Has Drew Pember been mentioned in here? All the DJ Burns talk made me think of him. Could see him following the same path. Former Tennessee transfer big man, will probably be the Big South player of the year at Asheville averaging 20 and 9. Shot blocker, developed into a 3 point shooter. Will be surprised if he doesn’t use that extra year somewhere else and be one of those popular transfers.
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Hmmm! Shoots like Sam and rebounds like Jayden.
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If we landed a big like that in the portal and brought back Reece it would be title or bust frankly
Everyone on this list
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Imagine you’re a mid major coach and you see your stud player on a list like this.
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If you’re like Mike brown you’re psyched because maybe you can parlay your stud player into a high major job and you can bring him with
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And knowing your school won’t have the $ to keep him.
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I know others have mentioned him earlier in the thread and he’s on the list; I really want Dillon Jones. I think a shooting wing to start at the 3 is a bigger priority than adding a front court piece to Kadin Traudt Dunn Bond Buchanan (let them play and develop in the out of conference). Would rather just bring in the Ivy League defensive player of the year, whoever it ends up being, rather than a young front court piece with a few years left.
But I saw an interview where Jones says he gets advice from Damien Lillard. I doubt he would do Lillard like that and transfer out.
Can someone start the @Hooandtrue tracker on recruits he really wants. So good man
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The serious list
Transfers:
Dillon Jones
High school:
VJ Edgecombe
Jaiden Glover
Daniel Freitag
Malik Abdullahi
Ty Davis
Damarien Yates
(bigs are irrelevant with skilled guards and we already have Buchanan whose gonna east those 4/5 minutes with Traudt for the forseeable future)
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Wouldn’t Dillon Jones directly compete with Dunn and Bond for minutes or am I missing something?
One year left. 36% from 3. Neither Dunn or Bond are proven shooters. And they would still get 20-25 minutes each with how thin our roster might be next season.
I think Jones is more of a small ball 4 and Gardner 5, he and Bond/Dunn could conceivably play together. Or all three at the same time if we wanna get crazy.
This is also all operating the assumption that Armaan doesn’t come back for another year and Gertrude will be getting at most limited minutes and maybe even redshirting coming off his injury. Neither or those things are guarantees by any measure.
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I hear you… I just don’t see it happening. Think we’re going to pivot to the younguns next season and let them sink or swim. Would guess portal targets will be for positions with obvious scarcity (PG, big). But I also have no idea.
I’d personally rather be a little bit worse next year but have all the young guys get experience (slash see if they’ve got it or not early) than play a grad transfer who can only be here one year major minutes. I view one-year grad transfers as emergency patches for obvious roster construction issues (like only having a single PG) but not for competing against our own recruited young talent at a position we have sufficient bodies for.
That said, if you convinced me we were potentially going to be so good next year that we could actually do something and not just have a rebuilding year prepping for '25… I don’t know, I’ve confused myself.
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Looks like Sheppard (the Belmont kid first on this list) went to the same HS Brogdon went to, right? Belmont runs great offense in general, but his numbers look really good even accounting for that. No idea if he can defend at a power conference level, but the last Belmont transfer, Will Richard, has translated his performance well after stepping up a level and going to Florida.
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I think there’s a way to have both. You can bring in a strong “patch” transfer, as you put it, that still provides major minutes for the younger guys.
So if we’re talking about our forwards – Bond and Traudt haven’t played a second of ball, and Dunn has only gotten minimal time. I’m not super confident saying any of those guys should start or play starter minutes at this stage. Not much experience outside of Kaden (assuming he stays).
So I could see Tony bringing in someone in if he feels like he needs more experienced depth here.
And since we’re losing Papi, Gardner and BVP, still plenty of time to distribute to the existing players even after adding one more guy. This would be Bond/Dunn (smaller wings), Traudt/Kaden (bigger wings), and a versatile transfer.
Question is whether you go bigger or smaller here – this is tougher because we could use more experience in either area. But not sure we have the minutes distribution to bring in one of each.
To talk you further into this, if Reece and Franklin stay, we’d have a pretty stacked backcourt with them, iMac and Dante. The missing pieces may be better depth in the front court. Fix that and next year could be really special.
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How good of a shooter is Gertrude?
We know in future years that Traudt and McKneely will provide elite shooting/spacing. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Dunn and Bond don’t develop into good shooters, but rather provide their value on offense by slashing.
One more shooter in that lineup would make us pretty much un-guardable. Imagine a shooter like Ty running that offense… holy cow. That’s best case. Worst case is we get Harris as the other starter with no 3pt improvements from his Gtown days.
Obviously a lot can change along the way but always fun to speculate. My dream of a lineup where McKneely and Traudt can get endless open looks while Bond/Dunn/PG can have easy access to drive is what makes me endlessly optimistic about our future
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You know I am sorta biased but I think Elijah is going to be a very very good shooter. Almost surprisingly so.
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100% on dunks!
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JPJ gonna love it yo
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