We’re in a bad conference, playing bad teams. Rose has beaten most of those bad teams while suffering his share of ugly losses to those bad teams. His record vs. the scant number of good teams we’ve faced is not very impressive, notwithstanding occasional nice upsets of Gonzaga.

We haven’t won at St. Mary’s. We get blown out too frequently. There are increasingly few marquee wins. I’m appreciative of Rose’s mostly respectable performance vs. instate schools.

That means more to me than the 20- win standard. We’re racking up W’s vs. awful teams, collecting some losses vs. awful teams, and rarely beating good ones. The tourney—the real measure of a team/coach’s effectiveness, is barely a consideration these days, let alone actually winning games there.

Count me unimpressed by 20 wins without first lifting the hood on what those wins look like.