Houston begs to differ.
Continuity as defined as returning 50%+ of production from prior year. Not necessarily team of guys who have been there for 4 years.
Every title winner in the transfer portal era has done so.
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Yeah I just guess my point is there are probably fewer of those teams generally than there were 5-10 years ago. The vast majority of teams are dealing with meaningful roster turnover on an annual basis. If you took our current situation/roster and applied it to the 2014 ACC, Iād be extremely pessimistic because weād be at a significant competitive disadvantage given weāre a brand new roster. I think that disadvantage still does exist, especially against the teams that do return more guys like Houston and Florida did, but I think the magnitude of disadvantage has shrunk.
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Thatās fair. Evan Miya on the podcast went on about how you can still play the portal but you should value multi year guys.
He pointed out that one year transfers miss a lot more than hit. And that the best success stories from the portal (eg broome and Clayton last year) were guys who developed multiple years with their new programs.
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For the record, im totally comfortable with what Odom is doing. Try to put the best year one team on the floor to build a foundation and reputation you can recruit to in the future. I hope we arenāt building a new roster from scratch every year, but what heās doing makes sense this year.
But we should acknowledge that lack of continuity and familiarity with the system and teammates will lower the ceiling this year (on an admittedly high talent floor).
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Programs have to be flexible. You canāt build your entire program around retaining guys and getting old together. Kids can not pan out, transfer freely, etc.
You also canāt entirely rely on building a new roster each season.
I think Odom (and our program infrastructure) is well prepared to find the right balance between the two longer term.
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I imagine things are about to change now that the House settlement is in place. I have a suspicion that we will see significant changes in the future. Among other things, multiyear contracts seem almost inevitable along with their accompanying buy-out clauses. I think weāre going to see a new version of ācontinuityā, but the price is going to be high.
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Iāve had the opportunity to chat with Evan Miya quite a few times over the past few years and I really like his stuff/think itās useful. I especially think itās useful when trying to solve a puzzle within a team. There are sample sizes involved, but it becomes very clear as a season progresses when certain players donāt pair well together or when there are lineups that are clearly inferior to other things a team has done or could try. Often it marries well with the eyeball test.
Where I think it gets harder is his transfer list, for example. He talked about how hard it is to find the next Dalton Knecht because you donāt know how these guys will translate. Knecht was aligned with many others at a similar impact projection that didnāt shake out.
All of his data, as much as it accounts for strength of opponent and tries to factor an individualās direct contributions, is still within a silo of his teamās outcomes and the competition they play. If a team is good, that player is normally going to have a pretty decent baseline even if itās not as good as others on their team. And maybe even within a team, the team plays better when theyāre on the floor, but maybe a different team wouldnāt benefit as much from them being there based on how the skillsets are complimented. If a team is bad, itās going to drag that player down even if they are a diamond in the rough.
Similarly, if you beat a team by 80 or 40, thereās diminishing returns there where itās hard to tell how much it matters.
Take Dallin Hall - think heāll be a very PG for us this year - but he also played over 50% of the game on a great BYU offense. He contributed - and you can compare him to the other PG on his team - but thereās certainly a probable assumption that BYU would have elevated many DI PGs in that same position (Iām not saying he isnāt very good, I do think he is).
Devin Tillis - Iām reviewing him now. Heās one of those players who I think will translate worse than his rating. His positives come more in ball skill and feel for the game, but heās also incredibly small and unathletic at his position. He could compete better against the UC San Diegoās of the world because even though that was a very good team, they were less athletic and were smaller. He really struggled, say, when he played Oregon St. - a worse team than UC San Diego but with a bigger and more athletic frontcourt (especially at the PF position) - he struggled even when they played Duquesne (yes, I know, Landeborg). I think heās the kind of player who can consistently thrive against a certain type of opponent, one he was facing often, but will struggle, or at least will have to play differently, against P5 athleticism when he faces it on a regular basis. (I think heāll have to play more of a connector/facilitator type role, which he could be good at - but I think weāre really going to want De Ridder a lot and it will be incredibly bad for this yearās prospects if he doesnāt clear for some reason).
Malik Thomas is listed under Dallin Hall, Miya said, because he mostly just scores - but he also showed reliably that he could carry a huge workload effectively in a conference that did often face top teams like Gonzaga and St. Maryās (they played Clemson and Memphis and Boise St. as well). There wasnāt a ton of variability in his game (I mean, there was, he did score just 8 against St. Maryās once - but also scored 25 against Gonzaga and Memphis) and was consistently filling it up despite being clearly the #1 option and teams needing to account for him.
To me, thatās likely to lead to more resiliency in terms of his ability to contribute wherever. So, I do think Thomas (and White, and probably Lewis) are bigger gets than their rankings indicate and Hall, probably slightly less, and Tillis considerably less so. Itās why thereās still lots of room for improvement in this stuff and why itās always good to have both the data and eyes balance each other out (and even then, thereās still no magic formula).
