Keion Brooks Working!

[Jkwo]

You’re using this top 5ish range like it’s a guaranteed star. And it’s simply not the case. While most of the players I listed one pretty good players for us, they were not the stars they were expected to be which is what was mentioned.

I've never claimed that they were guaranteed superstars. In my original post, my words were that they haven't "let us down" and predicted they would be "really nice players" who could well help our team to be "the best in the country by March".

All of these were perfectly modest and rational statements, which I then further backed up with my assessment above. 12th ranked players and Alex Poythress (not a guard) have nothing to do with my assertion.

For every single example laid out, see below:

And exactly 1 of your 4 examples was a top 5 player. How about this, only a single player has been ranked ahead of Boston or Clarke in the last 4 classes, Fox. That's it. Now you get 2 guys on the same roster?? Here are the top 5 guys Cal has had: Wall, Cousins, Knight, Davis, MKG, Noel, Randle, Andrew Harrison, KAT, Skal. Thats 10, and exactly 1 of them didnt pan out. Outside the top 5 becomes more dicey, but generally Guards perform better as freshmen than forwards, who perform better than centers. Clarke is the non top 5 player of the 2, and Meyers thinks hes the best 2 guard hes ever seen.

I understand pessimism after the last few recruiting classes, but this is one to get excited about.

Exactly.

And to hammer home the guard point, take Wall, Knight, Andrew, then throw in Cal's other top 5 guards (Rose, Evans), his guys who were right around 6 or 7 (Fox, Teague, Aaron Harrison), and that's 8 out of 8 guards who all ended their freshmen seasons as massive successes.

And that's leaving out Monk and Murray who were both around 9.

Unless this recruiting class really sucks, Clarke and Boston are comfortably in the "high level contributor as freshmen" zone.

 

[fatguy87]

We are going to be in trouble if Boston and/or Clarke are at the level of Teague and Andrew Harrison as freshman. Both guys played for successful teams, but they were not particularly good. Both players shot worse than Ashton Hagans as freshman.

Anyway, they should be good players. If one of Boston and Clarke became a super star while the other is like Aaron Harrison, we will be in a good position.

 

[Jkwo]

We are going to be in trouble if Boston and/or Clarke are at the level of Teague and Andrew Harrison as freshman. Both guys played for successful teams, but they were not particularly good. Both players shot worse than Ashton Hagans as freshman.

Anyway, they should be good players. If one of Boston and Clarke became a super star while the other is like Aaron Harrison, we will be in a good position.

Worse than Ashton Hagans?

If you mean his overall fg%, then that's true, but it's where I would start with critique - Ashton shot 47% as a freshman, which is absurdly high for a point guard (would put him top 10 in the NBA at that position).

If you mean his 3 point %, then that's way, way off. Both Teague and Andrew were significantly better 3 point shooters as freshmen than Ashton - As a matter of fact, Andrew shot 35% to Ashton's 27%, which is a massive blowout.

As for Teague, while he was not quite as good a 3 point shooter (32.5%), in the NCAA tournament, he averaged 13/6/3 with two turnovers, with a high of 24 points, never less than 8, maintaining an A/T of 2. And his scoring was held in check by five other guys averaging double digits, which is really unusual. In what world is that "not particularly good"? Again, I didn't claim that they would be awesome from the beginning. I just said they'd be good by March.

That being said, Ashton merely being an awful three point shooter wasn't even a crippling weakness for the majority of his freshman year; he was probably one of the five best point guards in the country until he hit that freshman wall where he forgot how to play defense and started making mistakes like it was going out of style.

You don't need every player to be good at everything to be a contender. That's why both Andrew and Teague were vital parts, as freshmen, to incredibly dangerous teams in March. That was my entire claim.

Any two of pre-wall Ashton (not top 5, but I feel obligated to stick up for him now), March Andrew, or March Teague is plenty enough to make a deep run next to a strong sophomore wing and an eligible Sarr.

