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HookEm

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Everything posted by HookEm

  1. I swear, the thread police are out in full force. News flash: We aren't like the 300 other teams. There are no more than 10-15 other teams with our NIL bankroll, facilities, and clear need at his position. If we aren't working back channels to express our interest and resources, then we are dropping the ball.
  2. Beard's positionless switching defense at Tech would be a perfect fit for that lineup. Basically a team full of forwards.
  3. I would love for us to get Omier. He is an very solid rebounder and overall player. He isn't a great threat from outside, but 35% from 3 isn't bad. We could go "small" with 6'3 Julian Larry, 6'5 Tremon Mark, 6'6 Tre Johnson, 6'7 Jayson Kent and 6'8 Norchad Omier. That is a lineup that would give teams a lot of trouble. All of those guys are very good defenders. Great rebounding, great scoring. That said I have no idea if we are even a possibility.
  4. This dude should be our #1 target right now. He would immediately change the potential of the team. He is one of the top rebounders in the country, particularly on the offensive glass. Was also the Sun Belt defensive player of the year before going to Miami. And he can score inside and outside the paint. Break the bank and do what is needed with NIL to go get him.
  5. Never said RT has us on the brink of greatness. Had he won last year Beard would have gotten a huge amount of the credit. I prefaced all this by saying that Hurley is clearly the better coach. Maybe we would have won, maybe we wouldn’t have. We will obviously never know. And I’ll admit that saying we WOULD have won came across as more absolute than I intended. That said, had we beaten Miami, I do think Vegas would have had us favored in the game.
  6. In a neutral site game, yes they probably would have beaten us by double digits too. But if Texas was playing in Houston, the atmosphere would have been wild. We would have packed 50K+ fans into NRG for that game. Plus, it isn't like they were 1990 UNLV. They were seeded worse than us. They lost 8 games, including two losses to Xavier (who we beat by 12), and also lost to Creighton, who we beat by 5. FWIW, I also think we would have beaten Michigan if we had made it to Houston in football. Flame away.
  7. Hurley is a better coach and UConn is a better program, but last year in a virtual home game they were only up by four with five minutes to play… and we were playing without our two starting bigs, one of them a 1st team All Big 12 player in Disu. I am also convinced we would have beaten them in Houston if we had made the Final Four.
  8. My preference for how the 1-3 shakes out: Starters PG - Julian Larry - 6'3 185, 10.6 PTS, 4.9 AST, 3.0 TRB, 1.9 TO, 1.6 STL, 51.1 FG%, 42.9 3P%, 79.7 FT% 1 yr left (5th year), 2x All MVC Defense, 3rd Team All MVC, #1 MVC steals, #2 MVC assist SG/SF - Tramon Mark - 6'5 180, 16.4 PTS, 2.0 AST, 5.0 TRB, 2.1 TO, 1.5 STL, 43.6 FG%, 32.7 3T%, 82.2 FT% 2 years left (5th yr, RS). Gets buckets and is also a very solid defender. SG/SF - Tre Johnson - 6'6, 190, 11.1 PTS, 2.6 AST, 2.9 TRB, 0.9 TO, 0.9 STL, 43.3 FG%, 35.7 3P%, 94.1 FT% (U19 WC) Top 5 national recruit. Very skilled scorer and able defender. Not a raw athlete like our previous high recruits. Dude is very skilled and lit up the McDonalds AA game with 5 3s. Bench (conference stats) PG/SG – Jordan Pope – 6’2, 165, 18.0 pts, 3.5 AST, 2.5 TRB, 2.5 TO, 0.7 STL, 46.0 FG%, 35.8 3P%, 85.7 FT% 2 years left. Has improved every year. Will likely be our starting PG the year after next. I would start Tre Johnson, but I would close with Pope similar to how we used Rice last year. SG/SF - Chendall Weaver - 6'3, 165, 7.4 PTS, 0.8 AST, 3.5 TRB, 0.4 TO, 0.6 STL, 51.7 FG%, 17.6 3P%, 70.7 FT% Dude has the potential to be so much better than his numbers. He is a game changer off the bench. If his efficiency improves in the offseason, he will get more minutes. But right now, I think he is clearly the 5th best of the bunch.
  9. Great pickup. My only wish is that he came from more of a winning culture. The Indiana State guys won a lot of games. And Tramon Mark won a lot of games at Houston. Oregon State has been pretty bad for the last two years.
  10. That could give us a home schedule like this (plus whatever terrible nonconference filler they give us): #1 UCONN #4 Auburn #14 Alabama #26 Florida #35 Aggy - Permanent Rival #46 Oklahoma - Permanent Rival #54 South Carolina #84 Georgia #108 Arkansas - Rotating H/A #183Vanderbilt This year we played: #2 UH #8 Iowa State #15 Baylor #31 Tech #46 Oklahoma #66 UCF #70 K-State #117 Okie State #144 WV Even though the SEC isn't quite as good of a basketball conference, that looks like a more interesting home schedule to me. And it could get more interesting if we get Tennessee or Ole Miss at home.
