probably falls somewhere between “great coach” and “only won with Pitino’s players.” Kentucky fans were ridiculously hard on him and probably don’t have very realistic expectations right now considering their relative place in college basketball, particularly in terms of a recruiting base. At the same time, Tubby never really wanted that level of scrutiny and never recruited nearly as well as the charismatic Pitino.

He’s a great fit for MInnesota, though, with much lower expectations and a chance to be his own coach, not the successor of Pitino, shows he could never have hoped to fill. I imagine Tubby has been happier in the last two years than he was at any point at Kentucky, where the expectations visibly weighed on him. Tubby’s the best coach Minnesota has had in my lifetime and will probably shape the program into a consistently solid program in the Big 10, which is more than they have had recently besides the good Bobby Jackson-led teams in the ’90s.

He won with another coach’s players? It still takes an awful lot to get to and win a national championship regardless of how good your players were. It isn’t the most talented team that wins—it takes much more to being a college coach. If it were so easy, everyone would be doing it and coaches wouldn’t be making millions.

So let’s assume for a moment that your premise is correct. How can we prove that? Well, let’s look at what Tubby has done elsewhere. He brought Tulsa back to back sweet 16 appearances. Yes, Tulsa, was actually relevant once upon a time in the NCAA tournament; not anymore. Let’s move on to Georgia. He went 45-19 in two seasons, giving the Bulldogs their first ever back to back 20+ win seasons. Now the only way Georgia qualifies for a post season tournament is by winning the conference tournament. On to Kentucky. Let’s just ignore the national championship for a moment (as if a national championship means absolutely nothing) and look at the other years. 5 SEC regular season championships and 5 tournament championships. Some people like to criticize his lack of success in the NCAA tournament. He had 6 sweet 16 appearances and 4 elite 8 appearances. The NCAA tournament really is a crapshoot anyways. Disagree? Then why has there only been one year ever where all four #1 seeds made it to the Final Four? One loss and you are done. On to Minnesota where he took a 9 win team and turned them into a 20 win team with largely the same players. And now the Gophers are in the NCAA tournament and Kentucky is in the NIT. Next year will be even better for the Gophers as their two big freshman and stud freshman guard become sophomores and two more highly touted freshman take the floor. Deep NCAA tournament runs will be in our future thanks entirely to Tubby.

The winters really are no worse than summers in the South (not necessarily Austin, specifically). In fact, I would argue better. You can at least have some fun in the winter skating, skiing, snowball fights, etc. In the southern heat, you can’t even stand being outside. The old adage about putting more clothes on but can only take so much off applies.

In any event, I will be a UT grad student come August, so I will at least have a rooting interest for the Horns if they do beat us.

If you are married, I bet your spouse hates tv time.

Mediocrity? Where? The conference is so deep that they beat up on each other.

Proof:

The Big 10 has wins over Texas, UCLA, Duke, Louisville, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Missouri, Florida State, Boston College, Butler, Virgina Tech, Miami, Kansas State, and Notre Dame. I realize those last four didn’t make the tournament, but they are still good teams from power conferences (okay, Butler isn’t from a power conference, but they are a good team).

I think that our performances against teams outside the Big 10 shows the strength of the conference. It is certainly stronger and deeper than the Big 12. Indiana is horrible and Iowa isn’t very good. But teams 1-9 including Northwestern (they beat Florida State among others) and Penn State (beat both Michigan State and Purdue, but had a crap non conference schedule) who didn’t make the field.

I’m not sure I understand what that is based on. You are saying Texas has more talent now, or will always have more talent, or what? The talent now may be debatable, but I’ll take the future of Minnesota over Texas at this point. Tubby got just as much top talent at Kentucky as Pitino did. Texas has certainly been very good the last 4-5 years, so they do have a better track record. But a 7/10 game in the NCAA tournament is usually pretty close.