trueblue32

He has coached 2 of the guys at Alabama and neither would elevate this team that much. Oats inherited 2, maybe 3, NBA players at Alabama and then supplemented them with the 21st and 12th ranked recruiting classes. He really hasn't done some miracle job in the player development department to turn that level of talent into the #18 team, although Hodgson and him are clearly getting it done in recruiting. Even at UB he had his fair share of misses (some leaving for non-basketball reasons): Stefan Duric, James Reese, Javion Hamlet, Quate McKinzie, James Jones. To be clear, I would take Oats back over Whitesell in a heartbeat, I just think a lot of the criticism around here is not rooted in reality/reasonable expectation

We're punting on Skogman already? Hardnett is a fine role player as a sophomore. I think the weird thing about the Whitesell hate is the assumption that Oats has us in a significantly better situation. Andre Allen did nothing at ASU and is now averaging 3.6 PPG at Southern as a senior (KenPom #256) Raymond Hawkins did nothing at Alabama and now for whatever reason hasn't touched the floor at Long Beach State (KP #264). Noah Williams is the third best player on a Washington St. team that came in second to last in the P-12 last season (KP #129). James Rojas plays at Alabama but produces (4 PPG, 3 RPG) less than Montell McRae our top 25 year, he's not a game changing player. I don't think that the roster is significantly better if Oats was here right now given that Mballa wouldn't be here without the de-commits listed above. The truth is that this year's team is currently rated more highly and has improved more from the first year team than Oats' second year team and has a higher win% thus far (if that's what you're focused on). This team is on a similar trajectory as the team after Oats' second year, with the major difference being that the current core is juniors (Mballa, Williams, Segu), while Oats' core was sophomores (Massinburg, Perkins). All that said, success is cyclic for the most part at the mid-major level, next year will probably be this group's peak and barring major transfer additions we won't burn as bright as Oats' last team, but we should hopefully be a top 80ish team, which is good as a mid-major. The reasonable hope is that we iterate on that success with the next group, rather than blowing everything up and putting us another regime away from our peak.

I don't anticipate him being an impact transfer on Mballa or (potentially) Brewton's level but I think but he should be a solid add to the rotation as a 6'5" guard. Fairly efficient on offense. barttorvik.com's PORPAGATU! factors in efficiency, usage, and competition. He posted a 2.3 in a small sample this year, then a 1.7 junior year, and 1.8 sophomore year. Current Bulls for reference: PRPG! Jeenathan Williams 4.3 Ronaldo Segu 3.1 Jayvon Graves 2.4 Josh Mballa 2.1 Tra'Von Fagan 1.6 Keishawn Brewton 1.1 Brock Bertram 0.8 LaQuill Hardnett 0.8 David Skogman 0.6 David Nickelberry 0.6 Jamon Bivens -0.3 Savion Gallion -0.7

An important detail before launching into the weekly Whitesell bashing

Only the Bona and WVU games have been officially announced as cancelled but it looks like the Akron game is also getting postponed

“I predict more great news on this topic soon.” I’m guessing is referring to Jazmine Young the Tennessee State transfer on the women’s team but I guess it could also potentially be referring to good news about Zachery rejoining MBB

This year doesn’t count against anyone’s eligibility per the NCAA so he would be eligible for next year.

I think there are rightful reasons to be concerned about how the team has looked so far, but playing BG as close as we did on the road without Mballa or Brewton (maybe even Zachery), portends good things for the next time we see them, and MAC play in general. That’s a lot of talent/depth missing so far

Not sure if it's an unannounced game or an error on ESPN's part but ESPN is now showing a MBB game scheduled against D2 Mercyhurst on Thursday. It would be a decent game to add. It looks like Mercyhurst returns their top 7 scorers from last year's 20 win team and added a transfer from St. Bonaventure. UB was scheduled to have 9 days off between last night's game and the Miami (OH) game.

Has anybody pointed out that Nickelberry is shooting with his right instead of his left this year? I have no idea how I missed that the first two games lol

Most of the analytics sites have BG around the 4th or 5th best team in the MAC. Last year they were #1 in KenPom's luck rating due to winning a super high % of close games, which has influenced the media into pumping them up too. They don't play much defense and don't have a frontcourt. Without Mballa we don't have much of a frontcourt either though, so it seems pretty close to toss-up territory which is where Vegas has it too.

