 3 point line consistent all the way around, so it eventually runs out of bounds, and you eliminate the corner 3.

We used to play a game during MSU games in college where you took a shot of beer every time MSU made a 2, and a shot of liquor every time they made a 3.  Generally they made ~4-5 threes per game.  If you played that game now, you would die.  

I personally hate it, I think it makes the game less watchable.  But I'm not sure what the fix is.  I think a start is to keep the 3 point line consistent all the way around, so it eventually runs out of bounds, and you eliminate the corner 3.

I have a theory but it is so radical that it would never get serious consideration.

Shooters have gotten so good that the 50% bonus for a long-range shot is simply too much. The fix is to make a regular shot worth three and a long-range shot worth four. Then the bonus is only 33.3% instead of 50%.

That actually isn't the radical part. The radical part is that, in conjunction with the above, the rim should be raised to 11'. When John Naismith invented the game in 1891 he was 5' 10-1/2" and he was considerably taller than the average American man. My guess is that six footers were rarer at Springfield College in 1891 than seven footers are in today's NBA.

As players got taller and better at jumping the inside game went from trying to get a good shot to just a dunking contest. The three point shot helped but then everybody figured out that 3>2.

At this point the game is largely 3's and dunks but that makes sense because why should you try anything else?

If you cut the long-range bonus to 33.3% and make dunks into something that only a few guys in the league can do then you'll bring back the midrange game, I think.