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Catdaddyhorn

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Posts posted by Catdaddyhorn

  1. On 4/19/2024 at 9:48 PM, Rickylovesweed said:

    Avila reminds me a lot of Tanner Groves at OU a couple years ago. 

    A guy that's really skilled and put up decent numbers at OU but got exposed athletically in a power conference. 

    I was about to mention the very same guy. Groves and Avila are definitely more skilled than most BIg 12 and SEC bigs, but there's a risk of getting the destroyed on the boards for both of them. And with so much ball screen action in these leagues they either force their teams to play an inordinate amount of zone or risk getting killed on ball screen actions repeatedly throughout the game. That being said, they typically excel in tournaments and one off games because they're not scouted to death like they are in conference games.  Although he's much more athletic than both Groves and Avila, Grant Nelson struggled in a similar fashion this past season in the SEC. His rebounding #s were essentially cut in a half where he went from a DR% of 26.7% in 22-23 to 17.3% this past season in the Big 12. And much like I mentioned above about skilled bigs like these guys excelling in the tourney, Nelson was arguably Bama's best player as the importance of the tourney games increased. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. Hate to say it but Rod Babers routinely questions what the DBs are looking at and diagnosing out in the 2ndary. He questions their basic understanding of fundamental aspects of the position which leads me to believe that he questions the coaching their receiving. Someone like Brooks, whose Dad is a DB coach himself, would be just the player to bolt if his Dad feels he's receiving inadequate or conflicting directions. 

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  3. 1 hour ago, HookEm said:

    Boom...

    image.thumb.png.603a0d7ac13f6c505a38282e6a5cd64e.png

     

    The main guy I wanted to check out was Dalton Knecht and I swear that both Rivals and 24-7 changed their rankings because they were more inline with Sports Grid and On3 when I looked it up earlier this season. Even The Athletic had him in the lower teens if not the 20s. 

  4. 29 minutes ago, Rickylovesweed said:

    The big thing Kent provides is he's excellent at moving off-the-ball/back door cuts. We had a major issue  at getting to and finishing at the rim this past season. 

    Kent scored on 37/41 dunks and 149/193 close shots. He's very efficient at the rim and he gets to the rim much more than any player we had on last year's roster. Now we will see how that translates at the P5 level but he's a type player we definitely need on the roster. 

    A lot of the time the guy on the receiving end of those backdoor cuts this past season was Brock and he was unwilling to even attempted contested layups when he was down there. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  5. 12 hours ago, HookEm said:

    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...

    image.thumb.png.7fbd660c313827265d39dcd8180c0390.png

    Here are some additional players plus our signees:

    image.png.bd8f9609e255bb2047997ae0d4253cd5.png

    This would be interesting to compare to last year's list of the same range of rankings. 

  6. On 4/17/2024 at 8:34 AM, HookEm said:

    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.

    Go check out where Dalton Knecht was rated in last year's portal. I believe he was in the mid 30s and he turned out to be easily the best transfer this past season. Also we were in on arguably the 2nd best transfer last season, Cam Spencer, but he waited so long to jump into the portal that we had no chance of getting him due to Hunter coming back.

  7. 5 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

    I see that as careful handling of a guy with tremendous upside. He may never achieve that level but you want to give him every chance within reason to get there 

    That's definitely what it is, as well as managing relationships in a new recruiting terroritory we don't have much history in. Nonetheless the point remains that Brooks was the better player from the jump.  And I believe Blue is as well, but I'm admittedly making this judgement off of what I saw from an injured Baxter last season. So we'll see. 

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  8. On 4/9/2024 at 12:10 PM, NoName said:

    so just to be clear, you have a situation where a guy quits his HS team, then his his freshman year gets 15 total carries and averages 2.2 yards, then says he's going to enter the portal, then decides not to when Texas tells him goodby, then gets so outclassed by a true freshman RB that he is a very distant third on the depth chart (for comparison Keilan Robinson had 3 rushes vs Bama and X and Mitchell both had the same # of carries as Blue in that game), then ends up only getting snaps for the year because the starter tears his ACL and it moves him to 2nd on the depth chart.

    ...does Blue have really nice wiggle? absolutely. but his stats are bumped up a ton by the fact he had 26% of his yardage for the year on 2 carries (3% of his total carries) - that is not sustainable nor is it a real perception of his skill.

    if you drop the one 69 yard carry it drops his YPC an entire yard per carry (6.12 to 5.14)

    this isn't that complex. the imbalance in usage between the two is because of skill and skillset differences between the two. even now, how many articles have been written about how Blue is expected to be the starter for 24 (i haven't seen any) - maybe he takes a huge jump forward, and i hope he does. but the reason for the imbalance is clear if you pay any attention

    again, Texas saw fit to start a true Freshman against Alabama, give him the most touches on the team in that game 15 touches (same as Brooks) and give you guy 1 and you are confused as to why the imbalance exists? clearly they and everyone else under the sun think one guy is significantly better than the other.

