Yes. And it is sad/ awful. Is Peach Jam screwed?
3 Likes
The only Peach Jam scouts will be the coaches from the basketball prep schools like Oak Hil, PaulVI, Monteverde, and IMG Academy.
2 Likes
Watched the Thomas transfer tape again tonight, and honestly, itâs not that impressive (bear with meâŚ). Heâs just very good at a lot of things. Heâs a very good shooter. He can get to the hoop. Can score at multiple levels. Can distribute a bit (but tbh, doesnât look like a major part of his skillset). But tbh, not a lot of âwoahâ in there.
But then you look at his efficiency and counting stats, including against some very good teams, and he looks awesome. Iâm guessing he must just be super consistent and that obviously doesnât show up in portal tapes, where everything is a make.
12 Likes
And a lot of his offense was FTs (48.4 FT Rate, 85% at the line), which also doesnât show on those highlights. He was high usage while being low turnover, which means heâs taking a whole lot of shots and FT attempts, and being even just solid efficiency wise there makes you very valuable.
8 Likes
Yeah, Good point. Noticed that he hit a lot of FTs in some of the P5 caliber games they played (Memphis, Zags, Wash St, etc)
3 Likes
That sounds like an excellent 4 year (or more) college player who isnât an NBA prospect. Sounds perfect for us to me.
4 Likes
Certainly not holding him to the standard of an all time Hoo great, but sounds a little like Malcolm. No real âwowâ factor but good at everything.
4 Likes
I thought the same watching his tape last night
2 Likes
Fair, but Malc was a shutdown defender before his senior year, I think.
4 Likes
This is my stab at using Hoop Explorerâs preseason roster-building tool to make the optimistâs projection for this season, assuming Thomas and De Ridder adds even though that is not confirmed:
In case itâs hard to see, that adds up to #17 O, #46 D, and #27 overall. That feels optimistic to me, but this is an exercise in loosely informed dart throwing, so whatever.
You can use it yourself: hoop-explorer.com/TeamEditor?
A few notes on using:
- You need to remove Warley (lol). I also filtered out Lang without removing him.
- Tillis doesnât start out on the roster for some reason, so you have to search for him at the bottom, with âOnly Show Transfersâ unticked.
- You need to manually build in Gertrude, GrĂźnloh, and De Ridder (if you choose) and make some assumptions about their profile
- For GrĂźnloh and De Ridder, I noticed that Sananda Fru had been projected at +4.4 RAPM, so I anchored off of that.
- I bumped up Chance a little on offense and bumped down a little on defense (the projections start out symmetrical for players with no data in the system).
- You can adjust any playerâs offense and defense up-and-down, so you can adjust further, like bumping Onyensoâs defense up and bumping his offense down, etc.
7 Likes
Fringe top 25 on paper seems about right if Thomas and De Ridder commit. I think weâd have top 15 upside if things really click and wrong side of the bubble downside if things donât
4 Likes
I will do no further expectations adjustment and expect a roughly #27 ranked team now. Thanks!
6 Likes
Seems right. Lots of unknowns and that could materialize into a big mess. On paper it looks good though. Certainly second weekend potential.
1 Like
Hall - White - Thomas - Lewis - de Ridder - Tillis - GrĂźnloh - Onyenso has Elite 8 potential.
Very hard to predict this team because thereâs so little to anchor on.** Nobody has played with each other before. Nobody has played for this staff before. Two potential starters have never played college hoops before. Only one guy played meaningful P5 minutes last year (Hall). Only two guys have ever played meaningful P5 minutes (Onyenso and Hall).
The talent seems very good! Thatâs my official position.
** as exemplified by @AdventiveQuasar âs heroic efforts to create players. But that kinda just is an exercise where your output = your input.
10 Likes
Iâll go with Odom knows what he is doing and we have a great entertaining team.
4 Likes
Yeah, I donât want this part to get lost - this is my way of formalizing my thinking about the roster, not some sort of ground truth about the team. I do think that directionally I feel certain we will be a better offensive than defensive team, though the overall level is very uncertain to me.
4 Likes
Iâve thought a bit about the leadership dynamic with zero incumbentsâŚ
I think one huge plus - potentially - is the fact that there are no incumbents that our mediocre players that would be in the rotation that would maybe be roadblocks to the more talented newer guys taking leadership roles. In my experience from what Iâve seen when guys donât respect another guyâs talent itâs really hard to follow someone like that especially if that guy is getting more playing time because of simply being incumbents and not because they perform better.
I think it will make it easier for Hall and Jacari and hopefully Malik to lead from day 1.
2 Likes
I think the hope is we can follow the Louisville trajectory from last season. Very similar circumstances with their roster. They took sum lumps early in the season and did not look great at the outset. We all know what happened once they got their sea legs,
5 Likes