Yeah. The bright side is that he should have a bunch of cash saved up to ease his professional transition into being an actuary or whatever he ultimately does. It sucks things havenāt worked out better for him, but thatās how it goes sometimes.
My daughters were both surprisingly tall as kids (and my wife is decently tall. I am not), and going into middle-school every height-chart and doctor told them theyād both be like 5ā10". They both stopped growing by age 12 and are mildly bitter about being 5ā4" and 5ā5". Shit happens.
Saying he wasted the years implied there was a better possible outcome.
Heās a kid, so it genuinely makes me sad to watch his dreams (which werenāt unrealistic, given his HS results) get crushed. And Iād love for him to put it together, but having watched him play (sparingly) for a season, I just donāt see how there could have been a better outcome.
At least youāre within rounding. One recent beau of my younger daughter claimed to be 6ā and the kid wasnāt even 5ā10". I had to chat with him about the importance about being strategic with his lying. Credbility is finite and hard to earn, donāt throw it away stupidly.
Shoes with slight lifts or a pouffy hair style are modest investments. Iāve doubled-down on finding ways to take advantage of my low center of gravity and stumpy legs.
Despite it all, I could still see TJP being a good D1 player but almost certainly not here, and probably at a lower level.
I basically think he couldnāt adjust to the athleticism at the P5 level and his shooting hasnāt been good enough to afford him the development opportunities. But I also think UVa wound up being a uniquely bad option for him (esp. given the circumstances this year, no TB, but also no Warley whoād have helped him on O and protected him on D) and probably would never have been a good option. Like it wonāt happen, but heād be best at one of those mid major programs that plays a more free, open style and lets him get plenty of reps. Heās probably more of a rhythm guy than a pure shooter, it turns out.
Itās hard for a lot of these guys to adjust when they get overhyped in high school. You see it all the timeā¦itās a battle to keep grinding, maintain their motivation when they realize theyāre further behind than theyāve been led to believe. There are former top 100 recruits riding the bench at mid majors everywhere. Itās not just because they were overrated in HS, itās also that they lost their drive.
A few of our own guys have had to deal with it. Jabri was in that position. I give him credit, he at least kept at it and was a contributor at other schools. McCorkle had some issues and ended up giving up basketball entirely. Thatās more common than you might think. I still think Power has a good chance to be a quality college player but a lot of it will be determined by his attitude.
The better outcome I had in mind was redshirting one of these two years, give himself a fifth year by which point maybe heās figured out his role at this level. (Also get one more year of NIL money, especially if the redshirting hid the fact that heās not very good.)
The few moments I saw him play for Duke last year he looked serviceable with upside. Did they send us the wrong dude? Man, he looks completely shot now.
Yeah, from a pure $$ standpoint, getting injured and RS-ing the season would have been the winning move. Its interesting in hindsight to wonder what would have happened if heād gone to a Davidson to be āthe guyā.
Would it have been a better outcome for him? Its hard to imagine things going worse for him than this season has, but life is fond of reminding us that things can always be worse.
Thereās a dude who starts for a borderline NBA playoffs team who is shooting about 31% or so from 3 at decent volume (~3 per game) who stopped looking at the rim when he was on our team when he had the ball at the arc.
Our system takes confident shooters and makes a nice offense from them. Our system takes guys struggling with their confidence and says āyou dont seem confident- have you considered not shooting?ā
Yepā¦the Bennett way is break young guys down to build them back up. Some never make it. What weāre seeing in the middle of that rebuild can sometimes make them look much worse than they really are.
This, thank you. People see a guy like Igor or Morsell figuring it out elsewhere, but discount that they had to take steps back to move forward. Igor is a crucial piece, but had to be a role player at Charlotte before moving back up. Morsell had to go be a 3 and D guy, same with Jabri.
A lot of the reason for successful transfer from high majors is humble pie at your first school, followed by a smaller role or school before figuring out your strengths. Jaemyn Brakefield, Henry Coleman, Jaden Bradley, Efton Reid to name a few
If you just told me Saunders was shooting 38% from 3 and Ames was shooting 42%, I would think weāre at least in ACC Tournament double-bye territory. But as others mentioned, the glaring lack of TJ Power in there would have been alarming.
This screams team that has no Batman. I do enjoy the Batman Robin discourse and thank whoever started it in the preseason with our concerns around that (which ended up being very true)