Quote from: Salty spork on Today at 10:49:21 amThe only claim made in this thread is that UNC is a more respected academic school that U of A.

And that's the key, respected by whom?

That's where the rankings of colleges really start to become meaningless. How do you rank two courses, one with 300 students taught by a nobel prize winner (who hates teaching and just wants to focus on research) vs a class of 30 kids taught by somebody who hates research and spends their time trying to be the best possible teacher?

The answer to that depends on your goal. Learning the material well? Obviously the second choice is better. Bragging to your friends or colleagues? Well then the first is better. And IMO, that same mentality comes into a lot of those rankings and such.

For example, Oregon State vs Oregon. The ducks typically rank higher on these lists and are for some reason an AAU accredited school while the beavers are not. But, the beavers absolutely dwarf the ducks in total research grants. Absolutely crush them in publications and research impact. They have way more total students and in general, the students who graduate from OSU do better professionally than those from the UofO. However, as a STEM guy, I'm biased towards those fields and metrics related to those fields. It's widely accepted that Eugene is definitely the better school for arts and humanities.

Which brings us back to 'respected by whom?' If the job you are doing isn't related to your degree at all and/or the person hiring is largely ignorant of what actually goes on inside of a university, absolutely, a more 'prestigious' university will open more doors for you in the same way that people who don't know much about watches are more impressed by a rolex than a garmin Fenix. If your degree is important to your job and/or the person hiring isn't ignorant about college rankings, then the only thing that matters is your competency.

QuoteEverything else you are talking about is red herring. Nobody is making any claim that any MIT student is smarter than any U of A student. Nobody is saying you cannot get a good job and advance in business with a degree from the U of A. All that is copium.

While we are asking you son questions, Ask him if that MIT degree opens any doors for him. I don't have to ask. I went to a top grad school. I can tell you, it gets you in rooms. What you do when you are there, is up to you.

1. Only one type of person in this world uses that word, and well, I'm not gonna say any more about that.
2. We are talking about undergrad, not grad school. Having more money for bigger research toys doesn't impact some 19 year old undergrad kid. It does impact a grad student.

Quote from: Fan701 on Today at 07:24:50 amAs long as I can remember gifted scorers are often described as selfish, as if it would have been better to pass it and let Devo take the shot.  The fact is that Battle didn't need big volume to score a lot.  He was very efficient, got to the line a ridiculous amount of the time.  For instance, against Missouri, he scored 42 points on only 15 shots.

On an individual level, based on numbers alone, I'd agree that Battle was efficient last year if the focus is true shooting percentage.  Battle was right at 60%, primarily because he got to the line 6.7 times per game and made 87.3% of his FTs.  And every time he drew a foul, an opposing player and team picked one up. 

No doubt Battle is a really good player.  I've enjoyed learning more about advanced stats over the last year.  After considering most of them, stats like true shooting percentage are handy tools to compare players and teams. 

Having said that, we didn't use, generally speaking, advanced stats in 1978, but we didn't need to to know that Sidney Moncrief was a very efficient player.  Like Battle, Moncrief's efficiency that year was helped by getting to the line 7.1 times and making 5.6 per game.  There was no 3-point line in 1978, but Moncrief also made 59% of his shot attempts.  His true shooting percentage was 66.2%.  Battle's 2-point percentage last year was 45.2%.

Not everyone here had a chance to see Moncrief play, and he is a Hall of Famer. But the point is that no one needed advanced stats in 1978 to know that Moncrief was a great all-around basketball player. He averaged 7.7 rebounds for Arkansas in 1978. Defensively, he won the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year award the first two years it existed. 

My point is it takes eyes, experience, and numbers to fully evaluate a basketball player.  Battle's true shooting percentage of 59.9% last year was good by itself.  It's the overall eye test where he looks like a player who may not be the sort to build a team around.  Moncrief attacked the rim, but his shot selection was great.  Sutton demanded it of all his players.  And that team averaged 75.1 points per game. 

Battle's shot selection was an issue many have here.  Attacking the rim is great.  Drawing fouls is great.  45.2% on 2-point attempts isn't great.  Maybe Battle did as he was coached, but he seemed at times to try and take what wasn't there and play out of control.  That's an eye test, not analytics, and both are valid for purposes of evaluating a player. 

Today's probable starting pitchers

For Arkansas:  Brady Tygart (4-1, 2.68 ERA)

For Kentucky:  Dominic Niman (7-3, 5.00 ERA)

Quote from: donnie on Today at 10:51:39 amI think Omier's asking price may be too much when we have multiple needs. Just a hunch. If you can get Toppin or Achor for half of what Omier wants and get Deivon Smith as a result I'd say that's a win.

Amazing the complexities all these coaches are facing to build rosters with a "salary cap" (meaning each school has a certain amount to afford on transfers).   New meaning being given to the idea of getting the "most for your money"