Dumpster fire

[fan2011]

By standard Mooney recruit, you are referring to the 8 guys on our roster last year, that didn't really help us all that much, not the 5 guys who actually could play? Correct? Yes, Sal and Wojcik might be better than the Verbinski, Schneider, JJ, Cayo, JMA, Ford, type players, but that is not all that high of a bar.

I don't see them having anywhere near the accolades of a Buck or Sherod coming out of high school.

Correct. I don't think they are on the level of Fore, Buck, Sherod, Gilyard or Golden, but I think they are a cut above the bench and redshirts last year. I think these are the types of players that on a well managed team could give some good bench production as underclassman (including freshmen year) and step into starting roles as upperclassmen. Unfortunately due to roster issues they will have to take a bigger role earlier than they should, and probably won't be super effective as freshmen, but should be able to contribute as role players. I would not be surprised to see the two of them average ~35 minutes, ~12 points, ~6 rebounds, and an assist next year.

 

[keefusb]

I don't think it all adds up to us being better than last year, unfortunately.

Thus, the "silver lining" post I made earlier.

 

[97spiderfan]

Correct. I don't think they are on the level of Fore, Buck, Sherod, Gilyard or Golden, but I think they are a cut above the bench and redshirts last year. I think these are the types of players that on a well managed team could give some good bench production as underclassman (including freshmen year) and step into starting roles as upperclassmen. Unfortunately due to roster issues they will have to take a bigger role earlier than they should, and probably won't be super effective as freshmen, but should be able to contribute as role players. I would not be surprised to see the two of them average ~35 minutes, ~12 points, ~6 rebounds, and an assist next year.

2011, I completely agree with this. That is my thoughts exactly on the incoming players. And to Keef's point, none of this adds up to us being any better this year than we were last year.

 

[fan2011]

I feel like 2/3 guys coming in next year have some pretty nice accolades. The Euro is a bigger unknown, for sure.

In your opinion, what do guys need to be at to elevate above "mediocre?"

Go somewhere besides Richmond!

 

[Not-A-Homer]

Correct. I don't think they are on the level of Fore, Buck, Sherod, Gilyard or Golden, but I think they are a cut above the bench and redshirts last year. I think these are the types of players that on a well managed team could give some good bench production as underclassman (including freshmen year) and step into starting roles as upperclassmen. Unfortunately due to roster issues they will have to take a bigger role earlier than they should, and probably won't be super effective as freshmen, but should be able to contribute as role players. I would not be surprised to see the two of them average ~35 minutes, ~12 points, ~6 rebounds, and an assist next year.

I suspect that it will not happen, BUT, If Sal & Wojcik meet your predictions it will be a successful year for them as freshman.

But, those contributions are no where near what is needed to make next year a respectable season.

 

[fan2011]

I don't think it all adds up to us being better than last year, unfortunately.

Thus, the "silver lining" post I made earlier.

The calculus of basketball, and team sports in general, is extremely complex which is one of the aspects that really draws me to it. On the surface you are correct, there is no way we will be replacing Buck and Fore with equivalent or better players next year on an individual level, but the strength of a team is not simply the sum of its component pieces. Look for example at Washington, who have had multiple lottery picks and overall very high talent level over the past 7 seasons, but like us have not made the tournament since 2011. Look at LSU, who had one of the best basketball talents in the past decade, Ben Simmons, a few years back and failed to make even the NIT. At the same time, removing a team's best player does not always make the team worse, see the Ewing theory. Team performance is a much more complicated beast, and that complexity allows enough uncertainty for me to see a sliver of hope through these heavily tinted glasses.

 

[97spiderfan]

Good points again 2011. I think you could make the argument of a "better" team next year after Khwan left (despite the fact that Khwan was one of our best defenders). You slide Buck into our 2 guard and the team gets taller, because Buck is taller than Khwan and than either Sal/Cayo slide into Buck role at PF. Maybe the team is better defensively because of this. That is a reasonable argument to make

However, with Buck now gone, I think it is impossible to make that argument. Buck was our do everything guy and most well rounded player.

We are now replacing our 2 guard with a freshman and power forward either with Cayo (who is extremely limited offensively) or someone else who hasn't played one minute of college basketball.

And beyond that, we had almost no depth beyond our starting 5 last year, which was our real achillies heel, so how is that any better now? In fact, it should be worse because some of that depth is now starters for us.

 

[fan2011]

Good points again 2011. I think you could make the argument of a "better" team next year after Khwan left (despite the fact that Khwan was one of our best defenders). You slide Buck into our 2 guard and the team gets taller, because Buck is taller than Khwan and than either Sal/Cayo slide into Buck role at PF. Maybe the team is better defensively because of this. That is a reasonable argument to make

However, with Buck now gone, I think it is impossible to make that argument. Buck was our do everything guy and most well rounded player.

