Bitterwhiteguy

Something to consider: not everyone is factoring in the loss of two of UCLA's incoming freshmen to season-ending injuries. Shaq's son Shareef (heart surgery) and Tyger Campbell (ACL) were expected to contribute and are both out for the year. They're also going to be without a redshirt junior for the first couple months with a foot injury; this UCLA squad is going to be worse than many expect.

*cough* https://www.barkingcarnival.com/2018/10/17/17908576/pro-leagues-comin-the-g-league-and-nbl-are-after-di-players

Prepare to be pissed. They will press more than last year, but less in conference play due to quality of opposing guards. There will never be 'HAVOC' at Texas, the Big 12 is too good.

Marcus Smart's handlers would like a word with you.

*touches nose*

Sims can block shots just fine. He's not Bamba or Konate, but nobody is.

Mark Few isn't leaving where he's at, bigger fish than Texas have tried to pry him away. As for Marshall, there's already one too many raging assholes coaching at Texas right now. I tend to believe Marshall enjoys being the big fish in a small pond and wouldn't like coaching somewhere where basketball is second-fiddle. I'll have my season preview pieces start showing up in about a month, but suffice it to say I'm more optimistic about this squad than I have been in awhile. Having said that, if Shaka can't make this group work CDC will probably start thinking about the long-term future of the program without Shaka in charge.

In a league with Grimes, Wigginton, and Fisher, that may be a tall task.

I think it has less to do with Shaka watching Herman or aiming at Will Baker and more to do with having an actual AD as AD for the first time in years. Nearly every aspect of the various programs has stepped up in the past few months, it's not by accident.

If Jones isn't starting (for whatever reason) there's a good chance Ramey is the replacement.

Yes, but less so than the last couple of years. If Andrew Jones gets back to 100%, the entire starting lineup (Coleman, Roach, Jones, DO, Sims) will have zero freshmen for the first time in Shaka's Texas tenure. That's 2 sophomores, a junior, a senior, and a redshirt senior, with 2 of the likely first four off the bench being a sophomore and a RS junior.

This is correct.

He said that about Febres last year, too. So maybe that should be your baseline for the Ramey quote; no small part of bringing in freshmen is instilling confidence, and coaches know they read the quotes. It might be less a reflection of the other players than a message to that specific player.

It will be earlier than that.

It was a joke.

Hard to host a game at the Drum if it's a pile of rubble.

We've had some form of this discussion elsewhere (assuming you have the same username on SBNation), and I appreciate your desire to let Jones & his family make their own decision. Having said that - and there's not really a way I can assure you of this without revealing my sources - I can pretty confidently say they don't give a damn what anyone else is saying, they're making their own decisions based upon what Andrew and his doctors are saying about his status. Nobody that matters is pushing Andrew to return, there are people within that group expressing the proper amount of caution and the group as a whole (including Shaka) is listening to the doctors. That family is tight and they're taking a very rational, level-headed, long-term view of the situation; they're not going to put him out on the court unless Andrew and his doctors (who aren't affiliated with UT, in case you're concerned about conflicts of interest) say he's good to return. This is being handled extremely responsibly by the people who matter.

I'm not a recruiting guru so take my view with a grain of salt, but he didn't have an offer from Texas and Shaka's staff took awhile to get recruiting up to full speed so my guess is no, or at least nothing major. It's also worth considering that trying to bring in another PG might have cost Shaka Andrew Jones, where at least with Jacob they can say they were going for an off-ball shooter. Nothing in recruiting happens in a vacuum.

Carsen Edwards is back this year.

Literally last year with Jones.

Slow your roll on that for now. He's still got more treatment upcoming so it's still too early to take too much from his social media posts.

It is, but he is actually gaining significant body mass back.

I don't have a problem with building the freshmen long-term, ideally that eventually becomes the norm more like some slightly-lesser version of how Kansas does it. I guess what I'm getting at is that I would like the freshmen to earn their spot rather than some years in the past where they had no choice but to plug them in from the jump. If we're being real here, this is a potential point of concern -- and it's not exactly a concern yet, but I'm keeping a close eye on it) -- How many from the 2018 class (if any) will get pushed out for a shiny new freshman. The teams the last couple of years have been young for myriad reasons, some on the staff, some on Barnes' washed-up pipelines, and the recruiting of 1&Ds. I'm on record that if a guy like Mo Bamba wants to come you take him 100% of the time and it's not even close, however I generally prefer the 1&D types to either be the last piece on a contender or to be a guard who can shoot. Having said that, there has been a lot of turnover in the roster. The first 2 years I'm putting more on Barnes as he left Shaka with a team full of seniors and not a lot of recruits coming in (Shaka basically kept Snoop, and Davis to their words and brought along one guy (Tevin Mack) of his own. The second year, after 7 guys leave you're going to be filling a lot of holes, so I get the roster turnover there. However, there continues to be a lot of turnover as Shaka creates the team in his own image. Last year we knew there were likely to be 2-3 players moving on (Bamba, a then-healthy Jones) with the incoming class being as large as it is.This next class should be pretty small (3-ish), but if Shaka runs off a couple more players so he can bring the numbers of new faces to 5+ then we're likely looking at another year of this team being young in 2019-2020. I think Shaka has a very clear idea of what he wants to do on defense and is trying to assemble enough ball-handlers/shooters long-term to make his offense run (and it's an offense that works with the right roster). Or at least that's the hope. If he runs 3 guys off from the 2018 class in search of the new shiny in 2019, I'll get increasingly concerned that he's plugging holes than building something.

This team needs experience if they ever want to get out of the cycle of forcing non-Bamba freshmen into major roles right out of the gate. Roach would help with this, allowing guys like Ramey & Febres to be used situationally as they grow into above-average D-I players (and I think they will, sooner or later). If Roach comes back and plays like he did that last month of the season, this team will be markedly better for it. (I like the incoming class, just would like to let a few of them get their feet wet instead of dunking them in the deep end.) Also, the IT report jives with what I'm hearing.

Nobody seems willing to give a definitive answer as to why he has to leave. There have been rumors of weed, fighting with teammates, and being a,poor teammate, but nothing concrete. The only thing you mentioned that's incorrect is the fighting; the rumored Roach/Tevin locker room brawl didn't happen. People pointed to a shiner, but if you go back and look at the days leading up to that game, Roach already had swelling around his eye (a source told me it was a reaction to medication). Those two were buddies; there's a reason they got suspended together and for the same number of games at the start of that season, it's because they got caught for the same thing. (Some day when it's legalized, this will stop being an issue in college basketball.) These things all contributed to him getting tossed, but the final straw I'm not going to get into in any detail on a public board except to say Tevin doesn't really deal with authority figures well. If you've seen me reference elsewhere how much I'm going to enjoy watching him interact with a coach that turns the screws like Avery, that's why. Maybe Tevin has settled down since he was in Austin, I hope for his sake he has.