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Where to, Ododa?

Don't understand why there has to be something negative about Zo's move. He has a UR degree, and both Coach Mooney and he decide there might be something better for him, both as a player and a student. Zo is a fine young man and student, and whatever he pursues, he will be a winner.
 
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Ulla1 said:
Don't understand why there has to be something negative about Zo's move. He has a UR degree, and both Coach Mooney and he decide there might be something better for him, both as a player and a student. Zo is a fine young man and student, and whatever he pursues, he will be a winner.
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The negative is that he is a known big man commodity and 5th year senior. I don't like red shirting in hoops either, but to Mooney's defense the grad transfer was not a factor to consider 4 years back. I wish ANO well and wish he was staying to finish out his career with the Spiders.
 
32counter said:
3 transfers from the same team in the same season ain't good.Something's up in Spiderville no matter how you cut it.Not to mention losing an assistant coach.
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localspider said:
Transfers plague every team, taking their talents to a program that will value their skills. Nothing against ANO, but he was a liability on offense in Mooney's system. He may be better scoring and rebounding in a traditonal program. I recall someone pointing out his offensive efficiency which is all fine and good, but he never figured out how to establish low post position to receive the pass or rebound. Maybe not his fault, could be lack of development. I wish him luck.
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32 is on target.

I suspect that Nelson-Ododa's transfer decision is mostly about opportunity and comfort level. Mooney went all in on the offense-defense substitution strategy. That strategy is not best for Nelson-Ododa's playing time because it means that he will be on the floor primarily in defensive situations. He likely realizes that he is not an instant offense type of guy.

Sadly, I think that this hurts the Spiders chances of making to the NCAA tournament next year.

Can't blame the player for wanting to be on the floor. I wish him nothing but the best!
 
yes, my memory is shot but seems like when we were recruiting him, he had relatives in the raleigh area and he was looking at state. yes, probably looking at landing locations and when he found one, made the decision to move, certainly not doing it to sit out there as a free agent, he knows where he is going, a done deal.
 
Ulla1 said:
No way this was not a mutually agreed upon move by Zo and Chris Mooney. Both sides will benefit from the move. Nothing but the best wishes to Zo.
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It was not mutual. Mooney wants him to stay.
 
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This is a big loss, I don't see how anyone can position it otherwise. ANO was primed to become the all time blocks recordholder at UR, that's a major skill that won't be easily replaced.

Reasons for leaving are clearly speculative, but I have to think losing a starting spot to TJ and the likelihood of even less time with two other bigs coming eligible this fall are the impetus.
 
I don't think it was mutual either. Bet this is the beginning of the end of red shirting at UR. This graduate senior loophole makes it counter productive. Develop a player until he is finally good enough and he takes off as a hired gun.
 
Wood does not replace ANO and yes this does hurt. How does losing our best defensive player not hurt us? Yes - his offensive was limited, but without question - his shot blocking was a key to our defense. And there is no way Cline or Wood make up for that.

This is not a major blow to our team, but it is a blow and will hurt us a little bit on the defensive end.
 
Alonzo was easy to like and to root for. I liked his quiet demeanor and confidence, especially the way he handled his injury and came back in the final 6 games. I did not think the offense was as fluid with him in the game as when he was out injured. He seemed to hesitate with the ball and that nano-second would cost an open break or good shot. Net/net though he is definitely a loss to the team. Mooney saw him as a potential NBA talent if he would develop. Spiders will be fine and still have plenty of depth. Very best hopes and wishes for Alonzo!
 
Ulla, no way to spin this. you can't actually think Mooney didn't want ANO back. we're much better with him on the roster.

