Amazing we could never get players like him to stay for 2 years, let alone 3.
Wagner Returning For Year 3
- Thread starter ukbb2003
- Start date
Cal has to have guys stay as he is not getting the same numbers of guys. He is having to hit portal and he is not as good there.
He can’t shoot and probably wouldn’t get drafted. Not to say he can’t improve but he’ll probably be back for his senior year. He didn’t live up to the hype.
I just wonder if this will be trouble with the young guards they have coming in.
If he didn't improve maybe it's coaching??
Let's hope.
Where was he going? If he doesn't learn how to shoot the darn ball, he isn't going to have anywhere to go after next season.
If coaching is the reason he hasn't improved, stupidity is the reason he keeps accepting poor coaching, so they deserve each other.
We also didn't have the NIL.
I was hard on him after he left. I would like to say i was wrong about him being a bad player. He improved much at Arky this season. Onward and upward to your NBA dreams young man!
We have enough money to retain guys like him. Cal would have pushed him out a couple years ago. We made the list of ten schools with over 10m budget so we spend with the best of them.
They will be a damn tough out when we go to their house. Don't be over confident, they will be ready.
He's only returning because he wouldn't get drafted. This is not a situation where Cal has "convinced" a first round pick to stay.
They will have players and be good no doubt. I just mean he is not getting 5 or 6 high school top 30 players at Ark. He might get 2 or 3 but now he is asking guys to stay instead of pushing them out like he did here. Many guys would have been great for us if they would have stayed another year. Instead they signed the 3 or 4 year deal, spent a few weeks in NBA and was knocked down to the Gleague. Would have rather had them back.
We have the ability to produce more NIL now though. Calipari and the donors got into it and the relationship went sour. We wouldn’t have close to 10M with Cal. That’s not saying that I agree with them shutting him out but it was their decision. They’d had it with him long before many of the fans unfortunately. It was ugly.
Cal wants another championship. That wasn’t always the case while here.
Not disagreeing with you at all. My point is how many guys did we have during Cal’s time that were in the same boat as Wagner and left after Year 1.
If you thought Calipari increased the level of difficulty for his team to win by playing Wagner and Fland together, then wait until you get a load of Wagner and Acuff. If you measure "best" and "worst" players by the impact they have on their team winning, then Acuff is the worst of the 5-star high schoolers I've seen. Back in the day Calipari was known for getting highly ranked, probably undisciplined, incoming freshmen to play more together and less selfishly; but this Acuff is another level and I don't think Calipari can get the same results today. I've read that other talented kids don't like playing with him (don't know how true that is) and I can certainly see why.
Not then for sure. If he would have adopted this strategy five years ago when we all wanted it he would still be rolling here and probably not lost in the first round so much. Money would have been here and his NBA army could have helped a ton. I would be asking all our former guys still playing for a couple 100 grand a year tax write off donations.
Their cousin Franz stuck in the NBA the longest lol
A lot of our “one and done’s” would have returned for a second year for $1.5 mill….this is the new way.
I agree with you. I supported the coach until late. I didn’t quite understand at the time why Cal was getting froze out on things like practice facility. I’m admittedly a basketball-first fan and was upset that there was even a debate about it.
I guess things worked out for the best though. The thing I didn’t like about Cal was the game planning and not trying to retain more guys and Pope does those things very well. I’m happy with how it turned out.
We had it happen during the Cal era here too. Not often but you occasionally. Nick Richards comes to mind. DJ is basically in the same spot as him.
We have enough money now. But the NIL money was a lot less a few years ago and even programs who had all the money weren't paying nearly as much as they are now. Nigel Pack made headlines transferring to Miami for $800k, but now that amount seems pretty tame. I do think the $1-2 million NIL deals now change the calculus on Cal's guys going pro.
We've had guys way less talented go to the NBA... but that was all before NIL.
Just a new world.
Just a new world.
I won’t lie, this kind of irritates me because Wagner is the kind of player that Cal would always push out after the second year and our fans would try to convince each other that this was the best thing for the player because he wouldn’t get any faster or shoot any better. But Cal can’t pick and choose who he wants from the top 25 freshmen anymore so now he has to convince guys like Wagner to come back.
Exactly the point is we has a good amount of guys that left when they shouldn’t have . They were set on leaving after 1 year no matter what .
I can’t say I’m that shocked that he decided to stay in school . Even in HS whenever he was interviewed he never mentioned anything about the NBA.
I am not sure why our fans do not understand the game changer that NIL is….Wagner would have been in Israel playing if it wasn’t for the fact that he can make more money at Arkansas.
It’s ironic that many of us, myself included, pined for the death of one and done.
Turns out the solution was pretty straight forward. Pay the guys that aren’t surefire first rounders more than their second round contract might be, and let them transfer as often as they want. Problem solved lol
To be clear I’m less pessimistic about NIL than the transfer thing, which is the worst part of the wild west we have now. Just interesting to me how the last paradigm shift is now old news.
Turns out the solution was pretty straight forward. Pay the guys that aren’t surefire first rounders more than their second round contract might be, and let them transfer as often as they want. Problem solved lol
To be clear I’m less pessimistic about NIL than the transfer thing, which is the worst part of the wild west we have now. Just interesting to me how the last paradigm shift is now old news.
I think Calipari realized that gym down in Fayetteville needs some renovation/ upgrade. He made sure he is is using NIL to get the best brick layer money can buy: Wagner and Acuff. This a dream duo of masonry. 👌
