With respect to the NCAA tourney.....
 

Danny Ainge's 4 years in Provo:
77-78 No tourney invite
78-79 First round choke
79-80 First round choke
80-81 BYU's last visit beyond round 2 and won as many tourney games as they have since.

Even the great Danny Ainge was part of back to back choke 1st round losses. I think that was with a great supporting cast, by BYU standards. What do we learn from this? BYU's NCAA tourney history has sucked ass for a long time and that all is not lost for next year.

I still believe this team was better than it showed against aTm, and if/when they get that monkey off their back it could be good ride. Even Archaea might smile.....

I think fans are irrational about tournament wins. Getting a win in the NCAA tournament is the same statistically as finishing in the top 10 in D-1 football. Neither has happened very often for the vast majority of D-1 sports programs.

Thanks, I was wondering how Ainge's first few years went. You must have read my mind.

I will smile with just one win, and I'd better record it for posterity as history shows us we might not do it again for two generations or a generation and a half. A generation is thirteen years. It's been more than a generation since our last tourney win and almost a generation since our last top ten finish in football.

It almost sounds as if BYU fans need to become the beneficiaries of generational cascading trusts in order to reap the benefits of BYU's tourney wins and Top Ten finishes in football.

But to be honest, with as solid as the Y has been over the past, you would think they could have pulled out at least one win. Yes, seeding has not been fabulous, but there have been many winnable games for them over the years.

Frank Arnold was a terrible coach and an awful human being. He buried his talents.

How do you figure? 32 teams get first round wins. I would say Sweet 16 is like the top 10 or a little lower.

BYU took third place in the WAC that Elite 8 year. Utah and Wyoming tied for first and Utah, by the way, went to the Sweet 16. This was their team:

"BYU made it to the NCAA Final 8 with a team starring future NBA players Danny Ainge, Greg Kite and Fred Roberts. Arnold struggled after the 1981 season and finished coaching at BYU in 1983."

Underachieved badly even that year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Arnold

I had forgotten that. When was the last BYU had three NBA players on the roster? Never.

Which is why people shouldn't be expecting BYU to ever get past the 2nd round. I'm not saying it won't ever happen, just that people shouldn't expect it.