http://www.rpiratings.com/NBA.html
13 nba players from uconn, 12 from unc. and don’t try and give me some
kind of quality>quantity argument, as you’d be hard-pressed to find a
better 4 than ray allen, richard hamilton, caron butler and emeka okafor.
John

You have us by one on the list of current players. But Michael Jordan came from North Carolina. And he didn’t just go to school here, he was born and bred baby. Besides, I think Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Jerry Stackhouse, and Rasheed Wallace stack up pretty well (if not decidedly better) against your quartet. And could any of the UConn four do this?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ieXETZVLJa4
Suck it!

Hahaha. I was considering going “PS–Don’t even try and bring up MJ”.

Carter and Allen pretty much a push, although VC hasn’t starred in a
movie. Caron Butler is currently the man on Washington. Jamison has
similar stats, but Butler actually plays D (2.2 spg for butler compared
to .9 for AJ)–something he learned at UConn. Wallace>Okafor, although
the latter has a longer career ahead (and is a bit of a better team
player). And Rip is like a successful version of Stackhouse. Even in his
best year, for Detroit, Stack shot 40.2% from the field–no coincidence
when he left town and Rip arrived (and become the Pistons go-to guy) that
the Pistons won a championship.

Pretty even, although the UConn side is younger. And once RayRay wins a
national championship this year, the day will be mine!

John

didn’t even have to click on the link to know that was coming (although i
did anything cause it’s pretty sweet)

anyways, did vince carter ever do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEWIDG5OV-U&feature=related
or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GofVmD5lNAI

Just because a dude has a bunch of steals doesn’t necessarily mean he plays good D. Case in point: Larry Hughes. I think he’s always near the top in steals per game which looks good because they don’t keep track of bad risks per game. I don’t really think that should be a big plus in your argument for Caron Butler. To his credit he’s having the best year of his career so far, but how long will that last
Why do you say Okafor is a better team player? Because he doesn’t get a lot of technicals (some might say this fires the team up)? Or is it just because he’s in there more for defense and rebounds than scoring? Sheed wins the battle of the big men because he’s so versatile. Has Okafor made an NBA three-pointer in his life?
I’ll concede Hamilton over Stackhouse, but I don’t think it’s as wide a margin as Sheed over Okafor.
And no, Vince never won a college championship, but Jeff McInnis, Stackhouse, and Sheed all did in 93 and they’re all still in the NBA. That’s of course not to mention Sean May, Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants, Marvin Williams, and David Noel who all played on the 05 team (that won a championship) and are now all in the NBA. Suck it!

I considered putting a qualification on that, as you’re right about the
steals point, but the fact is that Caron Butler IS known for playing good
D. The Wiz put Butler on the other team’s best SG/SF. I don’t know AJ
particularly well, but I’m quite sure he’s NOT.

I didn’t say Sheed was better than Okafor. I think very highly of Sheed.
I’m clearly just mocking the fact that Wallace is a “bad” guy and Okafor a
“good” one. Wallace clearly has his personal interests ahead of the team
every time he gets another T.

Now, Okafor led his team to a national championship in college just like
Sheed did. And it took Sheed quite a while before he became an NBA force
(in fact, it took him 5 years before he made more than .3 3s/game, by the
way). Considering that Okafor was a 2nd overall pick, he has plenty of
potential to bridge this “wide margin”.

May, Felton, McCants Williams v. Villanueva, Ben Gordon, Donyell Marshall,
Cliff Robinson. We could each make points as to whose list is better, but
it’s pretty even, so don’t even bring the lesser guys into it (I’ve never
even heard of David Noel. Seriously, I haven’t).

Not to mention, all things being equal (other than the fact that we are up
13-12 in quantity), the Huskies wear a nice manly shade of blue–you won’t
see them frolicking around in pastels. Ergo, tiebreaker to me, suck it
long time.

John

As it happens, all things aren’t equal, you’re up 13-12 on current active players in the NBA and I’m up 5-4 on players in the NBA from the most recent college championship. But that’s talking about the past, let’s talk the future. How many legitimate NBA prospects are currently playing for UConn? How many potential Player of the Year candidates do you have on the roster? 3 and 1 respectively for Carolina. Suck it long, suck it hard!

Eric

P.S. - you should have brought your boy Gay (haha) into the discussion. I haven’t watched him play in the NBA, but he is averaging 19.2 ppg and 5.5 rebs for the Grizzlies. Unfortunately for him, he’s playing for the Grizzlies.

P.P.S. - it takes a man to strut in pastel.

How is being up 5-4 in players in the NBA from a recent college
championship any kind of argument for you? For one, we won the national
championship the year before you. For two, if anything, doesn’t that mean
that our 4 players in the NBA are better than your 5 players if you needed
all 5 of them to win it?

That’s exactly the point: UConn does all this without the fan fair of
Carolina. We didn’t have MJ in the 80s, we don’t have the whole Tobacco
Road thing, but what we do have is an awesome program ran by a hugely
successful coach. You can’t take nearly as much pride in Roy Williams as
I can in Jim Calhoun (who found guys like Allen, Hamilton and Okafor when
they weren’t even big-time prospects), who built this program himself.

Anyways, if you look at our recruits, we get our share of big-name guys
these days. Caron Butler was the top recruit in the country his year.
Rudy Gay was top 3. Right now, Stanley Robinson, Hasheem Thabeet and
Jerome Dyson are all future NBAers. Meanwhile, Curtis Kelly, who hasn’t
done shit yet, was a 5-star recruit out of HS (on the same scale in which
Kevin Durant was a 5-star guy). He hasn’t panned out at all, but my point
is don’t go thinking your program is so high and mighty. Thabeet has a
good chance of being picked before ANY UNC player in this year’s draft (he
was considered a potential lottery pick if he went out last year).

