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Chris Paul: "[The 05 Team] Should Have Won the Championship"

deacvision7 said:
95 hurt

WVU hurt more
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This. The expectations around that 2005 team were so high. We were able to overcome our defensive issues most nights but it caught up to us and it hurt oh so much.

If you look at the games we lost that year we gave up point totals of 91 (Illinois), 91 (FSU), 102 (Ga Tech), 102 (Duke), 81 (NC State), and 111 (WVU).
 
deacvision7 said:
UMass and Camby were on tap in the E8 iirc. My hopes weren't as high for that one as the bracket Wake found themselves in if they would have beaten WVU

that UMass team was good and Chill was sick
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He would've gotten over the flu by the time we played UMass, had we pulled off the win (and I believe it was a fairly close game). If memory serves me correctly, UMass got thoroughly smacked by the same OK State squad (also a bit of a head scratcher), before UCLA soundly beat them in the Final 4.
 
My wife and I had Final 4 tickets that year after having made the Raleigh then Meadowlands trips the year before. We drove up to Cleveland Saturday morning from Winston, caught a bit of the UM-W game with a rising Bruce Pearl knocking off BC, watched the Wake game, went to the hotel, got up, ate breakfast and swore to never go back to Cleveland again.

Then we ended up seeing fucking Carolina win the whole thing in St. Louis. So, no, we aren't over it yet either.
 
redwing42 said:
Then we ended up seeing fucking Carolina win the whole thing in St. Louis. So, no, we aren't over it yet either.
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That's on you. I would've left by halftime or not gone. Not going to St. Louis is always a great option.
 
redwing42 said:
My wife and I had Final 4 tickets that year after having made the Raleigh then Meadowlands trips the year before. We drove up to Cleveland Saturday morning from Winston, caught a bit of the UM-W game with a rising Bruce Pearl knocking off BC, watched the Wake game, went to the hotel, got up, ate breakfast and swore to never go back to Cleveland again.

Then we ended up seeing fucking Carolina win the whole thing in St. Louis. So, no, we aren't over it yet either.
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Well I was at the final 4 in Seattle in 1995 (won nose bleed tickets in the NCAA lottery) and had a friend who got us Final 4 tickets in the L'ville section in 2005, we were ~25 rows up mid-court. Great seats for the game.
 
bym051d said:
That's on you. I would've left by halftime or not gone. Not going to St. Louis is always a great option.
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Didn't know if we would ever get back to see a Final 4 or not. We did seriously consider selling the tickets and not going, but a week and a half is pretty short notice to change those kinds of plans. At least the St. Louis Zoo was nice, and I can say I've been in the Arch.
 
quick look at kenpom -- we were the best offense in the nation but only 89th defensively. finished 8th overall.

we were 8.5 pt favorites against west virginia, actually the same line for the louisville game against them in the elite 8.

i recall a conspiracy theory that the committee misranked our entire region to avoid giving the ACC three one seeds since a lot of the top seeds in looked off. (washington was #1, should have been a #2. louisville was #4 but should have been a 3 or 2. gonzaga was #3 which was too high, etc.)
 
Chris Paul: "[The 05 Team] Should Have Won the Championship"

If you dared to mentioned that team’s defensive issues, you got jumped on real quick. The boards were not kind to obvious criticisms.
 
Complacent Deac said:
1996

I was watching Tony Rutland run circles around Stephon Marbury and drain long 3's and thought "damn, we are GOOD."

Then he blows out his knee. I mean I have seen that since, but not often.

Oh and 2005.

And maybe the year we beat Depaul - at least a final 4 in my lifetime!
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For as long as we've waited we're owed a natty.
 
I watched that West Virginia game in a Vegas sportsbook and the minute it was over I had to rush to airport to catch my flight home. It was the the saddest , longest flight I've ever been on. I should have know it was bad karma when a dude sat next to me at the sportsbook and struck up a conversation and then mentioned that he went to... Butler.
 
The 1995 team entered the NCAA tournament having won 10 in a row. 7 of those wins were over top 20 teams, including two over UNC who was #2 and #4 when WF beat them. At that point, not only was it clear that WF was the best team in a loaded ACC (that was the year Randolph went nuclear in the ACC tournament), but WF had proved it was better than UNC as WF had beaten UNC on the road and on a neutral court in the last two weeks heading to the NCAA tournament. As mentioned in the thread, after the ACC tournament, Randolph got sick and was not close to form for the NCAAs. Even so, WF advanced to the Sweet 16 to play Eddie Sutton's OK State team led by "Big Country" Brian Reeves. In the last minute of a tie game, an OK State forward named Jason Skaer banked in a misfired three point shot, and then Tony Rutland had a three point shot go in and out. WF loses, and OK State advanced to the Final 4. In addition to the maddening loss because Childress was limited and the unlucky banked in three; UNC naturally advanced to the Final 4 without playing a close game in their regional. Sickening.

After the game, as I wandered through the atrium of the WF hotel in NJ after the game, and a piano playing and someone singing. Looked over and it was future actor Marc Blucas. Blucas had graduated the year before, but had traveled to the Meadowlands to see WF advance to their first Final 4 since 1962. Pure pain.
 
IAppreciateIt said:
quick look at kenpom -- we were the best offense in the nation but only 89th defensively. finished 8th overall.

we were 8.5 pt favorites against west virginia, actually the same line for the louisville game against them in the elite 8.

i recall a conspiracy theory that the committee misranked our entire region to avoid giving the ACC three one seeds since a lot of the top seeds in looked off. (washington was #1, should have been a #2. louisville was #4 but should have been a 3 or 2. gonzaga was #3 which was too high, etc.)
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the 2005 team was better defensively (per kenpom) than ANY [Redacted] or manning team
 
also interesting - the 2004 wake forest team was also kenpom's #1 offensive team

cp3 was pretty damn good i guess
 
The WV game was the last time I hosted a game watching event at my house. Had about 20 people crowded around my rear projection big screen. We were prepared to party all night but everyone left promptly in silence after the final horn never to return again
 
Funny that CP could rattle Gansey and Pittsnogle's names right off the top of his head - 17 years later. Just shows that those losses are burned in the players' minds just like the fans - which is not surprising, of course, but it is interesting to see it demonstrated...
 
I loved Trent Strickland, but if we could have swapped LD Williams for Trent, Gansey wouldn’t have gone off and we would’ve maybe won a title that year. In the multiverse, that happened.
 
buckets said:
the 2005 team was better defensively (per kenpom) than ANY [Redacted] or manning team
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That 2005 team probably played the toughest nonconference schedule we’ve perhaps every played. Not to mention the league was still good then too.

The grind was probably what did that team in. Skip ran notoriously difficult practices and we played a loaded schedule.
 
For all the Pittsnoggle hype Gansey was the biggest killer that day. Dude loves him some Cleveland
 
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