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Bryant Crawford Hiring An Agent, Staying in Draft

Doesn't seem like Wake culture has affected football, tennis, women's golf, etc.

Football players as a group are a bigger group than many other affinity groups on campus. Basketball is very much smaller.

Tennis and golf are "country club" sports historically.
 
To an extent, but it's significant to note when folks are talking about salaries and trying to compare playing Euro ball to playing G league.

Not really. We know if they go to the G-League they aren't going to make jack squat. We know if they go overseas they can probably make a decent salary. The decent salary they make is almost assuredly not all that much more valuable than the $60,000 education + housing + food + gear that they would receive at WFU, and when the add in the fact that they both gave away a WFU degree (lets be honest ,they are never going to step foot inside another WFU classroom) for perhaps a $10k - $25k one year bump it is a pretty silly decision.

Whether they pay taxes is almost irrelevant to the point, it was just something brought up as supposed proof that BC and DM are really going to make some good money because of their decision. The reality is that in the vast majority of these cases they are going to end up on the short end of this decision.
 
Let's make one thing perfectly clear, NOBODY here really knows what kind of team we will have next season because of the innumerable variables and questions that are as yet unanswered (heck I don't think even the coaches have the faintest idea right now). Here are just a few:

1. Are the post grads any good or will they just provide some sorely lacking experience?
2. Will any or all of the freshmen contribute much?
3. Will the loss of Crawford, Key and Wilbekin cripple our offense, but also strengthen our defense?
4. Can Manning actually coach defense any better?
5. Who will provide the shooting?
6. When Smart inevitably gets into foul trouble, who backs him up? (Probably a walk-on Okeke)
7. How much of a jump will Chaundee and Olivier actually make?
8. Who backs up Brandon?
9. Will the turnovers decrease without Crawford?
10.Will anybody even care to show up to cheer them on?
 
Let's make one thing perfectly clear, NOBODY here really knows what kind of team we will have next season because of the innumerable variables and questions that are as yet unanswered (heck I don't think even the coaches have the faintest idea right now). Here are just a few:

1. Are the post grads any good or will they just provide some sorely lacking experience?
2. Will any or all of the freshmen contribute much?
3. Will the loss of Crawford, Key and Wilbekin cripple our offense, but also strengthen our defense?
4. Can Manning actually coach defense any better?
5. Who will provide the shooting?
6. When Smart inevitably gets into foul trouble, who backs him up? (Probably a walk-on Okeke)
7. How much of a jump will Chaundee and Olivier actually make?
8. Who backs up Brandon?
9. Will the turnovers decrease without Crawford?
10.Will anybody even care to show up to cheer them on?

Oh yes, let's do more rearranging of deck chairs on the... Hindenburg.
 
I agree about Manning, but the uppity elitist school we are trying to be cannot help.

I think we get all the WF culture we need to know when we look in the student sections of basketball and football games.

We no longer even have that many good ole NC guys, who love college basketball, teaching on the faculty.

That used to help the tall kids connect. There’s no connection for Doral, Bryant other than the coaching staff. So if the coach relationship founders, they got no reason to stay.

I don't support the specific take in this post as I don't think Wake needs to carve out 25% of each class for North Carolinians like it once did (it may still do it). However, when I went to my reunion a couple years ago and I walked around the tailgate area for the reunion classes, the appearance was absurdly white and conservative. I could imagine athletes not feeling comfortable in that environment. From walking around campus, my general perception was that the fashion amongst the student population hadn't changed in the last 20 years - students were still conservatively dressed. If you go to any bigger urban area or school, that wouldn't be the case. A possible exception may be large public schools in the deeper South.

I fully admit this is a superficial take and my observations could be very wrong. However, I was concerned that Wake was stuck in time.
 
Let's make one thing perfectly clear, NOBODY here really knows what kind of team we will have next season because of the innumerable variables and questions that are as yet unanswered (heck I don't think even the coaches have the faintest idea right now). Here are just a few:

1. Are the post grads any good or will they just provide some sorely lacking experience?
2. Will any or all of the freshmen contribute much?
3. Will the loss of Crawford, Key and Wilbekin cripple our offense, but also strengthen our defense?
4. Can Manning actually coach defense any better?
5. Who will provide the shooting?
6. When Smart inevitably gets into foul trouble, who backs him up? (Probably a walk-on Okeke)
7. How much of a jump will Chaundee and Olivier actually make?
8. Who backs up Brandon?
9. Will the turnovers decrease without Crawford?
10.Will anybody even care to show up to cheer them on?

Those more bullish than me about next season are putting so much hope in Hoard. He's not a Top 5, guaranteed to succeed type player, though he talks like one in some interviews where he states his intention to be one and done. We are basically depending on him to come into the ACC and carry the team on his back as a freshman. Will he flourish? Hope so. Will it be too much to expect of him? Likely. Will a slow start convince him that he just needs to get his and get out?
 
