Despite having had some teams that possessed the talent. The teams from 1987-88 and 1993-94, in particular, come to mind, along with possibly the 1995-96 and 1997-98 teams. The loss to Duke in the Elite Eight in 1994 was devastating. I remember us dominating Duke in the first half and then getting pounded in the second half. I have always thought that their Coach K just vastly out-coached our Coach K in that game although in all fairness, outside of Robinson, I never thought that team had tremendous depth. Being seeded #1 in 1996 and then getting hammered by Tubby Smith's #8 seeded Georgia in the second round was sickening (that was the first year we lived here which made it particularly hard to stomach). I can also remember over the years having a hard time in the tournaments with non-conference teams that we should have handled with ease, teams like Western Carolina and Wisconsin-Green Bay come to mind. In that same vein, last year's loss to VCU seemed to me to be primarily a coaching failure, that team had tons of talent even without Hummel.

I have wondered for a long time if it has been a weakness of our coaching staffs in failing to prepare properly for big games especially against non-conference opponents that we are not familiar with. They do a great job historically in conference play but we suffer in the tournaments. Bob Knight has always said that everyone has a will to win but not everyone has a will to prepare to win and John Wooden said something similar, "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail".

Just some thoughts on things I have been wondering about.