trueblue32

I think that all of that can be said about kids when they first go through the recruiting process too, so I don't understand how then making them spend 4 years wherever they first went is a better solution. At least they're 1+ year older and have an idea of what they did/didn't like in their last school.

whoever fields a team of 5 MAC caliber players is going to win it this year lol

Looks like the tweet got deleted but it said we reached out to Norfolk State transfer guard Jalen Hawkins who averaged 13 PPG last year

North Texas Transfer Mardrez McBride: https://247sports.com/Article/Basketball-recruiting-Penn-State-Georgia-Cincinnati-Penn-State-Buffalo-Mardrez-McBride-185396001/ Buffalo: “We actually played them through the year and he was able to see me with his own eyes and was very impressed. He says he still has nightmares to this day but they need an impactful guy who can contribute right away.” Had 17 points, 5 rebounds in our game. Averaged 11 and 3 on the season

oof

Speaking of…

Scholarships have always been one year deals. A percentage of transfers are run-offs on the wrong side of that deal. Committing your time and talent in exchange for a scholarship isn’t “free” anyway. Do they provide money for relocation? Do they send postings to kids on better situations? I don’t think encourage means what you think it means. Of all posts to make a stand on how the transfer portal makes sports less fun for you, this is a strange one. The kid has dealt with loss of a parent, Oats selling him a bill of goods, and major injury. I hope he finds what he’s looking for

https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2021/college-basketball-transfers-2021-1234646192/amp/ “While the rise in college basketball transfers has drawn sharp criticism from some quarters, it is important to note that college athlete transfer rates are still far below those of the general student population. According to a study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 37% of college undergraduates across the country transfer at least once during their four years.” The real story is that the NCAA had previously been inhibiting kids’ ability to do what’s best for them like the average student does all the time

“As crummy as it is to be thinking about this earlier than we wanted, I enjoy recruiting/drafting almost as much as the games themselves.” I do agree with this. There’s some excitement to a clean slate in terms of roster construction. It falls on the coach as well but it never felt like the graduating core put it all together. We had 3 solid high usage guys, but it felt like the team always lacked a level of connective tissue that made it all work. I like Jones as a high feel passer and shooter that isn’t going to force offense. I like Hardnett as a garbage man who finishes well and plays hard defense (although gotta get the fouls under control). I thought Blocker showed good scoring instincts and could be a microwave scorer off the bench. Skogman has the ability to be one of the key cogs of the next generation. Where some see players that aren’t ready to step up, I see guys that play a role already and transfers can be dropped into to soak up usage (which will be attractive to them). It comes down to finding the right pieces, but it’s exciting to think about. Maybe that’s just the undying optimist in me lol

Wasn’t sure that these deserved their own threads until there’s more concrete news on visits or commits, but we can make a rolling list of transfers we’re linked to. Evansville PG Shamar Givance: Ball State C Payton Sparks: https://www.on3.com/news/ball-state-freshman-transfer-payton-sparks-has-plenty-of-early-suitors/

11/24-11/26: Paradise Jam 12/18: at West Virginia

Aside from the fact that we literally haven’t even offered him yet, how many of the guys on the top 25 team were ranked on 247? If we offered Brennan Rigsby last year as an unranked 247 player maybe he’d be on campus right now instead of heading to Oregon next year

Understanding and repeating are different things

It was some extreme back of the napkin math to address your post asking for a metric that suggested that UB could win 3 in Cleveland. I stated that the more realistic probability is somewhere around ~20%. You can feel duped by whatever you want, but UB’s tournament win probability isn’t solely predicated on UB’s team strength, but also that of the other top contenders. Last year was the first year since 2015 that the MAC had 3 top 100 teams. Like us Ohio and Toledo brought back most of their cores from those teams, and are similarly rated. All 3 fan bases can say we need to win it all in Cleveland, only 1 is going to be happy (possibly 0).

They don't have to go 5-0. They have to go 3-0 in Cleveland. Luckily Toledo doesn't have HCA in Cleveland and Maceo Jack isn't projected to have to play any minutes at center this time against Akron

You keep saying the word "metrics", but I don't get the feeling that you understand them at all. haslametrics.com is the only site that I'm aware of that you can generate predictions for matchups, so we'll use it as a ballpark estimate. Using pythagorean expectation we get: Akron: 73.6% win probability on neutral Toledo: 31.4% win probability on neutral Ohio: 43.4% win probability on neutral For a MAC tournament 10% win probability. This is low-balling the win probability given the likelihood of upsets that gives us an easier path and the fact that despite this board bemoaning our bench, we play them more than Toledo or Ohio, which would favor us in this setting. For reference last year kenpom had us at a 27% probability. I think the realistic probability for this year is somewhere in between those two numbers, maybe ~20%. To be clear, I don't believe we are favorites going to Cleveland, nor should we be, but the favorites often do not win. This team also has a tangible chance of winning 3 in Cleveland, which you are dismissing. You're not going to find any metric that says it's a likelihood that we win the tournament because winning 3 straight games against quality competition is hard. I'd imagine Gonzaga and Vermont (maybe I'm forgetting someone else) have a tournament win probability of greater than 50%. This is another way of saying that he's .500 in MAC tournament games. If that's meaningful to you (it shouldn't be) we have a 12.5% chance of winning the MAC tournament.

Last year's 11 seeds averaged 51.3 pre-tourney Last year's 15 seeds averaged 148 pre-tourney

I think I'd like to see him take all of Brewton's minutes (maybe give a couple more to Jack). Brewton and Jones on-off numbers are similar, but I think Jones' would be better if more of his minutes came off the ball with less responsibility. Jones is more efficient/productive almost across the board with the exception of turnover rate, and I'd attribute that mostly to him having more responsibility to create for others. I had hopes that Brewton could get going and be a microwave scorer off the bench, but that just hasn't come to fruition which is unfortunate. We're running out of runway for him now and I think we should tighten up the rotation + think about the program's future. Even if it's a push in terms of on-court impact we might as well get experience for Jones who will be here for 3 more years.

I think there actually is rationale to this. Toledo has recently been highly reliant on the 3, which being a higher variance stat can be difficult to maintain for 3 games in a row. 2018: 36.7% of their points came from 3. Shot 31.8% from 3 in their loss 2019: 38.6% of their points came from 3. Shot 45.2% from 3 in their loss, looks like bad D did them in here (another common theme among recent Toledo teams). 2020: 35.7% of their points came from 3. No tournament 2021: 38.7% of their points came from 3. Shot 20.7% from 3 in their loss This year they're only getting 25.2% of their points from 3 which I think could be key to them going all the way in Cleveland this year. They also have a better defense (by Toledo standards), although they've gotten a bit lucky in terms of opponent 3P% and FT% this year so they could be due for some regression there.

This one is fairly easily explained away when we had Maceo Jack playing center that game. The MAC screwed us by moving that game up to work around teams on COVID pauses when we had COVID cases of our own (and they didn’t even reschedule any games onto that date) Skogman and Hardnett (clearly he is injured) were our only forwards and we got 29 mins from them and they combined for 9 fouls. Akron shot 57% from 2 when we allow 49% on the season. Akron rebounded 37% of their missed shots when we allow 28% on the season. I don’t really have any concerns about Akron in a rematch. Not to take away from your point, we’re certainly inconsistent, but wanted to vent on how dumb that game was lol