ANO is certainly good enough to be a starter here, but TJ took over the starting job and ran with it making ANO a backup. that wasn't going to change next season. as much as many of us wanted them playing at the same time, TJ and ANO realy don't play that well together. so I understand why ANO would take advantage of the opportunity and move on to play a bigger role and give himself a better shot at playing professionally. not sure why anyone here would begrudge him that.

for those of you thinking he'll move down a level, wanna bet? he'll play a lot for a team in a P5 conference. the timing is very interesting, and makes me think someone reached out to him. I don't like that. pretty sleezy. if Texas, even sleezier. I believe if he knew he wanted to grad transfer, he would have done it earlier to give himslef more options. the only reason to wait until now would be that he needed to be sure he had the credits to graduate, or if somone with a spot reached out.

as for Wood, this should have little effect on him. he's not a 5. TJ is the 5, and he's a perfect 5 in this system. if Friensdshuh is ready and he probably is, he'll play some 5, too. Deion is probably better suited as a backup 5 himself, rather than on the wing. he bodies up opposing 5's as well as anyone. I'd like Wood at the 4 with TA at the 3. if Wood's not what I think he is, then TA at the 4 and Trey at the 3.

this is a loss and a pretty big one, but it's not crushing. we have talent at that position and depth. but we're not better today than we were yersterday.
 
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Everyone here saying the offense ran more smoothly without ANO is delusional. Without ANO our offense was worse by ~0.1 points per possession, or about 10% lower than it was with ANO. That amounts to 6 or 7 points over the course of a game. We won games when he was out because we played a bunch of bad teams who had trouble scoring.
 
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fan2011 said:
Everyone here saying the offense ran more smoothly without ANO is delusional. Without ANO our offense was worse by ~0.1 points per possession, or about 10% lower than it was with ANO. That amounts to 6 or 7 points over the course of a game. We won games when he was out because we played a bunch of bad teams who had trouble scoring.
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Congrats Fan2011. This post is right on target.
 
For anyone who is upset that we were somehow denied a year of Alonzo on the court because he redshirted, think of it this way: Had he played his freshman year, would he have helped lead us to the tourney that year? No. And had he played that year, he would have graduated and used up all his eligibility this year anyway. So while it would have been nice to get his 5th year, it was our decision to shirt him -- presumably because he was not yet ready to contribute then. I feel like we got what we were going to get out of him.

And he is not going to transfer to Texas or Duke. Good freaking lord.
 
Fan 11, your stats are nice, but stats only tell one side of the story and you can pull stats to show what you want them to show. We won six in a row to close the season without ANO, including big road wins at UMass and St. Joes and beat Top 25 team in VCU at our place and a good GW team, which we lost to with ANO on the floor a month prior. And the game he returned, we lost to VCU, the very same team, we "struggled" to beat without ANO just a few weeks back.

I like to watch the games and denote my observations based on what I saw on the court. And there is zero doubt in my mind, that our best basketball of the season was played after ANO got hurt. Is there causality between the two, that it is up for debate.
 
cannot give a definition, legally, of tampering when it comes to college basketball but would guess that CM is mad because he counted on ano and because some coach, somewhere, was involved. it most likely goes on just like texting went on when it was not legal but can still make you angry if someone is messing with your players.
 
97spiderfan said:
Fan 11, your stats are nice, but stats only tell one side of the story and you can pull stats to show what you want them to show. We won six in a row to close the season without ANO, including big road wins at UMass and St. Joes and beat Top 25 team in VCU at our place and a good GW team, which we lost to with ANO on the floor a month prior. And the game he returned, we lost to VCU, the very same team, we "struggled" to beat without ANO just a few weeks back.

I like to watch the games and denote my observations based on what I saw on the court. And there is zero doubt in my mind, that our best basketball of the season was played after ANO got hurt. Is there causality between the two, that it is up for debate.
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UMass and St. Joes were bad teams last year. We struggled to score in both of those games, especially the UMass game. Luckily UMass and St. Joe's were bad so we won. We handled VCU at their place when they had Weber and we had ANO. We needed double overtime to beat them at home when they didn't even have Weber anymore and we didn't have ANO.

