Per Meyer, UK Still #2

[Smashcat]

in composite team rankings and would be #1 with the addition of Murray, Maker or Brown, despite recent 5-star misses,

 

[UK_Johnny24]

Gotta get Murray man. Murray AND Brown would just be love though.

 

[crazyqx83]

Who cares what we're ranked? We have a huge need at SF.

 

[Brando Mac]

Our best bet is for Murray in a skilled 3 guard line-up.

Brown would be great, too, but there's just too many forces pulling him away from us.

 

[Blue Decade]

The object of the game is to win. It doesn't matter what Meyer thinks of our class. Meyer is 1 guy with an opinion, and class rankings don't win games. If they did, we could just award each game to the team with the higher class ranking, and save everyone the trouble of playing. And even if a person is obsessed with class rankings, we still have 1 of the top classes and several top players are still undecided. But all that matters is beating other teams. We have 3 returning McDonalds All Americans plus 1 of the top recruiting classes in the country. Only a handful of coaches every get to coach a roster like this. Under the circumstances, the gnashing of teeth on this board is really inexplicable. Are we so spoiled as a fan base now, that we can't cope when a player commits to Kansas or Duke? Really?

 

[Mojocat]

Who cares what we're ranked? We have a huge need at SF.

Aka the tail wagging the dog.....

 

[brdmn22]

Who cares what we're ranked? We have a huge need at SF.

Well, the point is we still have some damn good players coming next year. Calipari can't literally get every 5-star player he wants.

Do we really have a huge need at SF? Currently, UK has Mulder, Matthews, Poythress, and even Willis to play minutes at the 3. Ulis and Briscoe are the starting backcourt, with Hawkins as a bench player. Mulder and Matthews are more than capable of playing the SF position in college. Both are extremely athletic and good defenders/rebounders. Poythress and Willis will probably play the 4 mostly, but they are capable of playing the 3 if a team has a particularly big SF (not many teams).

So that leaves 5 players: Ulis, Briscoe, Matthews, Mulder, and Hawkins to play the majority of the minutes at the 1-3 spots. That's a solid rotation. 4 of the players can play multiple positions, while Ulis is the only one that has to play only one spot.

 

[Son_Of_Saul]

First time since the spring of 2012, when I felt UK needed one more significant piece to compete at a high level.

Presently, UK just doesn't have any scorers. Calipari has two pass-first guards, three other role players wing players in Hawkins, Matthews, and Mulder, and a pretty thing frontline. Getting at least one of Brown, Maker, or Murray would change the whole trajectory next year.

 

[bigc45157]

We definitely need scoring

 

[ArmyWildcat81]

Who cares what we're ranked? We have a huge need at SF.

Sounds like we may land the NC STATE commit, that is a 3-star. He has a UK offer.

 

[UK_Johnny24]

We don't need the NC State kid. It'd just be a wasted scholarship and interfere with an opening for a recruit next year. We have our end of the bench guys with Hawkins and Willis. What we need is freaking Jamal Murray. Brown would be awesome but I'm not holding out hope for him. I think we're a legit top 10 team right now but with Murray we would be the best team in the country IMO. I'm not a fan of 3 guard lineups but we'd look something like this in the best case scenario.

Tyler Ulis
Isaiah Briscoe
Jamal Murray
Alex Poythress
Skal Labissiere

Coming off the bench we'd have Mulder, Mathews, and Lee. I could see that team bringing home 9 for sure, and only losing 2-4 games. Ulis will be one of the best PG's in the country. Elite ball handler and passer who can score and he's a natural leader. Briscoe's a big, strong bully guard with mad handles, passing ability, and a good scorer too. Murray is just the real deal. He's legit. Just a big time scoring combo guard. He can basically do it all. I could see Poy becoming a Patrick Paterson type player with him playing at the 4 all the time. And Skal is AD 2.0 enough said. As for our bench guys. Mulder would give us a really good scoring 6th man. He's athletic and a big time 3pt shooter. Mathews is a question mark for me. He'll get a lot of minutes off the bench but how will he perform? Hopefully he'll be a slashing wing and play great defense and improve his shooting. And Lee should really, really improve his game over the summer. He'll get a lot of minutes as the only backup big. He'll give us good D and rebounding, and score on offensive rebounds, in transition, and oops from penetration. Hopefully he improves his post moves and free throws. But anyways, I think by just adding Murray it makes us elite and the favorites to win it all.