HookEm

Agree. I think Brock is the better player overall, and more likely to start on this team at SF.

I think it is almost certain we are going to start Kaden Shedrick. He is a true center and it lets us start Disu at the 4. He didn't leave a starting role at Virginia to come here and play off the bench. G - Hunter (if he returns) G - Aẞmas G/F - TBD - Weaver (small) or Cunningham (big) or Mitchell (if he returns) or TBD from the portal F - Disu C - Shedrick ----------------------------------------- G - Weaver F - Cunningham F - Onyema F - Anamekwe

Anybody have any updates on our next portal targets? Wonder if we are in a wait and see approach with Hunter and Mitchell before we take on anyone new.

I don't think you have any idea what my opinion actually is. Please spell it out for me and I will tell you if you got it right. Yes, four 5-stars is a lot to lose (although technically we have only lost three so far since Mitchell could be back). Regardless, I agree it sucks. You know what else sucks? Losing one 5 star plus EIGHT 4-stars in your first month on the job. Holy shit! Greg Brown (early entry) - 5 star Donovan Williams (transfer) - 4 star Royce Hamm (transfer) - 4 star Kamaka Hepa (transfer) - 4 star Gerald Lidell (transfer) - 4 star Kai Jones (early entry) - 4 star Matt Coleman (early entry) - 4 star Tamar Bates (decomit) - 4 star David Joplin (decomit) - 4 star Keeyan Itejere (decomit) - 3 star It seemed to turn out all right for Chris Beard. Maybe it will turn out ok for Terry. Maybe it won't.

I honestly don’t think there are many true sunshine pumpers. This isn’t like the old days of Mack Brown and Chris Sims sunshine pumping. Almost everyone here would have liked to hire Jay Wright or someone of that caliber. Most people are just asking to give RT time and also acknowledging that transfers are part of the game now and not necessarily a poor reflection on him. I haven’t heard anyone say “RT is the man!!! We are gonna go to the Final Four every year!!!” But whatever.

I mean this was just a few minutes of looking on this thread. There have been many, many more posts like this. Any time anything bad happens a certain set of posters can't help themselves but remind everyone that they didn't support his hiring.

Well, if you like 5-stars, we are currently leading for the #1 recruit in the country. I'm not worried about our recruiting long term at all. We have a staff full of guys who are very good recruiters and we have the facility and NIL resources to compete with anyone. My main concern is the ability to put a team together where all the pieces make sense, with a well established culture that the whole team buys into. We never got there with Shaka, despite recruiting classes full of amazing individual pieces.

Perryman FTW! I can see it now. Abmas gets hurt in the NCAA Title game. Perryman finally gets PT. Hits like 5 3s and Disney makes a movie about him in 20 years. Personally I would like to see Cunningham get big minutes at the 3. He was part of like 4 of our best 5 lineups last year. (Does anybody still have that post?) He makes winning plays and makes others better. Give the dude 25 minutes a game and watch us win.

I was with you until this point. Every single time anything bad happens, Group 1 falls all over themselves to remind everyone that RT is not and never has been our standard. It is a beating. And because if that, Group 2 overreacts to any good news.

I decided to run the numbers with this method for UConn. Turns out they would have had 434 points. That would historically be a top-10 team. Texas this year had 266 points. That would historically be a top-30 level team. Texas in 2021 had 940 points. That would historically be the #1 team in most years. Damnit.

Again, I'm not saying it is bad. 5-stars are great and losing them sucks on a variety of levels. As I said, the whole thing is an optimization exercise. You can definitely get good results with 5-stars. If your resources are limited though (e.g. NIL $$$), I think taking 3-4 "Player of the Year" mid-major transfers over a single high school 5-star is better. For many years, I maintained a big database of the top-100 players of each class with where they went to college and keep it maintained each year with just the active players. I assigned each player points based on their classification and rank. The top player got 100 points, #2 player go 99 and so forth down to the #100 player getting 1 point. I also bumped each player up 17 points for each year that they were in the system. Thus, the #34 player as a junior was about equal to the #1 player as a freshman. (I did a fair amount of modeling to come up with this number). Then I summed the points for each team and compared it to end of year results. Almost every national champion ended up being in the top-10 using this system.

Kind of. Historically, I have felt like Michigan State's approach of building their class is the best one. The bulk of their players in the 25-75 range who end up staying for multiple years. I have long wished Texas followed this strategy. They have only had 3 top-10 players in the last 17 years (only one a one-and-done) and yet have still made 5 Final Fours over that time. And all that was before NIL and easy transfers. Now the 5-stars command money and playing time and it is almost a guarantee they only stay one year. If they don't go to the NBA they will be pissed off enough to transfer. Look, I get as excited as anyone when we land a top-5 recruit. I was excited for Greg Brown and Dillon Mitchell and Ron Holland. I realize we are probably the favorite for the #1 recruit in the nation next year. I will be doing back flips if he picks Texas. I can't help myself. I just think there are better strategies to win.

Maybe the sarcasm didn't come across in my post. Figured people would pick up on it since I was one of the main detractors of recruiting 5-stars.