And when ANO came back after not playing for over a month and wearing goggles that were hampering his vision, of course he was not as good as he was before. But this is not the ANO we are losing.

In basketball the team who scores the most points wins. Since each team gets the same number of possessions in a given game the team that scores the most points per possession wins. We scored less points per possession against worse defenses when ANO was out. Our offense was objectively worse by every measure other than raw wins, but those wins came against a lot of bad teams. I think you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics or extremely oversimplify to come up with an argument that we were better without ANO.
 
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I have to think that ANO's chief motivation for not staying is more playing time. I suspect we will see him go somewhere where he will be assured 25 or more minutes per game without all the offense/defense substitution mumbo jumbo. I could see him at Miami, GA State, perhaps even a place like UCLA where they have had a handful of guys declare early. I would think that Tony Bennett would love to have him in C'ville, he could step right in and fill Adkins' role as a defender and rebounder, and get plenty of minutes on an Elite 8 caliber team.

It will be very interesting to see where he lands...
 
No way Larrier could get into UR and no way he would be invited to try.
 
believe those games were on the road as well so no matter how bad you think those teams were, nice wins, any road win is a nice win. must admit, am not a numbers or stat guy in determining wins, nice to look at but not really sure what they say about how a particular game was played mentally or physically. if you shoot well, don't turn it over and defend, you win and if you don't, you might lose to a bad team or might pull it out. each game has its own personality based on match ups, energy, road or home and does not matter what the numbers say, you can win or lose based on how you and the opponent plays on a given night.
 
Ulla1 said:
No way Larrier could get into UR and no way he would be invited to try.
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There you go posting your opinion as fact again. Funny that you said the same thing about Kenny a Williams after he committed to VCU, when UR offered him. Keep thinking UR has this mystical inability to land talent, due to a "higher" admittance standard. Harvard, Stanford and Duke do just fine finding talent.

This is big time college athletics. UR has a great arena, a fine academic institution and a great campus. What it does not have, is a great recruiter (or assistants who can recruit). Look at who Mike Rhoades is bringing to Rice (4 Star Virginia kid), you don't think he could get into UR?

The longer fans accept the "high standards" excuse, the longer nothing will be done about it.
 
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the bright kid with offers from UR, Duke and Stanford will go to Duke or Stanford. I understand that. we're fighting for the bright kids a little below that level.
 
spiderman said:
the bright kid with offers from UR, Duke and Stanford will go to Duke or Stanford. I understand that. we're fighting for the bright kids a little below that level.
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Obviously kids will generally choose Duke over most non-blue bloods. But there's no reason for VA ESPN Top 100 kids to choose Rice over UR. UR could certainly be in play for kids considering Harvard, Davidson, Rice etc...

As much as I wish UR to be the cellar dweller for decades to come, there's no reason they can't be top 4 year in and year out. I continually see the "education" argument given here, as to why certain recruits never choose to come, or are considered. If Terry Larrier wanted to transfer to UR, no doubt Mooney would consider it, if not push for him to be admitted.
 
The admissions piece is a silly discussion to have, especially in comparison to VCU, for several reasons. First, we should not use it as an excuse. Second, it is a flat-out fact that VCU is able to admit more kids than UR can. It just is a fact. Third, of course we both are recruiting some kids who could get into both places.

Fourth, comparing UR to Duke as a way of showing that a great academic school should be able to attract top talent is idiotic. Duke has won multiple national championships and sent dozens of players to the NBA. Duke is the exception among similar academic schools, not the norm. Duke also plays in the ACC, the best conference in the country. I don't hear anyone arguing that Harvey Mudd College should be recruiting five-star talent. Wonder why that is?
 
spider23 said:
I know many on this board do not accept this excuse (though I may break it out a little bit from time to time). What can we do about it?
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I assume most here are donors. Mounting pressure on Mooney would certainly help, causing him to search for better talent, or at least hiring an assistant who's background was not Princeton.
 
