State of the Program, 2026: A yearly look recapping last season and assessing where things stand moving forward. Spoiler - I’m optimistic!
Thanks for your support and engagement, LRA!
Love it
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Good stuff. A few callouts for discussion:
And, while I’ve written recently that Dallin Hall was an under-appreciated part of this team with how his contributions game, his defense, his leadership, and his effectiveness throughout our differing lineups, and it’s unclear how Miles’s personality would have fit with the group, it’s also probably fair to classify that as the biggest misstep of last offseason. Perhaps that will be a lesson learned for Odom, that it’s good to recruit to depth and competition, but some finesse may need to be used when you already have a quality fish in the boat.
I wonder what happened with Miles and Hall, what Odom’s thought was, to what extent Odom thinks he mishandled that, and if so, if it’s something he should change this offseason. By and large, you prefer having returners, but a totally open cupboard does allow for a more scattershot approach. But even when you are pulling in two of everything, you do need some finesse around egos/roles/etc.
Some major programs are just ignoring the ruling entirely, gambling that the NCAA will not be able to enforce any penalties and/or that challenges will not hold up in the court of law. As for us, we appear to be working under the rev share guidelines and then using other methods (and international players apparently can’t receive direct rev share anyway) to compensate the basketball team. Generally speaking, when there are the pretense of rules, we’re disadvantaged because we’re not going to be as aggressive at pushing the limits on them as many other programs even if our overall funding could be very good.
I appreciate you raising this. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s not really clear to me what’s going on, and unfortunately college hoops media seem less interested in any cap / CSC related matters and don’t really cover it. I do think that some fans in the portal threads underrate the extent to which it might be a risk to overpay too much. There’s at least a slight possibility that schools suffer at least reputational harm if they can’t meet the full amount of their offered dollars (and also makes me scratch my head when I see various prolific posters say that “we have a huge endowment” or “we have billionaire donors” w/o any thought to how those dollars would get allocated to hoops players, given the current structure).
There appear to be additional wrinkles in the mix, like the Executive Order recently imposed that will surely be contested, and the NCAA proposing 5-year eligibility and hard age caps (which could be relevant for Ugonna Onyenso attempting to get a 5th year of his own eligibility, by the way).
Never say never in college hoops right now, but I’d be surprised if they do 5 years and have it apply retroactively–that is, to kids who already used up their eligibility under the current rules. The most fair way to do is to have it phase in, I think, but at the very least, I’d be surprised if they mess with this portal period by allowing a slew of now graduating players to have a 5th year next year. But we shall see.
One offense and one defense thought:
- My biggest offensive issue was really around talent. I hear you on BLOB stuff, but seems minor (until it bites us at a key moment). We need some better end of shot clock option, type guys.
- My biggest defensive issue is kinda scheme, but it’s really talent. If we have better athletes on the perimeter, then we can spring a trap on the press more often, and we can pressure on the perimeter more often.
- Bonus thought / in-game: The treatment of Malik Thomas did leave me scratching my head once or twice. At VPI being a notable example, but as late as Tennessee crunch time.
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Thanks for all of these… and most of these final thoughts echo my own. I do think there’s a chance Thomas was hurt and/or not completely right after that fall in the Tennessee game which would explain a lot - but I haven’t seen this confirmed, nor confirmed it myself.
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Thanks Cuts! Great read.
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I’m glad you enjoyed it, thanks!
I agree. Though I think there are scheme tweaks like:
- More early offense: To Cuts’ point that we probably didn’t play as fast as we should have/as Odom wants to, sidestepping late clock situations all together can help.
- Less linearity in offense: We ended up in late clock isos at times because we were too predictable in terms of running ball screens. I’d like to see Johann as dribble handoff hub re-enter the picture; was there early but they went away from it over the course of the season.
I find myself re-visiting Michigan offense film:
They aren’t running the most exotic stuff, but they run it all very fast, they hammer their comparative advantages, and they have a little bit of diversity because they can throw it to Mara and cut and loop around him, as opposed to Cadeau creating every shot out of a ball screen.
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Our bigs are good passers. Could probably leverage that even more
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Capable SG critical of course but I feel the #2 C is nearly as big. We relied heavily on defense from that spot and need to replace it. Who are the UGOesque candidates?
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Like Jacari, Ugo was pretty damn unique. And he was peaking late in the season- a true game-changing player. My guess is that they are few and far between, and after seeing how he was deployed by Odom to change games, other coaches have aggressively prioritized this kind of player. Hard to find and harder to lose- unless he’s back!
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