No one knows if WF is going to be historically bad, just annoyingly bad (like last year), a little surprising, but still irrelevant. That's the range with this group left over even if this team somehow maxes out with the limited talent on hand (which is possible, because its easier to coach with a limited roster; less decisions to make; players gain confidence that they will be allowed to play through mistakes).

Before WF plays a single game, everyone knows that WF is not going to finish in the top 10 in the conference, WF is not going to the NCAA tournament and WF will have another lost basketball season.
 
Oh, I see.. dismissing Wikipedia is a "hottake" tm.
when discussing its description of a well documented historical event? absolutely. we aren't substantiating scholarly work here and wiki is just as reliable as a dictionary in these instances.
 
Let's make one thing perfectly clear, NOBODY here really knows what kind of team we will have next season because of the innumerable variables and questions that are as yet unanswered (heck I don't think even the coaches have the faintest idea right now). Here are just a few:

1. Are the post grads any good or will they just provide some sorely lacking experience?
2. Will any or all of the freshmen contribute much?
3. Will the loss of Crawford, Key and Wilbekin cripple our offense, but also strengthen our defense?
4. Can Manning actually coach defense any better?
5. Who will provide the shooting?
6. When Smart inevitably gets into foul trouble, who backs him up? (Probably a walk-on Okeke)
7. How much of a jump will Chaundee and Olivier actually make?
8. Who backs up Brandon?
9. Will the turnovers decrease without Crawford?
10.Will anybody even care to show up to cheer them on?

RE #3 - It's wrong to include Crawford with Key and Wilbekin in bad D. His D was fine.

RE#9 - This is another board myth and knee jerk reaction. Yes, Bryant made boneheaded plays. Yes, he made more TOs than we'd like. But the way people talk about it here, you'd think he made 6-8TOs/game. He actually made 3.3. Markell Johnson made 3.2. Duval 2.8. Pinson made 2.4. I could go on and on. Hell, in almost 20% less PT and less control of the ball, Brandon made 2 TO/game. If Brandon simply played the same amount of minutes, he'd project less than one fewer TOs/game. If you added the amount of time controlling the offense, that number would close even more.
I'm not saying Bryant shouldn't have valued the ball more. I am saying it wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as this board makes it out to be.
 
I don't know where to find a metric to use, but Crawford's defense certainly seemed very bad most of the time. Outside his occasional steal, he didn't seem to defend any better than Key.
 
RE #3 - It's wrong to include Crawford with Key and Wilbekin in bad D. His D was fine.

RE#9 - This is another board myth and knee jerk reaction. Yes, Bryant made boneheaded plays. Yes, he made more TOs than we'd like. But the way people talk about it here, you'd think he made 6-8TOs/game. He actually made 3.3. Markell Johnson made 3.2. Duval 2.8. Pinson made 2.4. I could go on and on. Hell, in almost 20% less PT and less control of the ball, Brandon made 2 TO/game. If Brandon simply played the same amount of minutes, he'd project less than one fewer TOs/game. If you added the amount of time controlling the offense, that number would close even more.
I'm not saying Bryant shouldn't have valued the ball more. I am saying it wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as this board makes it out to be.

Crawford was responsible for many other turnovers that were given to other teammates. He'd give our guys the ball in bad spots on the court, make shitty passes that go off the fingertips of our guys, etc.

Craw is so, so much better than what we got out of him.
 
Folks are too caught up in who starts. When you just flip Chill for Craw as a starter and look at their per 40 in conference numbers it's easy to rationalize the impact. Yes, it's an 8 point dropoff, but Chill has fewer turnovers, roughly equal assists and steals, slightly better rebounding, plays better defense, and shoots it about the same as Craw. With Hoard coming in to replace TT those points don't seem as important.

But that starting 5 wasn't going to be our best lineup or the one on the floor in crunch time. I'd bet anything we were going to close games with Chill/Craw/Brown/Hoard/Moore. Flipping Sarr for Moore was already a brutal hit, especially since we have zero depth now at the 5. And Sarr is a huge question mark - he's replacing a double/double machine and he hasn't scored 10 points ever. Hell in his last 7 games he didn't score more than 2 points.

Now we're simply removing Craw from that lineup as well and we have no similar talent to replace him. Maybe Mucius steps in, maybe someone else... But it's not the delta between Craw and Chill that hurts, it's the complete absence of a guy who can score 30 on any given night from our best lineup.

Decent teams need someone who can get a bucket when they need one, and someone to pull down rebounds. When we lost Collins we lost both of those. Now we lose both again but across two players. For the season to be remotely interesting we need Sarr to take a huge leap, Brown to become a consistent scorer, Hoard to be at least as good as advertised, Childress to log 30+ minutes a night of solid PG play, we need to have zero injuries, and even if all that happens we still probably need something randomly good on top of that, like Wright turning out to be good or one of the transfers being better than we thought.

What sucks is that the ACC was fairly weak last year and won't be that much better this year. Getting kneecapped by the Collins/Dinos/Moore/Crawford defections all a year ahead of schedule came just as the ACC was giving us a chance to leapfrog a bunch of programs. It's like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football every offseason.
 
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