Eight Legger said:
The admissions piece is a silly discussion to have, especially in comparison to VCU, for several reasons. First, we should not use it as an excuse. Second, it is a flat-out fact that VCU is able to admit more kids than UR can. It just is a fact. Third, of course we both are recruiting some kids who could get into both places.

Fourth, comparing UR to Duke as a way of showing that a great academic school should be able to attract top talent is idiotic. Duke has won multiple national championships and sent dozens of players to the NBA. Duke is the exception among similar academic schools, not the norm. Duke also plays in the ACC, the best conference in the country. I don't hear anyone arguing that Harvey Mudd College should be recruiting five-star talent. Wonder why that is?
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I did not compare VCU to UR on admissions.

I did not solely compare UR to Duke, I had them apart of a list of similar academic institutions: Rice, Harvard, Stanford, Davidson, Duke. Choose Duke as the outlier all you'd like, but the other programs have had some pretty nice recruits and success in the very recent past, and sustained it (outside of Rice, who's coming around).
 
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I would think that with Richmond being one of the smallest D1 schools in the country (based on number of undergraduate students), our recruiting profile more closely matches Davidson or one of the Patriot League schools. Nothing wrong with that, it just makes the recruiting pool smaller. There is a smaller number of players who would be interested and qualified to come to UR and play basketball than the larger schools. Not an excuse, just a fact of life.
 
outside of Steph, I'm fine comparing our recruiting record to Davidson Harvard and Rice. we get better recruits. we play in a tougher conference. or in Davidson's case we did until they joined.
 
No doubt in my mind he was contacted or made contact with another school or their proxy. He knew where he is going.
 
If Ododa is leaving because of Mooney's game management and Mooney is aware of it then perhaps it will cause Mooney to rethink how he manages players in a game situation. I know many posters are frustrated with some of his decisions, and I have not looked into the numbers myself to see if what he does is beneficial. Kenpom did an analysis last March to find which teams were best in the last minute of a game, and Richmond was ranked as the 4th best team in the country during the game's final minute from 2010 and 2014. This is when the offense/defense substitutions happen, so there is some evidence that it works.

I am hoping Friendshuh is ready to contribute next year. He is the closest thing we have to a 5 on the roster and it would be nice for him to start getting playing time his redshirt freshman year.
 
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yes, this could be a good thing long term in regards to Friendshuh. it would be almost impossible to get him meaningful time next season without ANO leaving.
of course, there's also a chance that after his junior year in 2018 he'll have graduated in 4 years and can opt out like ANO just did.
 
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It is much more likely that ANO reached out to a Coach at a school where he thought he would get the chance to contribute substantially. He was quoted in the Times-Dispatch article as saying that this decision came following a conversation with Mooney.

Nelson-Ododa's playing time and contributions in his final season will significantly impact his ability to make money playing basketball after he has used up his collegiate eligibility. He knows this.
 
What disappointing news to come back here and read. There's nobody present or coming in this year that will give you what he possesses intimidating opponents in the lane. Thinking his decision and can't blame him after probably quietly pondering on the bench how in the hell is DT starting in front of me?
 
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WebSpinner said:
cannot give a definition, legally, of tampering when it comes to college basketball but would guess that CM is mad because he counted on ano and because some coach, somewhere, was involved. it most likely goes on just like texting went on when it was not legal but can still make you angry if someone is messing with your players.
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Basically, I think you are on target. Mooney was counting on him being there, and perhaps had recruited for next year based on the conclusion that he would be there. Obviously recruiting is long-term, but with transfers, perhaps he passed on a short-term guy because of ANO being there.

The other side of it all is that he was a regular (even though he lost some minutes after his injury). Seems like coming off the bench ended up bothering him a bit more than Mooney ever knew -- this is not a credit to Mooney. Being a coach, as we know, is not all about the Xs and Os. It's about managing people. I don't think this is Mooney's forte. It IS why Shaka became such a larger-than-life persona.
 
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