 

[weatherbird]

Worse than Ashton Hagans?

If you mean his overall fg%, then that's true, but it's where I would start with critique - Ashton shot 47% as a freshman, which is absurdly high for a point guard (would put him top 10 in the NBA at that position).

If you mean his 3 point %, then that's way, way off. Both Teague and Andrew were significantly better 3 point shooters as freshmen than Ashton - As a matter of fact, Andrew shot 35% to Ashton's 27%, which is a massive blowout.

As for Teague, while he was not quite as good a 3 point shooter (32.5%), in the NCAA tournament, he averaged 13/6/3 with two turnovers, with a high of 24 points, never less than 8, maintaining an A/T of 2. And his scoring was held in check by five other guys averaging double digits, which is really unusual. In what world is that "not particularly good"? Again, I didn't claim that they would be awesome from the beginning. I just said they'd be good by March.

That being said, Ashton merely being an awful three point shooter wasn't even a crippling weakness for the majority of his freshman year; he was probably one of the five best point guards in the country until he hit that freshman wall where he forgot how to play defense and started making mistakes like it was going out of style.

You don't need every player to be good at everything to be a contender. That's why both Andrew and Teague were vital parts, as freshmen, to incredibly dangerous teams in March. That was my entire claim.

Any two of pre-wall Ashton (not top 5, but I feel obligated to stick up for him now), March Andrew, or March Teague is plenty enough to make a deep run next to a strong sophomore wing and an eligible Sarr.

I'm afraid we are fighting a losing battle. People forget what players like Boston and Clarke perform like under Cal, probably because we have had exactly 1 of those players since 2015. But to further this assessment, 2016 had Fox as the highest rated player (#6), Bam (#9), and Monk (#11), 2017 highest rated was Diallo (#10), 2018 Montgomery (#9), and 2019 Maxey (#10). 2016 had 2 top 10 Freshmen, both pretty good, neither top 5, and was the core of a 32-5 team. Each of the next 3 years saw a single top 10 player in each class, and none of them rated higher than 9th. Next year, Boston is the first top 5 player since Skal (the lone top 5 bust), and Clarke at #7, higher than anybody not named Fox in the last 4 years. Yet people would rather view those 2 players on the same level as players ranked outside the top 10, or compare them to the twins, and James Young who were all instrumental in delivering a championship game appearance, and the twins piloted a team that went 38-1. Maybe they weren't as bad as people remember. Those twins along with Randle and Young continuously outperformed their VETERAN competition (most of them with Final Four Experience) down the stretch of 4 straight games. A lot of people will say "but if even one of the Harrison shots fail to go in, and we go home early", which misses the point that they had to play toe to toe with those teams for 40 minutes for those shots to even matter.

Most of this is probably still leftovers from the Wisconsin loss, but this team has the makings to give us a year to finally get BBN back totally engaged in Basketball.

 

[Fox2monk]

I hope he’s a monster next season, IU fans were always talking him down. I hope he makes them eat their words.

 

[Tyblue22]

This kid is about to BLOW UP

 

[ubtrapper]

I think Brooks will have a great year and we will be a decent team but I have concerns about Brooks being the lone leader on this team.

 

[Sparkaces1]

I think Brooks will have a great year and we will be a decent team but I have concerns about Brooks being the lone leader on this team.

Why would Mintz and Sarr not be good leaders, especially Mintz. He has NCAA experience as well.

 

[ganner918]

Brooks' problem last year was never energy, attitude, or work ethic. He just needed some time to adjust to the college game. We saw a lot of potential in him and when he got thrown into action last game of the year. I'm guessing we get 10 and 6 out of him as a sophomore, a good defender, and a guy who brings the energy every night.

 

[ubtrapper]

Why would Mintz and Sarr not be good leaders, especially Mintz. He has NCAA experience as well.

They will bring experience but in Cals system it's a whole different ballgame.

Hopefully they will adjust quicker than the Fr. but they will still have to adjust to what Cal expects.