Gay pisses me off as he never reached his potential at UConn. Then again,
I maintain that we were outcoached and outlucked against George Mason, not
out-gayed. Either way, I didn’t see UNC in the final four that year, so
eat a bowl of dick.

John

So, are we totally reversing our argument then? I thought you were all about touting the overwhelming and superior numbers of UConn players in the NBA. Now when I try to do the same for Carolina I get bashed? Yes, you did win the championship before us, but what does that have to do with anything? Were there some other UConn players from that year that made the NBA but later got cut? And no, it doesn’t mean that your 4 players are better than our 5. In fact, 2 of our players in 05 (Noel and Williams) weren’t even regular starters. So we didn’t “need” them to win anything.
I’m crying a f’ing river for poor, downtrodden UConn. It must be a coincidence that the lowliest team in the Big East is also the most successful. How is it possible that they get all those great recruits? Calhoun must be a genius of unfathomable proportions to convince top prospects to descend to the humble gyms of Connecticut to help out the team.
That’s BS. Congrats for Calhoun on getting his team the first championship in ‘99, but it makes it a lot easier to get recruits when you have a ring to flash around. And PLEASE don’t try to place Jim Calhoun over Roy Williams. That’s a battle you can’t possibly win. He won the AP Coach of the Year award in ‘92 and ‘06. He won the Naismith Coach of the Year award in ‘97. He’s been wildly successful at two different institutions. One might try to argue that he inherited dynasties at both of his jobs, but it’s not like he floated along on the heels of his predecessors. If anything, he took Kansas and made it better. He’s on pace to do the same at UNC (if that’s possible). Roy has a better winning percentage (.801) than Calhoun (.696). They’re both in the Hall of Fame. Calhoun has one more championship to his credit, but that’s gonna change in Roy’s favor very soon.
And now you go and totally contradict your argument again. “Oh, we can’t get big name recruits so Calhoun has to scour the earth looking and/or pull players out of his ass to be so successful.” And now you’re saying UConn does, in fact, get top guys. Stick with a thesis man.
But I’m prepared to argue on this point anyway. First of all, it’s really easy to be a potential lottery pick when you’re 7′3″ and not falling down awkward. Congratulations to Thabeet on his feat (and feet). You, of course, know that UNC gets a lot of top recruits, so I won’t bother with the lengthy list there. And yes, I do think my program is high and mighty. You seem to pick and choose when to take the high road or the low. You can’t have both though.
How could UConn get outcoached? They have Calhoun right? UNC wasn’t in the Final Four because we had just unloaded basically our starting lineup of the previous (championship) year to the NBA. Looks like we’re in pretty good shape this year though. Is UConn even ranked this year? Did UNC get beat by Notre Dame? Suck it!

Eric

First off, you brought up the “# of NBA players from one championship
team” thing. That’s besides the point, which is, to clarify, as a
program, UConn is as good or better than UNC over the past decade. And I
would claim that being in this echelon (with the likes of UCLA, Duke,
etc.) is MORE impressive than UNC having maintained this standard. This
is exemplified by their greater number of NBA players, 2 national
championships compared to your 1, and the fact that we did all this
without any heritage.

This leads into my next argument, which is the claim that what Calhoun has
done is more impressive than Roy Williams. Sure, Roy Williams is a great
coach. And I can’t speak for what he did before his tenure at UNC,
although I’ve heard good things. But Calhoun took a small program out of
little ol’ Storrs, CT, built it up himself, and has kept it at a high
level. It’s not like we peaked once and then fell apart. Further, his
win pct. at UConn is .720. Take away his first season, in which a team he
hardly assembled went 9-19, and he’d be up in the high .700s too. Just
look at the year-to-year progression:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Calhoun

As if he were listening to our debate, let me share what HOF coach Jim
Boeheim had to say about this:
“Jim Calhoun has done as good
a job as has ever been done in
college basketball history in
taking over a program that was
at one level and taking it to a
totally different place. A lot of
coaches have been able to take
good programs or even really
good programs and keep them
at that level or make them a little
better, but Jim Calhoun has done
something at Connecticut that I
really don’t think anybody has
ever done any place else.”
–Jim Boeheim, Syracuse

What Roy Williams did, coming into an already famous UNC basketball
program and achieving, isn’t nearly as impressive. Sure, Matt Doherty
didn’t do crap, so the job isn’t “easy”, but when possibly the most famous
athlete of all time went to your school, and you sell more sports
merchandise than anyone in the country (I heard this a little while back),
with that kind of exposure it’s pretty hard NOT to have a good team.

I’m still willing to admit when someone got the best of Calhoun, which did
happen in 2005-6. UConn was a #1 seed and had a ton of talent (4 current
NBAers). Unfortunately, Calhoun appeared to fall subject to a sort of
talent ‘hubris’, where he decided if he just threw his best players out
there they’d just beat less talented opponents (George Mason–who still
had to make some absurd shots to beat us). He didn’t substitute nearly
enough and stuck with man defense way too long. Hopefully he learned his
lesson, although it’s hard to argue with someone that’s done “as good
a job as has ever been done in
college basketball history”, I suppose.

While UConn is still rebuilding, the fact that we lost to a 14-2 Notre
Dame team isn’t a huge slight. Meanwhile, UNC had a remarkably easy early
schedule en route to their current record. Clemson was the first good
team you’ve played. We at least held our own with Memphis, whom many
picked to win the National Championship.

In conclusion, UConn rules, UNC drools, and the latter still wears sky
blue. Eat it, Kirk-shit.

John