This year's rankings for On3 look much more reasonable however... #1 - Hunter Dickenson - 3x 2nd team All-Big 10, 89 starts #2 - Max Abmas - 2x Summit PoY, NCAA All-Region Team, 123 starts #3 - Caleb Love - NCAA All-Region Team, 96 starts #4 - Harrison Ingram - PAC 12 RoY, 62 starts.... but pretty meh last year, very low efficiency #5 - Aaron Estrada - 1st team All-CAA, 77 starts #6 - Grant Nelson - 1st team All Summit, All Defense, 56 starts #7 - JJ Starling - ACC All-Freshman #8 - Kel'el Ware - 4 starts at Oregon, meh Freshman year, former 5-star #9 - Jameer Nelson - 1st team All-CAA, 97 starts #10 - Taran Armstrong - 2nd team All-WAC, 58 starts

Just here to say that the Tansfer Portal player rankings are pretty trash, especially On3. They are not nearly as accurate as the high school rankings. It is amazing how many really solid players get missed altogether, and who they chose to put in the top-10. A few examples from On3 for last year: Keyontae Jonhson - K-State - Ranked #37 - Was previously 1st team SEC and had started 50+ games. Ended up 3rd Team All-American Kendric Davis - Memphis - Ranked #94 - Was AAC PoY / 4-time All AAC. Ended up on final Wooden Award list averaging 22 ppg. Tristen Newton - UConn - Unranked - NCAA All-Tourney Team, National Champion Baylor Scheierman - Creighton - Unranked - Ended up on the NCAA All-Region team Norchad Omier - Miami - Unranked - 3rd team All-ACC, key Final Four member Tyree Appleby - Wake Forest - Unranked - Ended up 1st team All-ACC Sir'Jabari Rice - Texas - Unranked - Big 12 6MoY, key Elite Eight member Meanwhile, they had these gems in their top 5: #2 Bryan Antoine - Senior from Villanova who had started zero games in 3 years and averaged 2.3 points in his best year. Did nothing. #3 Samuel Williamson - Senior from Louisville averaging 5.6 points, 3.7 rebounds and started only 6 games as a junior. Did nothing. #4 Khristial Lander - Junior from Indiana averaged 2.9 points and had never started. Did nothing. I could go on and on. It shouldn't be that hard to rank these guys. If a player is a multi-year starter and is 1st team in their conference, ANY conference, odds are he is going to be a stud. If a player is a Soph and was very highly recruited (like top-25) and wasn't getting a lot of minutes on a more experienced team, they are likely to be good (but not AS likely). If a player makes an all-Freshman team in a major conference, they are likely to be very good. Rice had started 74 games at NM STate and was 94-26 in games played and was 1st team All-WAC. He should have been a top-50 transfer.

Hadn't really paid THAT much attention to recruiting this year. Man, Kentucky has a haul: #2 Aaron Bradshaw - 7'0 C #3 Justin Edwards - 6'7 SF #6 Dajuan Wagner - 6'2 G #14 Robert Dillingham - 6'1 G #26 Reed Sheppard - 6'3 G Surely with all that talent they can make the Final Four next year...

Not only that but we were net down a coach for the whole year since RT had to replace Beard and we didn't backfill.

That is why I had him in the #10 spot. As such I wouldn’t expect more than a few minutes of garbage time.

If this ends up being our team in November, I would give the offseason a solid A. This team would be expected to make the Sweet 16 or better. Starters: Tyrese Hunter Max Abmas Dillon Mitchell Dylan Disu Kaden Shedrick Bench Brock Cunningham Chendall Weaver Ze'Rik Onyema Alex Anamekwe Gavin Perryman Swap Hunter for Tyrin Lawrence and it is still a solid A. Swap Dillon Mitchell for another top-tier wing and it still might be an A depending on the wing. Grab another really good combo guard and it moves up to A+ I think it is very likely that we will see a leap from Dillon Mitchell if he comes back. I also think Tyrese Hunter is going to be much better, possibly All-Conference caliber.

Damn, our school colors are the best. Beautiful.

You misunderstand. I meant it as a collection of valuable things. A cache of talent if you will.

Nope. I wouldn't personally, but I can understand why others may see if differently. How much effort do you think you have to extend to get the #1 recruit? What are your odds of getting them AND keeping them? How much NIL $$$ do you have to throw their way? Will they buy into your culture and their role on the team? Of course, if this recruit has close ties to the program or was in our backyard then that would change the calculation. I can agree with this. For me, that is the main benefit of bringing in the true blue chips - cache for the program. I just don't think it is NESSARY.

I wouldn’t allocate anything toward 5 stars, especially high 5 stars. I stand by that. Reasonable people can disagree. I could see bringing in one per year but I wouldn’t fret if it didn’t work out. I would definitely bring in 2-3 high school recruits per year in the 40-100 range and try to keep them for 3-4 years. This seems to be the Michigan State model. Mainly though, I would prioritize getting several top-25 portal targets every year, hopefully with 2 years left to play. I would also prioritize cultural fit above everything else to try to get some continuity.

I couldn't stand Acie Law at Aggy. For UT, I never liked J'Covan Brown. At all. I also didn't like Greg Brown. Lesson Learned, avoid recruiting the last name Brown.