The great irony in all of this is that the fans who are calling in to radio and making statements like that won’t even care enough to call in when/if we take a step back. Basketball and baseball are of the same ilk here: people care A LOT when they are good. When they’re bad/average, those people MAY still watch, but they definitely won’t care enough to call in and complain daily. Instead, they’ll just say we should divert funds from the struggling sports to the only one that really matters aka football. All that to say, your statement about Barnes elevating the program to his down detriment with our idiot fans is spot on.
That garbage network was founded during the Butch Jones years. They depend on negativity and chaos happening at UT to survive. And with everything on campus being good again, they have to exaggerate the hell out of every loss because there aren’t as many of them happening now. There’s a reason they didn’t exist in the 90s
I'm still really high on Mashack, but his offense has completely abandoned him. He had a nice dribble drive game and even a midrange pull up jumper that was working. He can't seem to find that rhythm he had earlier in the year. Can't even make wide open layups right now. He's still probably the best defender we have, and possibly one of the best defenders I think we've ever had (at least over the last 20 years).
I’m hopeful that he makes at least the same jump next year he did this year, still obviously so far to go but last year he wouldn’t even look at the basket. This year he’s hit some shots and doesn’t seem to completely pass on wide open shots which means he’s put in work and coaches have a certain level of confidence there, another offseason like that and he could at least be serviceable offensively.