  11. That is part of the reason I wanted to snapshot it early in the process.
  12. Moreover, there are over 1,700 players in the transfer portal. Mark is ranked as high a 9, Larry as high as 40, and Kent as high as 79. If we can pick up Garrison and Pope, that is two more that are top-30 on a lot of lists. That is a fantastic haul. More important than the individual pieces though will be how they fit and play together. Last year, the sum wasn't better than the parts - and it wasn't even really about player development or coaching. They just didn't fit that well together. Abmas and Hunter is a very limited backcourt. And Shedrick, Mitchell, Disu is a pretty soft interior. Just replacing a couple of those pieces with comparable players that fit different needs would have made a world of difference.
  13. I took the top 40 players in each of the major sites to build something of a consensus portal rank. So, if someone was in the top-40 they made my list and then I filled in their respective rank for the rest of the sites. Here is how it shakes out... Here are some additional players plus our signees:
  14. Is this where we brag about being on a UT Engineering Advisory Board? Cool cool. I am too. Big deal. Honestly, Surly is one of the last places you want to start a dick measuring contest, especially as an engineer. Half of this site are engineers, and because we all went to a top-10 engineering school most of us are accomplished. FFS, can we not talk about basketball?
  15. Agree on both points. Obviously it depends on your guards around him though. If you have two good shooters at the other guard spots, and decent size, then he can be a really good asset. He brings an elite level of athleticism that can change the game and help free up the shooters. If he goes somewhere like Baylor or Houston, that always seem to have a boat load of good guards, then he will be a solid addition.
  16. I also agree that he will be replaced pretty easily.
  17. It was time for Hunter to move on. I'm torn on him because there were games when it seemed like he was one of the few who refused to lose. That aggressiveness was a double edged sword though. At times he would take over a game... and then he would make a terrible terrible terrible turnover. Sometimes those turnovers cost us the game, but we wouldn't have even been in the game without his defense and attacking in transition. He has some "dawg" in him that fit really well with Carr and Rice. Abmas was about the worst possible player to pair up with him. Abmas really is an undersized shooting guard, and isn't a good defender or distributor. Which meant that more of that load fell on Hunter (when he himself isn't a pure point guard). If Hunter was paired with Larry (a good defender and distributor) and Mark (a great scorer with size on the wing), he would have been better. I look forward to seeing where he lands. I hope it is on a contender where he isn't asked to be "the man". I will always appreciate him for helping get us to the Elite 8.
  18. There aren't many players in the portal who have been starters a S16, E8 and R32 team (playing 30+ minutes on each). He was going to be one of the top returning SEC players in assists and he is an above average defender. He has also improved his shooting every year (eFG% 0.377 -> 0.474 -> 0.512), (TS% 0.475 -> 0.508 -> 0.512). He has shown he can be a starter on a title contender, which we were last year. He just needs the right pieces around him.
  19. Like I said, if a player was a contributor on a winning program, that is also a positive sign. Tramon Mark checks a lot of boxes and he is exactly the kind of player we have been missing. I would rather he had some accolades, but it isn't a deal breaker. And the portal rankings are always imperfect. Some sites do a better job than others. Max Abmas was the #2 portal player last year (On3). Kadin Shedrick was #43. Tramon Mark was #78 player. Weaver was #272. Onyema was unranked. At some point, I'll put together a comparison of the top-35 portal players from last year and we can see who did the best job.
  20. He may be considered a top-25 transfer, but in 4 years he has never gotten a single All-Conference or All Defense Award. No All Freshmen Team. Not even honorable mention. Nothing. For me, that is a red flag, especially when 3 out of the 4 years were in the AAC. And Arkansas sucked last year. It would be different if he was a sophomore. Don't get me wrong, I hope he is great.
  21. I’m hoping these are our Onyema and Horton level players and the ones yet to come are better.
  22. It is easy for me to look at the new players every year with rose colored glasses. I see measurables and counting stats and ignore big flaws in roster construction, efficiency, defense and cultural fit. Now that we have been in the portal / NIL era for a few years, I'm starting to get a better idea of who will be successful at this level and who won't. In short, I want to see us get players with All-Conference credentials, who come from winning programs. If they are All-Conference, it means that their ENTIRE game is balanced and supports winning. Timmy Allen, Marcus Carr, Sir'Jabari Rice all were 1st Team All-Conference prior to coming to Texas. Abmas was borderline All-American. Weaver was conference RoY. All performed very well. Tyrese Hunter was Big 12 RoY and was a starter on our Elite 8 team (and could have been better last year with better roster construction). Tre Mitchell is the only previous All-Conference player who really underperformed and that was because he was a poor cultural fit. In contrast, Horton was in his 6th year and never sniffed an honorable mention all-conference nod. Kadin Shedrick is 6'11 and never got an all-defense selection or really any recognition of any kind (but he at least came from a winning program). Onyema also never earned any recognition at all. So why should it be surprising when all of these players are largely ineffective in the Big 12? So this year, while we haven't landed any bigtime players yet, the ones we are getting are checking some of the boxes. Julian Larry - 3rd Team MVC, 2x All-Defense, starter on Indiana State (#38 KenPom, 32-7 conference champion) Jayson Kent - 2nd Team MVC, All-Defense, starter on Indiana State (#38 KenPom, 32-7 conference champion) Tremon Mark - No accolades, but started 28 games over 3 years for a Houston team with a Final 4, Elite 8 and Sweet 16 For our next 2-3 transfers, I really want to see us bring in more players of this mold. Jordan Pope was All-Freshman in the Pac 10. But his team was so terrible that he didn't make an all-conference team despite good numbers. For me this is a red flag.
  23. I feel like this is a big negative for us
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