We are now replacing our 2 guard with a freshman and power forward either with Cayo (who is extremely limited offensively) or someone else who hasn't played one minute of college basketball.

And beyond that, we had almost no depth beyond our starting 5 last year, which was our real achillies heel, so how is that any better now? In fact, it should be worse because some of that depth is now starters for us.

I don't think that there is any rational argument for us being a better team next year without Buck and Khwan than with them. However, I think an argument could be made that even without Buck and Khwan next year, the team may still be an improvement over our team this past year. The change in the team comes not only from replacing players, but also from returning players improving. I think Gilyard and Sherod in particular showed incredible improvement over the course of the past season. Our start last year was the worst I have ever seen, we were performing on par with literally the worst D1 basketball teams, it was much, much worse than anything I have ever seen from Richmond. The improvement in the team was huge over the course of the season, our performance changed from what I would consider statistically the worst in D1 to ~120th, which is truly remarkable. By simple starting out as the ~200th or ~150th best team instead of the ~350th team, and not playing a top 25 difficulty OOC schedule, we should win a lot more games next year.

How does this happen? Will Sherod, Gilyard, and Golden's experience, leadership and chemistry be enough so our team can perform somewhat competently while working in 2 or 3 new pieces? Will Wojcik's basketball IQ allow him to quickly play effectively, and act as a performance multiplier allowing other players to play more effectively as well? Will Sal's and Cayo's length improve our defense? Who knows. But there are enough variables and enough complexity in all of this that I do have some sliver of hope we will be a better team than we were last year, or at least have a better record.

 

[keefusb]

I don't think that there is any rational argument for us being a better team next year without Buck and Khwan than with them. However, I think an argument could be made that even without Buck and Khwan next year, the team may still be an improvement over our team this past year.

Using this logic, that returning players will improve, then we also have to factor in the potential improvements in Fore and Buck that aren't coming back.

As you said there really isn't any rational argument for us being better than the 12 win team we were this past season. It's an irrational argument called "hope".

We can't logically expect the newcomers to next year's program to replace or exceed what we lost offensively. In terms of athleticism alone, we won't even come close to replacing what we lost, and we were a terrible defensive team last year. The only hope we have is that Sal is a shot-blocking machine like Garrett was, which still doesn't balance out the defensive loss of KF and DMB.

 

[fan2011]

Using this logic, that returning players will improve, then we also have to factor in the potential improvements in Fore and Buck that aren't coming back.

As you said there really isn't any rational argument for us being better than the 12 win team we were this past season. It's an irrational argument called "hope".

We can't logically expect the newcomers to next year's program to replace or exceed what we lost offensively. In terms of athleticism alone, we won't even come close to replacing what we lost, and we were a terrible defensive team last year. The only hope we have is that Sal is a shot-blocking machine like Garrett was, which still doesn't balance out the defensive loss of KF and DMB.

I think we could be better than the 12 win team, but we will certainly be worse next year than if we retained Buck and Fore.

 

[97spiderfan]

I think we could be better than the 12 win team, but we will certainly be worse next year than if we retained Buck and Fore.

We might be better than 12 wins but we still could be better than that and still be a pretty bad team on the whole. We finished like 170 something in the RPI last year. It is tough for a program at our level to dip below that, but we could finish 40 points higher than that and that is still going to be a really mediocre year.

 

[fan2011]

We might be better than 12 wins but we still could be better than that and still be a pretty bad team on the whole. We finished like 170 something in the RPI last year. It is tough for a program at our level to dip below that, but we could finish 40 points higher than that and that is still going to be a really mediocre year.

It is actually not too hard for a team "of our caliber" to fall lower than 170. UMass went from 26 to 240+ in a couple years. SLU went from 24th to 270+ in one season. St. Joes went from 21 to 200+ 2016 to 2017. It happens a decent amount.

Of course the other direction happens a decent amount too. GW from 150 to 36, and SLU from 184 to 28 from one season to the next among a ton of other examples. It is just very difficult to predict what is going to happen season to season.

 

[VT4700]

I think we will be a better TEAM without Buck and Khwan. I said weeks ago that we would be in trouble if we lost Jacob, Nick, or Grant, but we can survive losing Khwan and Buck. I think it is very fair to think otherwise, but I also don't see why my thinking is so crazy here. All teams at all levels lose key pieces, and they all don't automatically be worse the following year because of this. Sure, some teams have top talent ready to take over, but plenty of other teams do just fine when they lose guys and replace them with unknowns, especially if they have some top talent returning like we do.

We were not going to improve much and win consistently this year with last year's lineup. We just weren't. I don't think Khwan at 6'0 with limited range was a good fit beside Jacob. Playing them both heavy minutes again was not a recipe for success and we have to have Jacob play a lot, so I am not worried about losing Khwan's minutes. Buck gave us a little of everything, but as some have said before, he was the not the best at anything, so while we might be worse off in some areas without him, we can also be better in other areas without him. I think he is very replaceable and If he lands with a decent team, I see him being a role player for them, not a star.