Brewton's Instagram shows that he traveled with the team to Mohegan Sun so he must be eligible. I also wouldn't think they'd bring him to an event where one COVID positive would DQ the whole team if they weren't planning to play him. That would be a big addition this year

Our game is more than two weeks out but we are one of those first four games listed on Iona's schedule so that game might be out. Hard to imagine that the team will pay to travel and partake in the Mohegan Sun bubble only to play Vermont. A lot of schedules are crumbling already

Extra year of eligibility was passed today for winter athletes. To me the more interesting UB related implication is if it prompts Brewton to decide to suit up this year since he won't be burning his last year of eligibility. Hopefully they were working in the background on a waiver for this possibility if he does.

https://twitter.com/GoodmanHoops/status/1316373315284590593?s=20

Yeah I was talking about as a center, I think the 4 is his natural landing spot defensively. He seems agile enough to guard a little bit on the perimeter and strong enough to guard in the post. The issue is all the guys you listed are more vertically explosive than Williamson so I don't know what he can provide in rim protection, which probably necessitates playing another big man with him. I think Skogman could pair well with him because he is supposed to be able shoot the ball. I would have concerns about an Mballa and Williamson lineup handcuffing the offense with two non-shooting big men (although they would only overlap for one season).

Dealing with size defensively is a different question but in this video he scores 3 or 4 times on 7'2" Hunter Dickinson (#1 in blue) who is a 4 star freshman at Michigan. He does enough off the bounce/in the mid-range that he should be able to hold his own on that end against 6'10"+. I don't know if he would provide enough rim protection to be a full-time 5 for UB but he could pair with Skogman who (hopefully) will provide some of that.

I mean I agree with you as I stated in the original post. I'm not here to defend the ethics of the NCAA, but the rules are the rules. I'd rather not see harsher punishments to the programs we all obviously care about because boosters have the insatiable desire to tweet at 17-20 year olds. You can even like and RT their content to "show love", it's a weird line but the NCAA suspends kids for playing in charity exhibitions over the summer, so I don't know that we're safe from NCAA BS when we're already on probation.

I don't imagine tweeting at recruits to come to UB will ever cause an issue, but concern is reasonable when: 1.) A history of violations is cited as an aggravating factor in the NCAA's report which BrooklynBull expressed concern about. 2.) There were people on here saying a certain assistant coach was behind one of the accounts tweeting at recruits (which is another violation)

Didn't look into the meet based sports (i.e. swimming/diving and track), but they had a losing record in literally every sport listed with a record on their athletics site besides MBB and many were closer to winless than .500. They even list their rugby team which isn't NCAA sanctioned and they having a losing record in that as well.

Alright I'll take the bait. Since you point out Bona's injuries, UB is missing key players Xavier Ford and Rodell Wigginton in this game. Both Kenpom and Barttorvik have UB ranked more than 50 spots ahead of Bonaventure. Making it seem like its actually harder to make the tournament in a 4 bid league and hiding behind that is also weak. Nobody's holding a gun to Bonaventure's head and making them stay in the A-10 when they belong in the MAAC. Consensus: UB Bona was ranked around 90 in the metrics, rank 56th with a negative wins above bubble (resume metric) with 9 teams with better resumes also missing the tournament. You might agree that you were an all-time snub on Bona boards but by predictive metrics and resume metrics you weren't even close. This was UB's worst team during this stretch (particularly early in the year) and Bona's all-time snub team needs a buzzer beater to beat them. Consensus: Bona by a buzzer beater 6 points at home is handily? Conveniently missing the fact that the Bulls are missing Big 4 Player of the Decade CJ Massinburg in the game. Again, citing a conference you don't belong in's accomplishments as your own. Consensus: toss-up This might be the most laughable part of a laughable post. Beating kenpom #56 UCLA in a defacto home game in Ohio by 7, is not a wash to beating kenpom #28 Arizona featuring #1 pick DeAndre Ayton by 21 on a neutral court. I applaud the stones it takes to post something that idiotic though. You got this one right.

If we're not recruiting at the moment it's not a huge deal imo. We have 12 of 13 scholarships for next year accounted for at the moment. Everybody just had ~20% more work put on their plate in the middle of the season. The video coordinator is sitting on the bench at games which I don't recall seeing done in the past. The DOBO was doing the scout for the next game in Charleston which is not really in his current job description. I wouldn't mind if we sat on the scholarship and waited to see which big men are transferring in the spring, that (or something similar) may have been the plan all along

I was thinking this after whoever posted the top 30 list for Pangos above in this thread. I'm not familiar with all of the names on the list but a lot of them are the top 5 star guys. #236 nationally seems a little low to be in the company of those guys.

Sign https://ubbulls.com/news/2019/11/15/mens-basketball-bulls-sign-josiah-freeman-to-national-letter-of-intent.aspx