I have done enough fantasy football auction drafts over the years to know that dumping your entire budget into 1 or 2 players rarely works out 🤣

I still maintain that UMass will be no walk in the park and as far as I’m considered, until proven otherwise, St. Joe’s remains the team to beat in this conference. I will never count them out. We are far from a lock.

gotcha ... though I actually like the look of the players we're getting in for visits. we just need the right combination.

spiderman said:

you literally said "... we have to be smart with whoever we go after and be very confident that they’ll be a stud here. A back court of Rice and Simmons would absolutely fit the bill".

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The response was more supporting what 23 was saying about Rice, “Again, a Rodney Rice type next to a Buddy Simmons type gives you an A+ A10 guard room” rather than stating my own belief that we have to go after him. Although, you never know unless you try, but I ultimately agree with you that the ship has sailed.

I love the discussion, but I think this we are getting too into the weeds about whether Rodney Rice qualifies as a stud impact player who realistically would come to Richmond or not. If on on a scale of 1 to 10, where one is a walk on with no scholarships offers (in it for the love of the game) and 10 is Rodney Rice caliber player (I know there are players better than Rice out there, but I won’t even consider that on this scale because we have no shot at them anyway) then we should be going after players who are a 7-8. Seems to me we are playing it safe and going after players who are a 3-4.

Cosby is headed to Kennesaw.

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spiderstudent17 said:

I think you’re focusing too much on the idea it has to be Rodney Rice, which is not what I or 23 are suggesting.

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you literally said "... we have to be smart with whoever we go after and be very confident that they’ll be a stud here. A back court of Rice and Simmons would absolutely fit the bill".

spiderstudent17 said:

I think you’re focusing too much on the idea it has to be Rodney Rice, which is not what I or 23 are suggesting. Rice looks to be out of our league and will be likely asking for NIL north of $1 million. I’m saying we should be involved more in situations where the quality of player is closer to a Rodney Rice caliber than closer to a development player with offers from random low major schools.

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Yep, could be anyone. lot of p5 type of players that maybe were stuck behind really good guys. Of course was hoping that was GW3 this past season, but maybe a guy with more production yet was only getting 10-15 minutes due to crowded roster.

Did a quick search on Curtis on Liberty's message board, not a ton of consensus. Some though should have played more this year and has a lot of potential, others called him a defensive liability. They seemed to think he would be 6th/7th man next season.

spiderman said:

would you advise your high major son with NBA aspirations who starts at Maryland in the Big 10 and is wanted by everybody to play for ANY team in the A10? is that in his best interest? never mind a team that won 8 D1 games last year and who will use most of their NIL on you so they can't fill holes around you.

yeah, let's give him a call. smh.
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I think you’re focusing too much on the idea it has to be Rodney Rice, which is not what I or 23 are suggesting. Rice looks to be out of our league and will be likely asking for NIL north of $1 million. I’m saying we should be involved more in situations where the quality of player is closer to a Rodney Rice caliber than closer to a development player with offers from random low major schools.

Sounds like young Curtis may be a bit of a Nick Sherod type? Shooter with good size, knows how to play the game - but not eye popping athleticism. A little concerning that he didn't play much at all this season - but Liberty was a pretty good team - 64 in Kenpom.

old article on Blair. missed a year and a half due to injury back in high school. redshirted his freshman year at Liberty.

spiderstudent17 said:

Is anyone else a little disappointed to not see us going after at least a few big name players that other P5 programs are all competing for in the portal? I am operating under the assumption that our MBB NIL will be in the $2-3 million range that other A10 programs are doing. Could be the wrong assumption. However, if it is in fact the case, then I want to see that money being used for top talent. Again my position is bringing in 1-2 elite talent is better for us than 3-4 average/maybe above average talent. If we are in fact spending that much money and not bringing in those kinds of players, then it means the staff is not able to recruit A10 level players in this era of college basketball. That’s a red flag. Should then give that money to Roussell until we get new MBB staff that know how to close the deal.

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Yes, I am both disappointed and concerned - - about this specifically and the state of the program generally.

I definintely want to take a good look at Blair. maybe we (and Va Tech and Florida) were really wrong about him back in 2022 ... but maybe not.

spider23 said:

I agree with you here. I feel like we can get some decent "step up" candidates from lower leagues ( I know Philly thinks its a bad formula but not sure he has ever heard of Jordan King, Bigelow, Quinn???) with competitive NIL.

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This comment misstates my belief. I did say I am not going to get excited about about guys coming from bottom dwellars from much lower level conferences who happen to score some (based on stats and no actual knowledge). Dusan being the example I gave. Quinn for example does not meet this definition since he clearly did way more than score at Lafayette averaging 7+ rebounds and 4+ assists the year before he joined us. In addition, we didn't need him to be an alpha dog player - - we had a very specific role we needed to fill and he fit the bill to a T! King was an outstanding defensive player and turned out to be an alpha, but again we had better to surround him with.

