bleedblue wrote:People need to clam down. This was 1 bad loss to a team that's built to give us problems. Everyone's acting like we wiffed so bad in the portal by not getting 2 guys as good as Trey and Baylor. There weren't 2 guys available in the portal that could replace them, baylor was a freaking All-American. It will take some time to gel but Macs whole strategy the last few years is to play our best ball in March. We have enough opportunities this season to lose some games and still make the tournament. The sky is not falling, Mac will get it figured out.
Totally agree with this sentiment. Have we learned nothing from recent history?
2022-2023 - Creighton has a terrible six-game losing streak. The season was over in many people's minds. There was talk on this board of replacing Mac. Don't deny it; it happened. Yet, this was the season when CU was a questionable call away from the Final Four.
2023-2024 - the Jays got boat-raced by mediocre Colorado State and UNLV teams. The UNLV loss, especially, was just as embarrassing as what happened against the worst power conference team in history (Nebraska). CU rebounded to beat a top-ranked Alabama and made another Sweet 16.
A loss like this happens quite frequently early in a Creighton season. And it's not just with CU. With other higher-tiered teams too. The dreaded "buy game" losses, etc. With this new transitive nature of modern college basketball, it is likely to happen even more frequently. The player continuity from season-to-season just won't be there. We are replacing a ton of EXPERIENCED minutes (Trey, Baylor, Farabello) with players who either never played college ball before (McAndrew, Davis) or players who are still learning Mac's system (Pop, Neal).
But shitty losses focus a coaching staff on needed improvements. It's a process. Hindsight is 20/20, but those awful defeats the past two years probably helped CU in the long haul. I'm hopeful (and optimistic) this one will too.
I've seen some folks mention that this is different because we don't have the same squad this year. That may end up being true, but I don't buy much stock in that argument. Because it's the same argument the naysayers were making after the six-game losing streak and after the awful UNLV loss. Way too many sports fans are incapable of contextualizing one bad loss or even a bad stretch. Creighton is still a Top 20 team in talent and expectation. This past week's loss didn't change that.
I'm not saying you can't criticize the performance. So many things went poorly or were inexplicable (Kalk's shot chart being one of them). But some of the comments...R-E-L-A-X!!