I think we lost our 4th and 5th best starters and feel like we can replace them with better fits and be a better team than last year as a result. It really is as simple as that. Time will tell.

 

[keefusb]

We lose LEADERSHIP with the departures of DMB and KF. Hard to replace that. Perhaps harder to replace than the scoring and athleticism...

 

[fatherspider]

The calculus of basketball, and team sports in general, is extremely complex which is one of the aspects that really draws me to it. On the surface you are correct, there is no way we will be replacing Buck and Fore with equivalent or better players next year on an individual level, but the strength of a team is not simply the sum of its component pieces. Look for example at Washington, who have had multiple lottery picks and overall very high talent level over the past 7 seasons, but like us have not made the tournament since 2011. Look at LSU, who had one of the best basketball talents in the past decade, Ben Simmons, a few years back and failed to make even the NIT. At the same time, removing a team's best player does not always make the team worse, see the Ewing theory. Team performance is a much more complicated beast, and that complexity allows enough uncertainty for me to see a sliver of hope through these heavily tinted glasses.

And with all things being close to equal, the difference is almost always coaching.

 

[plydogg]

Sal is being characterized as a "project" player before he has even set foot in a UR classroom, so I don't expect him to be an immediate contributor. Wojcik didn't have many offers and frankly I don't expect him to be an immediate impact player, either. Gustavson is a total unknown, only had interest from us and Davidson, he's skinny like Bryce Schneider and probably not physically ready for D1 basketball. Blake Francis was a good pick-up for us, but won't be playing next year. I don't see anyone like Golden, NS, DMB, JG, who came to the program ready to contribute right away.

I don't mean to pick apart what you've said at all because I think it is pretty much valid in the sense we don't know what we're going to get and it is foolish for us to expect greatness from players who haven't played a minute of college basketball yet. The only thing I wanted to comment on is that I believe Wojcik may not have had many offers due to signed to Siena early on so at that moment his recruiting by other schools stopped. I don't know exactly how early in the signing process he signed but I think it could be a pretty big factor into that.

 

[VT4700]

We lose LEADERSHIP with the departures of DMB and KF. Hard to replace that. Perhaps harder to replace than the scoring and athleticism...

Really? Where was this leadership last year?

 

[Spider B]

Really? Where was this leadership last year?

Yes, there is certainly a lack of leadership in our program under CM. Leaders don’t accept losing and mediocrity. Just listen to CM’s post game interviews after losses and you hear that losing is accepted and just competing is valued. Instead of devaluing Fore and Buckingham’s contribution to UR basketball, look at the leadership (or lack there of) of this program. VT, do you ever think the kids transfer out because they want to win and go to the NCAA tournament? Clearly that doesn’t happen here with your boy Mooney as coach. Let’s address that issue.

 

[spider23]

Yes, there is certainly a lack of leadership in our program under CM. Leaders don’t accept losing and mediocrity. Just listen to CM’s post game interviews after losses and you hear that losing is accepted and just competing is valued. Instead of devaluing Fore and Buckingham’s contribution to UR basketball, look at the leadership (or lack there of) of this program. VT, do you ever think the kids transfer out because they want to win and go to the NCAA tournament? Clearly that doesn’t happen here with your boy Mooney as coach. Let’s address that issue.

Very good point B. The teams that went to the NCAA's had strong willed players that were leaders, such as David Gonzalvez, Butler, Kevin Smith, Dan Geriot and Kevin Anderson. That is where the leadership came from apparently. I remember a year or two after that, we had a team that could not play on the road or close games out. Speaking with someone close to the program (not a coach, but an employee tight with the coaches) and they were dogging the players, essentially saying they did not have the mental make up to win on the road etc. May very well have been true, but a terrible message. That was the beginning of me souring on the coach. I was thinking, do something about it. The more evidence I see, the more it points to Moon getting very lucky to land the Geriot/KA/Smitty type of players, OR he continued to land them, but lost his will to hold them to the same standard?

 

[ChoppinBroccoli]

Bumping 7 month old threads to re-ignite an argument, late at night. Easy on the egg nog this season.

Really? Where was this leadership last year?

Not coming from the 13th year head coach.

 

[spider fan]

I tuned in to the thread again to see more videos of "dumpster fires" but all I got was worn out verbiage.....................

 

[Gospiders06]

Don't worry a whole new fire will start burning once we lose to South Alabama......

 

[VT4700]

Sorry for the recent post. I was reading thru all the crap in another post that had several old comments of mine copied and pasted and I mistakenly thought the post above was a new post and not part of a thread from all the copied and pasted stuff about me.