The point of that post was that the team has fallen so much that we no longer only need 4th or 5th starter guys - - we need 1st or 2nd starter guys and I don't love the idea of thinking we can get them by simply jumping on big scorers from losing teams in much lower conferences. The emphasis here is losing teams from lower conferences. Whatever their skills, they couldn't raise up their teams at a lower lever so I am not buying into they are going to raise us up!

That said, I fully recognize we are going to need to make it work with upward transfers - - I just prefer to take our shots with a different profile than an undersized guy from a losing team in a conference a level or two below us. I am a big believer that there are guys at all levels of basketball who move around and losing seems to follow right around with them and that's not a coincidence!

Lastly, the post was not intended to be a big indictment of the specific player (who I know nothing about) or the notion that transfers up were not the way to go - - it was intended as an indictment of Mooney and the sad state a once proud program finds itself in after 20 years of his stewardship!

OK sman, maybe down to Curtis Blair III. No, would not advise him to come here at this point, but again you have to make it a destination, like a VCU , and SDSU and a Gonzaga years ago. We will be stuck in this mode for 20 more years if we can't dare to dream a little. But no we are not getting a Rodney Rice.

spiderstudent17 said:

I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not, but that’s sort of my point. Maybe other P5 schools offer him 400-500K. Is that reasonable to say? If we offered him $750K and he came here, he would be a difference maker immediately. We go all in on 1-2 impact guys while P5s might hedge their bets with them a little bit because they have so many other impact guys they are targeting/want a roster full of impact guys and need to disperse the money more evenly.

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would you advise your high major son with NBA aspirations who starts at Maryland in the Big 10 and is wanted by everybody to play for ANY team in the A10? is that in his best interest? never mind a team that won 8 D1 games last year and who will use most of their NIL on you so they can't fill holes around you.

yeah, let's give him a call. smh.
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8legs1dream said:

What if we offered him the entirety of our NIL fund

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I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not, but that’s sort of my point. Maybe other P5 schools offer him 400-500K. Is that reasonable to say? If we offered him $750K and he came here, he would be a difference maker immediately. We go all in on 1-2 impact guys while P5s might hedge their bets with them a little bit because they have so many other impact guys they are targeting/want a roster full of impact guys and need to disperse the money more evenly.

GKiller said:

idk they should have recognized this 5 years ago, 10 years, 25 years ago. and didn't. regardless of pay to play. those other things were still true. so while I agree I'm not sure about the last part re: admin. the admin just opted for the status quo with "good guy" Mooney and extended him 2 more years for no good reason. so I have a hard time trusting the admin on much. again I get why they don't like the optics on some level - I don't even like the optics much - tho I'd still do it. & they could too but I just expect some resistance, more of a last resort type of thing. could be wrong. plus Mooney has spoken about preference for multi-year guys over 1 year guys. Obv we've had a few 1 year guys. the 7th year 25 year old is another step beyond tho.

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The landscape is a lot different now than it was 5, 10, & 25 years ago. Not much I could see our admin doing differently other than lowering admission standards for kids. No one 10+ years ago was going to transfer with 1 season of eligibility left and then have to sit out a year first before playing their last year, which is what the rule used to be. That only left players who transferred as a grad student to play with one year (rare instances 2 years) left. We had no problem bringing in guys with 1 year left like Kwesi Abakah, Jordan Madrid-Andrews, and Noah Yates who come to mind. There was the one instance where admissions denied Bernard. Don’t think it’s fair comparison to say UR didn’t recognize it all those years ago because pre-COVID and before the sit our 1 year transfer rule went away, granting JUCO players another eligibility year, and NIL, this was never viewed as a possibility to recognize to begin with.

spiderstudent17 said:

Optics has gone out the window now that college basketball is basically semi-professional. The school opted into the house settlement, which tells me that we’re serious about basketball success to some reasonable degree. Getting 7 year, 25 year old guys comes with the territory. Personally, I don’t mind it. Our academic reputation as a school has never been better. Bringing in 1-2 guys a year who have, goodness knows what kind of transcript, isn’t going to change that. I know you’ll agree with me on this, but the benefit these players can bring in enhancing our basketball and consequently our school profile outweighs whatever optics letting a guy come play here in his 7th year would be. I bet the admin recognizes that too.

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idk they should have recognized this 5 years ago, 10 years, 25 years ago. and didn't. regardless of pay to play. those other things were still true. so while I agree I'm not sure about the last part re: admin. the admin just opted for the status quo with "good guy" Mooney and extended him 2 more years for no good reason. so I have a hard time trusting the admin on much. again I get why they don't like the optics on some level - I don't even like the optics much - tho I'd still do it. & they could too but I just expect some resistance, more of a last resort type of thing. could be wrong. plus Mooney has spoken about preference for multi-year guys over 1 year guys. Obv we've had a few 1 year guys. the 7th year 25 year old is another step beyond tho.

Georgia State’s Toneari Lane…

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What if we offered him the entirety of our NIL fund

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Not at all sure I agree with this one.

And the successful mid majors get one of these "types" every couple years it seems.