Some positivity from M Jones to start your Sunday
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He'll be negative of Cal, and someone will come on here and bitch about it. He'll be positive of Cal, and someone will come on here and bitch about it.
But really Matt does say something like this every off season. Like we care what a older man from the bowling alley thinks. Cal has to show he's good again.
All he was doing was relaying what he heard from someone else. Good lord you guys cook stuff up out of thin air.
This tells me you don't know how the NBA thinks and you don't undeestand what the word "projection" means.
BJB and KW were projected first rounders. How did that work out? Wasn't Chris Livingston a projected 1st rounder too? Heck, does the NBA even pick big guys in the first round anymore? Sonago from UConn didn’t even get picked at all.
Nobody knows how these guys are going to perform this season, it's just a guess.
Onyenso is unproven. He’s going to be going up against juniors and seniors that will carve him up and he will most likey get into a lot of foul trouble, especially early on.
Dude couldn't even get 5mpg last season and you guys think he's going to crush it this year? Come on, you should know better by now.
We have seen too many players that were "too talented to fail" that failed in Cal's tenure here. Most did fine, but then took a huge jump after they left UK because they were in offenses that created space.
It’s not easy to play for Cal. Yeah, they get prepared for the NBA, well, that's great for the NBA, not so great for UK.
When you field a team full of one year players, what you have is a bunch of wildcards and that is a recipe for disaster. You better have a full deck of those wildcards, especially if Cal is the coach.
What was Baylor's 2020 recruiting class ranked? Kansas' 21 class? UVA's '18 class? Nova's '15 and '17 classes?
So, you want to keep Cal simply because he is the best recruiter? Do you think that's working out well for UK right now?
Don’t you see what's happening? Cal's culture is based on individual goals and success. He doesn't promote team goals and/or accomplishments, he also doesn't promote UK basketball.
Recruiting class banners worked his first 5 years, but that's not working anymore and it doesn’t mean we need to rehire Tubby Smith or BCG.
You guys crack me up, you think Cal is UK basketball and he's the only guy that is capable of doing this job. Meanwhile, he’s losing at historic levels and schools like Baylor, UConn and UVA are winning titles by playing with kids they developed to win for their programs.
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I was just going to say something similar. St Peter's didn't need top recruiting classes to beat us. Neither did Kansas State. All of these ranked teams we keep losing to weren't nearly as highly ranked in recruiting but yet they still keep beating us. I'd take a good recruiter that is a great x's and o's teacher over Cal (who is great at recruiting but mediocre at 'xs and o's) right now and there are probably a boatload of them out there.
That is exactly what he does and exactly why these guys won’t come. Surely you recognize that. You have been around for a while. Why do you think the SDSU kid didn’t come? That is why we can’t get another center. This is Cal’s MO. The freshmen always get priority. We would have a hell of a team if Cal didn’t play favorites.
He didn’t come because he’s not as good as Justin Edwards and would play behind him while he will be a starter at Arizona. Guys want to play their senior year and he has a much greater opportunity to play at Arizona.
The problem with having so many wildcards is that you can’t have a joker for a coach. Recipe for disaster as we have seen.
No one knows if he is as good as Edwards but the point is he knows Cal won’t give him a shot at starting. Cal is going to favor the freshmen in an effort to get them to the effing NBA. Period.
I feel comfortable saying Justin Edwards is better than Keshad Johnson. Every who evaluates talent will tell you the same. Keshad Johnson is a nice role player, Justin Edwards is an elite player. You can have Keshad Johnson, I’ll take Justin Edwards all day long. Being a portal player doesn’t give you special powers, Keshad Johnson is still just a good role player.
And for every class that had 5-stars and didn't win, there are many that did. I won't list them because if you know CBB, you know exactly which ones I mean. How, BTW, was UK the last 4 years when Tubby's recruiting sucked followed by the next 2 years under BCG? I see what's happening, but you are so agenda driven that you come up with specious narratives that cite the examples that support your argument while ignoring those that run counter to it. If Cal was only bringing in the Bobby Perry and Dakota Euton type players, you and others like you would have run him out of town before he went to four FFs and an Elite 8 in his first 6 years at UK.
I'm not saying that you're wrong. I just don't know. And thinking something and knowing something are two different things. But whatever the issue is it needs to be fixed. In today's CBB environment, I think a good core of returning players and a couple of the best transfer portal players is much more important than OAD freshmen for building a title contender.
We did that with 3 frosh and 2 sophs in 2012. Yes, I realise that AD is a generational talent, but Teague was not really an NBA caliber player and Lamb, although a terrific college player and shooter, was not good enough to have an NBA career either. And yes, it's probably true that none of our frosh are as good as Webber or Howard were at UM in 1992, but that remains to be seen. It's possible that our 5 will turn out to be better than UM's 5. Ray Jackson and Jimmy King were nothing special, nor was Jalen Rose his freshman year. UM had little or no good returnees that year, yet made it all the way to the final, only to lose to a Duke team that we should have beaten. We had one great player in Mashburn and several good, but not great players to compliment him. So much depends on heart, chemistry, luck and even some intangible factors.
Actually Michigan had a bunch of seasoned veterans on their bench behind the Fab Five.
I know it's been a while, and it doesn't matter to your point, but Michigan actually had a good returning core the year of the Fab Five. But by the end of the year the freshmen were starting and carrying most of the load.
That's not my recollection, but maybe your memory is better than mine. That, BTW, is not all that I had to say in my earlier post.
Eric Riley (8.6 reb/gm), Michael Talley and Kirk Taylor were all double digit scorers the year before. James Voskuil was a decent role player too (kind of a stretch 4 before they started calling it that). Tony Tolbert and Sam Mitchell were good players who transferred before the season, but I don’t know whether that was related to the incoming freshmen or not.
Riley was pretty good.
Also Rob Pelinka was a Junior and Senior those two Fab Five years and played some, if I remember right.
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