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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. More than anything, Klay looks slow now. He used to be an A+ defender, but not anymore by a long shot. And because of that he is having to work harder on both ends especially in the playoffs. My guess is that is why his shot isn’t falling. Fatigue due to age and loss of a step.
  2. maybe. On Bill Simmons the other day he was lamenting how Smart has like 50% more attempts at game winning shots than Tatum and Brown COMBINED. And he isn't very good at them. The problem is that he doesn't think he has an "adequate" offensive game. He thinks he is the man. Maybe Boston will keep him, but I wouldn't put the odds higher than 50/50 if they get knocked out by the Sixers.
  3. If Boston loses, they are probably going to think about re-tooling their roster. I wonder if there is any way Boston would give it a go with CP3. Even at his age, he probably gives them a better shot at winning a title than Marcus Smart. And Smart would help Phoenix quite a bit with his perimeter defense and grit.
  4. If the season started today, we would be rolling with: Max Abmas, 6-1, G – 21.9 PTS, 4.4 REB, 4.0 AST, 1.1 STL, 0.2 BLK, 91.9% FT, 53.0% 2P%, 37.3% 3P%, 36 MP, 123 GS, 2.0 TO - 2x Summit PoY, NCAA All-Region Chendall Weaver, 6-3, G – 9.5 PTS, 4.6 REB, 2.0 AST, 0.9 STL, 0.4 BLK, 70.3% FT, 46.5% 2P%, 40.2% 3P%, 29 MP, 25 GS, 1.2 TO – Sun Belt RoY, 3 yrs left And on the bench we would have Brock Cunningham who could play some spot SG and Gavin Perryman. Obviously we need to add some more. Ideally a 30+ mpg quality starter (like Tyrese Hunter) and another decent bench / development player who will accept 15 mpg.
  5. I thought the deadline to transfer within the SEC was May 1? If so, then I think we may be in the driver's seat if he decides to withdraw from the NBA draft.
  6. Three guys seems about right. Hunter + 2 more please.
  7. Maybe I am the only one who wasn't super thrilled with the prospect of adding Rodman to the roster. He seemed to be a solid player, but not GREAT. And I don't think his dad is someone I would want to be closely associated with our program (even though I loved him as a player).
  8. Yeah, I agree. That said, none of the bigs averaged more than 19 mpg last year. 26 for Disu and 24 for Shedrick would be a pretty big increase. Shedrick averaged about 19 mpg the last 2 years. Onyema played 20 mpg last year.
  9. Playing around with lineups a bit. Assuming we add Sellers (or an equivalent G/F) and Rodman - and neither Hunter or Mitchell come back, I think the minutes would look something like this (with starters / closers in orange): Abmas, Weaver and Sellers are all used to playing big minutes so I don't think that would be a problem. This would definitely be a tournament team, but would still be pretty thin at guard. Any injury or foul trouble and we would be in trouble. If we add DJ Rodman, I think the minutes distribute pretty well at F/C, with the key players getting 22-26 mpg. If we add Hunter, things improve a lot IMO. That would let us bring Weaver off the bench and either add another backup guard and reduce everyone's minutes or distribute all of the guard minutes between Hunter, Abmas and Weaver. To me this looks like a team capable of making a deep tournament run. There is a ton of versatility with all the guard / forward players. You can go small with Hunter + Abmas + Weaver + Brock + Disu. You can go big with Abmas + Brock + Rodman + Disu + Shedrick. Just about everyone can shoot. Everyone can play defense. Lots of out of position rebounding. This would be a fun team to watch.
  10. Probably better to discuss here than in the Portal or Recruiting threads, but I am continually amazed at the lack of respect that Cunningham gets. Any talk of having him in the starting lineup inevitably leads to comments like "we're fucked". I have to assume these are casual observers who only look at individual scoring metrics. My observation has been that Cunningham contributed more to winning than just about any player on the team last year. This site has some interesting stats on player offensive and defensive rating and accounts for the impact a player has when they are on the court (and normalizes it vs the strength of the other team's players) https://evanmiya.com/ Cunningham rated as our best player in total Bayesian Performance Rating last year (and the #34 player in the country). He had our 2nd best Offensive rating (behind Rice) and our best Defensive rating. If you just look at the "Box" ratings, Cunningham doesn't fare as well (3rd on offense, 6th on defense). This is because a ton of the stuff he does that helps the team doesn't show up on the box score - things like skip passes, screens, tipped out rebounds, defensive help, box outs where someone else rebounds, etc. Combining both offense and defense team efficiency, Brock ranked as the #18 player in the country last year. On offense, Texas scored 117.8 points per 100 possessions with Cunningham on the court. (Contrast that with 105.4 points per 100 possessions with Arterio Morris on the court.) He was also #2 on the team in +/-. With another year of offseason work, I see no reason that Brock won't come back as an even better player. I would love to see him get 25 mpg this year. Team Cunningham.
  11. Once again, this is the stupidest thread title in the history of Surly.
  12. Agree. I think Brock is the better player overall, and more likely to start on this team at SF.
  13. 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
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
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