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My proposal:
- All HS guys default to two year contracts.
- Guys going into their 2nd or 3rd years I would also want to be on 2-year deals, but I could see that being up for discussion.
- Guys who have been in college for at least 3 years already are on 1-year deals the rest of their tenure.
- Multi-year contracts become void in the event of a coaching change (Player Option ONLY).
- Small school guys can get ābought outā of their contracts by bigger schools where the bigger school has to pay the smaller school and it comes out of the bigger schoolās fixed NIL/RevShare pool. Obviously thereād need to be some sort of quantitative metric for determining when a guy is transferring up, and itās not just a P5 thing, someone going from Hampton to VCU would count too.
- I value the idea of retention, and think some degree of āoffer matchingā from the current school would be beneficial, but at the same time want to stop well clear of anything resembling a Franchise Tag or other Restricted FA deals as at the end of the day the Players should have the right to escape a bad situation.
- Academic progress still should matter, and Iād like to see some sort of academic clearinghouse involvement in ensuring transfers are still making degree progress, with forced redshirts involved for guys whose grades/progress are slipping, especially if itās because theyāre transferring multiple times.
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The trouble with ranking potential transfers is that you do it without context. Whoās the best available point guard? And you look at the production of the PGs in the portal and rank them accordingly. But, like you say, that doesnāt account for the quality and performance of the team they came from. But even more so, it doesnāt account for the needs of the team theyāre going to.
For Virginia, we need a steady, experienced point guard who can run the offense against elite competition because weāre building an entire team ā including the coaching staff ā from scratch. So Hall has limitations, but he is a MUCH better fit for Virginia than, for example, a volume shooting PG who comes from a small school, even if, on paper, stats say that other PG scored more, rebounded more, shot better, etc.
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I would think that there would be no ādefaultsā WRT contract length. The length of a contract would be part of the negotiation. Both parties will have their concerns. Likewise, the terms of the ābuy-outā clause will vary. Neither all schools nor all players will occupy the same positions of strength when they begin talking. It will probably get messy, but we are unlikely to be privy to the details.
Good summary of the dynamics of on-off types of metrics. Iād also argue that this general problem of āhow do you isolate a playerās performance from his team?ā still exists even if one thinks stats are dumb and just watches tape on guys.
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The EvanMiya type data-based rankings absolutely consider level of competition.
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On Miya and the Hoos On pod: he said Malik Thomas grades out lower than expected partly because SF played about the same when he was out. But my general view on on-off stuff for guys that play SO MUCH is that the āoffā numbers might not tell you much because of small numbers and also āitās not a random selection.ā Miya is in wholesale but I find the stuff more useful in retail
@Cuts_from_The_Corner Does Tillās lack of athleticism play out more on offense or defense? Or both? Iāve been more worried on defense but I could see some of both.
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Following up on the on-off stuff, it looks like SF played better on offense but worse on defense with Thomas in the lineup. Which was more or less a wash on Net.
If you limit to top 100 opponents, FWIW, he does get marginally better (team plays a little better in his possessions, and defense is fairly close)
Both, for sure. Some spoilers here and not to be overly harsh.
Heās not quick and he canāt jump.
So, on offense, he likes to play in the mid post a lot, bully ball, and pass out of it, and then spot up from outside. Great - but against length/athleticism he really struggles to get convincing shots up and gets neutralized a lot more (but he can still spot up and be a good passer).
On defense, UC Irvine was good - but they ran a bunch of stuff like 2-3 zone, diamond and 1 more than man - and they played everything to confuse and then funnel into their 7ā1" Center for rim protection. Individually, I thought he was a decently strong (physically) defender with disruptive hands - but really just couldnāt contest very well and wasnāt really good at changing directions - so heād get burned on close outs and ball defense with guys who could make a quick move on him and then shoot over.
Thereās a much more balanced total view of his game to be had - butā¦
All-in-all - I think heās the kind of player who can really have the game flow through him against a certain level of player - but I think heās going to have to almost solely be a connector/floor spacer against more athletic 4s.
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I think Malik Thomas averaged about 32 minutes per game, so itās statistically tricky to grade him lower based on raw data on team performance without him. Thereās a good chance thereās a situational reason he was out. He had one game where he fouled out last season and four games where he picked up four fouls. Youād have to actually watch the games: was he out when the game was out of reach? Was he out more against worse opposition?
Iāve only watched two full games from San Francisco, but he was clearly their alpha.
Edit: I went back and looked: his games where he played the fewest minutes were against their weakest competition. 24 minutes against Long Beach. 23 minutes against Boise. 25 minutes against Chicago State. All double digits wins.
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Totally agree
He reminds me of Gardner
Thanks for the write up. Iāll read it again in November to remind me who the guys in the VIRGINIA uniforms are.
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