Dylan Mingo was supposed to commit to UNC on Monday but canceled the announcement due to âongoing negotiationsâ lmao this sport man
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Wasnât coming to UVA but the Jordan Smith heavy transition to Arkansas away from Duke is interesting to see - and pretty refreshing to watch them hopefully lose someone from PVI finally
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Duke already got Bryson Howard and Deron Rippey Jr
Jordan Smith Jr to Arkansas official, for those of you following
So here we are in mid-February and we have no HS commits, and at least publicly, nobody we are heavily involved with. Is it possible we strike out in this class? (and maybe because we just kept our bat on our shoulder?)
And it seems like a year when thereâs good talent in-state (though I have no idea if some of these VA schools in this list are really local, or more like prep schools â like Gillion academy)
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Again, this staff has yet to win a recruitment where it didnât out bag drop anyone. I think there are a lot of things to be excited about right now but I donât love how this staff has struggled to acquire talent
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I think we have to give them some credit for Chance and all credit for Barksdale/Carrere, though no clue if the latter two are worth praising yet.
I generally thought we were pretty savvy in the portal, not just overwhelming with $$, but we havenât seen that savviness in HS recruiting yet. I was re-reading some of thid thread, and it seemed like we had a lot of options in late summer / early fall, and things didnât really seem to get serious with any of themâŚ
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Optimistic side of me is going to hang my hat on the power of having a good team this year, which was only obvious after the ship had sailed on all/most of our targets.
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Iâll give them the benefit of the doubt for this offseason. I also think that given what theyâve shown us in terms of opportunism in the portal that we shouldnât rule out the possibility of them going hard after some coaching change commits.
And maybe theyâre waiting to see what shakes out there instead of chasing guys who arenât great fits. Theyâre 1 for 1 on roster construction in my eyes, so Iâm not prepared to get worked up about it yet.
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Weâve had an incredible run this season - for selling purposes to regular transfers, internationals and HS recruits. All have had success this year under a first year P4 coach. Team is winning and players are playing in a style that is popular. We will also still have decent money.
If the staff canât work with that then we are screwed. I am very excited and optimistic for what April will bring. I do think it will mostly come from international and transfers, but I suspect we get one top 50 and one 50-100 hs recruit before the dust settles.
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We arenât 365th in pace this year⌠but we are 311th. Is that attractive enough to recruits? Do recruits like to full court man to man without trying to steal the ball? Iâve heard TDR talk about how the college game is faster than Europe ⌠so maybe thats why they seem to be focused on Euros in recruiting? Style fit?
Faster than only 5 other Power 5 teams.
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We are #182 in average possession length on offense, and run a press to shorten the opposing teamâs possession in their offensive halfcourt, so our defensive possession time is #351.
I canât remember where to find transition splits now that hoop math has gone away (@AdventiveQuasar probably knows), but in general, we get out in transition a lot.
So your question basically boils down to whether recruits want to pick up full court?
I would be surprised if thatâs something that recruits have a strong negative reaction to, but kids do have odd tastse, I supposeâŚ
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109th in percentage of possessions ending in transition on offense (I.e. shot/foul/TO): https://hoop-explorer.com/TeamStatsExplorer?advancedFilter=SORT_BY%20off_trans_pct%20&confOnly=false&gender=Men&maxTableSize=300&t100=false&year=2025%2F26&
#118 in defensive transition percentage (higher rank = less opponent transition offense).
Odomâs VCU team last season had more transition but had a similar divergence between transition percentage and overall pace.
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And I suspect the reason we donât try to force a lot of turnovers with our press, is that we are not good at it. With different personnel, I suspect we would. Heck, when Elijah was getting more PT, he tried it a bit more, so I think itâs something that the coaches would like, but itâs not a strength of at least Thomas, Hall, or TDR.
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We foul enough as it is. Coach probably doesnât want to add another 2-3 fouls each game that far from the basket.
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I think this is right, though I think itâs lower priority than other elements of their style of play. Odomâs teams have been all over the place in terms of defensive TO rate, but I recall him saying before the season that his last VCU team was close to his preferred style. This team has some similarities statistically (defensive 2P%, offensive rebounding, foul-proneness) but isnât forcing TOs at the same rate (the bright side is that they are a better shooting and defensive rebounding team).
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I suspect the reason Odom has, throughout his career, going back to at least UMBC, focused more on Euro recruits (esp. to the extent one considers the UK part of Europe, which is controversial these days) has to do with (1) overseas connections (maybe dating at least to his Dadâs relative reliance on non-US pools of talent fairly early), and (2) trying to find pools of talent where there was less competition / some comparative advantage in scouting.
I suspect it has very little or nothing to do with play style
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That VCU team, at least in my mindâs eye, had a lot more long, lanky, athletic types: Zeb Jackson, Jack Clark, et al.
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I think youâre right, but I do sort of think he has adopted a bit of a euro team construction style as a result. The euro ball handler-shooter-screener taxonomy on offense seems to be closer to Odomâs way of thinking about the team than the traditional Wooden 1 through 5 one.
Itâs probably mostly a happy accident, but my first thought when he put the roster together this offseason was that it seemed like a very modern, euro ball team construction.
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Interesting, but just want to point out thatâs significantly different than what @DavetheWave was asking â which was that does Odom go after Euros because they like Odomâs slower play style and/or because they love pressing without trying to force turnovers.
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The euros most likely go to Odom because 1) he paid them and 2) their camps probably feel comfortable with Odomâs heavy euro connections
We should get this kid to reclass and be our center #2. He turns 18 in May and the Nigerian connection with Ugo could help. (top 5 recruit in 2027 currently playing at South Eastern Prep in Florida)
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