     

    Say what you want, but despite starting Baxter over Brooks it was clear as day that Brooks was the more impactful RB. And once again this offseason Baxter is getting outshined by the RB who will surely back him up to start the season.  

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    • Like 1
  9. On 4/9/2024 at 2:34 PM, HookEm said:

    I think it is entirely possible that RT will end up being the 2nd most successful coach we have ever had, in terms of what he accomplishes.  But....

    That is incredibly misleading because the environment is now set up for winning in a way that hasn't existed in our entire history.  NIL, the transfer portal, an awesome new arena, the move to the SEC, favorable Texas high school talent improvements, increasingly rich alumni and media deals, etc. are all set up for us to dominate, not just win at the old rates.  If he simply holds serve, then that is a major failing in my view.

    This is a great point.  People truly don't understand how much Texas high school basketball and the overall infrastructure for building and developing talent has changed over the course of the last 30 years.  As a state we essentially went from Steve Jobs amd Wozniak in a garage to 2010 Apple. When it comes to high school basketball talent, the state of Texas is easily the best in the nation.  Now add in NIL, the transfer portal, Moody, and the changing paradigm of removing pro options for high school talent and we couldn't be more suited to actually win a national championship.

    Within the last 10 years damn near every worthwhile university in the state sans us and A&M has found some level near their peak success in college basketball. The right coach would have us approximating  what Connecticut has accomplished over the last 25 years.   

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  10. On 4/6/2024 at 7:49 PM, Spider2YBanana said:

    It's not good hearing Baxter losing a fumble. I assumed that would have been fixed afrer the Washington fiasco. Kid needs to get it together. Plenty of time to get it fixed. 

    I read an article today that the author (I have no idea who it was) was adament that Blue would end up being the #1 back due to him having another gear and he's running between the tackles. I wish I would have saved it. Fml. 

    I felt Blue should've gotten the larger share of opportunities behind Brooks last year and never understood why he didn't.  It seemed to me that Gerry Hamilton went out of his way to downplay Blue's qualities in favor of Baxter. I guess he was getting that view from his contacts on the staff because the imbalance in usage between the 2 last season never made sense to me.  

  11. 19 minutes ago, SL Xpress said:

    And in this particular instance your favorite money person was instrumental in Terry getting the job.

    Okay.

    All I can tell you is the basketball people I know were not excited about the whole circumstances surrounding Terry getting the job, but feel like he deserves a chance. Which he is getting. 

    And then there are other people who are not money people who feel like this is a good example of why Texas will never be great in basketball. Because this wouldn't have happened in football, the argument goes. Which I don't agree with. If a situation analogous to what happened with Beard and Terry occurred in football, I think it would have been very difficult to make a change. Even in football. 

    We just have to let it play out. Hopefully Terry ends up being a home run hire. 

    Yeah let's trace out an analogous situation with football where Tom Herman goes on a bender and gets booked for beating his wife. Todd Orlando then leads us out of the desert to the College football playoffs. There's no doubt in my mind that we'd be sitting here looking towards year 4 of Todd Orlando's tenure at UT (provided he didnt completely shit the bed in the intervening years). And yes the elite 8 out of 350+ division 1 basketball teams is analogous to the CFP with 120+ teams. 

  12. 47 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I don't follow recruiting and I missed the McD AA game last night.  What are the expectations for Tre Johnson?  Is he a point guard who can shoot or is he "just" a shooting guard?

    It sure would be nice to have a true point on the 40 Acres again.

    He's a shooting guard in the vein of Devin Booker. Really efficient in terms of scoring and the limited amount time it takes him to get a good shot.  In other words, he scores without being a ball stopper. 

    • Like 1
  13. 4 hours ago, Pancho said:

    And they have Nate Oats as their coach.

    Yet this is their first time making the elite 8 with him, despite being a 1 seed and a 2 seed in two other tourneys.  Tommy Floyd has the same issue. A lot of regular season success without the tourney success to show for it. 

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  14. 20 minutes ago, Herpa Derpa said:

    I don't think the portal claims to be anything. The folks that think the portal is a simple pick and win endeavor that only fails if you don't "work it" hard enough are the fools you're looking for.

    *basketball portal rankings**

  15. 3 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

     

    Where was Dalton Knecht on this list last year?

    Heading into last year's portal I really wanted Grant Nelson,  but his time at Bama proves that,  although he's a decent player,  he was no where near the difference maker that I thought he'd be.  The basketball portal isn't necessarily the exact science it claims to be. Counterintuitively the college football portal rankings seem to be much more predictive than its college basketball equivalent. Typically predicting football player quality is more of a hit or miss excercise than basketball,  but not in this area. 

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