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Wake - Virginia Tech Game Thread

bob, hate to say it but none of your posts prove that you know shit about basketball either
 
bobknightfan said:
You realize, of course, what a damned sorry excuse that is? Hard for someone to ever be wrong if he is going to play the "I was only kidding card" every time he makes a stupid comment or prediction. And a lot of people on this board have that act down pat. LOL.
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If it were an excuse, you'd have a point. Since it's the truth, well, you don't. That said, ok, you got me...I obviously don't know anything about basketball because I clicked the button beside 11-12. Feel better now?
 


Richard Sherman's such a thug that he went out and made a whole buncha money off this "outrage."
 
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MichDeac25 said:
First question is where are you getting this list from indicating that Wake had involvement with these players? Just an honest question as I can't find the source.
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I'm going to address this in parts and then hopefully we can put all of this ridiculousness to rest.

First, I just went to Scout's recruiting page, looked at the top 100 and did 2 minutes of research on the names that popped out to me. I used to follow recruiting pretty heavily. A look through their Scout profile or a simple google search was sufficient. Those were the 11 I remember. I'm sure I missed some more.
 
MichDeac25 said:
Off the other list you provided, Marquis Rankin committed to VaTech, averaged 3 ppg, 1ast, left the team for personal reasons. Damien Leonard, committed to South Carolina, transferred to Furman. Trevor Cooney - the article listed his first interests as Villanova and Syracuse, Wake was at the back, committed to Syracuse, been very good. C.J. Barksdale, from VA, committed to VaTech, been solid on not great VaTech teams.
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I didn't include those players because they weren't relevant to the conversation. They all committed before Dino was fired. The article that listed them was from November 2009.
 
MichDeac25 said:
That's a pretty mixed bag, particularly for "supposed" top-100 can't miss prospects.
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It's actually not a mixed bag at all. It's about what one would expect if they looked at a group of 11 random players spread across the top 100.

On average those players have played 66 games averaging 23 MPG and posting a PER of 15.3.

Their average Win Shares per 30 games (basically the wins they contributed during a season) was 2.26. This is the list of Wake players who have posted that many Win shares in a season in the 8 years prior to this one.

Travis (3 times)
CJ (3 times)
Aminu (2 times)
Ish
LD
Chas (2 times)
James (2 times)
Jeff (2 times)
Visser
Eric
Trent
JGray

7 of the 11 players I listed have averaged over 2 Win Shares per season. The only "busts" in that group would be Jabarie Hinds, Julian Randle, and Deuce Bello
 
MichDeac25 said:
But regardless, we have no idea the extent of the involvement we had with these players.
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Actually as many others on here have stated we have a pretty good idea of how involved we were with many of these players. You make your posts as if everyone here has only followed Wake basketball for a year and the internet doesn't exist.
 
MichDeac25 said:
We clearly didn't have any commitments from any of them by the end of their junior years. We've had other players commit in their junior years before, including Shelton Mitchell.
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Ah, the old "everyone commits their junior year so buzz couldn't have possibly gotten a good class" argument. Actually the majority of the top 100 commit fall of their senior years.

In 2011 only 12 of the top 50 were off the board in the middle of August, 4 months after [Redacted] was hired.
 
MichDeac25 said:
But it doesn't matter, if anything the Dino/Prosser regime was known for going after highly ranked players. Some worked, many flopped. I trusted Skip with that process a lot more than I trusted Dino. .
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These are the top 100 players recruited by Prosser/Dino (all rankings are Scout except 2002 which are RSCI). I have ** the one's that worked at Wake, * the one's that worked elsewhere, and bolded the flops

Eric Williams**
Justin Gray**
Trent Strickland**
Chris Paul**
Kevin Swinton
Jamie Skeen*
Anthony Gurley*
Ish Smith**
James Johnson**
Jeff Teague**
Aminu**
Tony Woods*
Ty Walker
Ari Stewart
Desrosiers
McKie**
JTT

That's 17 players. 9 of which have been overwhelming successes at Wake. 3 of which were successful elsewhere but didn't work out at Wake due to extenuating circumstances. 4 busts, though I'm convinced Ari wouldn't have been. and 1 (JTT) who wasn't a bust, but also didn't work out at Wake.

That means Skip/Dino hit on 12/17 of their top 100 recruits. That's 70%. Hardly characterized as "some worked, many flopped".

I trusted Skip more with handling/coaching those players once they got there but I don't know if I trusted him more in bringing those players in. Dino only got to coach 1 of the top 100 guys he recruited and the initial results were promising.
 
MichDeac25 said:
Admittedly, the jury is still out on Buzz on talent evaluation.
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The jury came back a long time ago.

Anthony Fields
Daniel Green
Miles Overton
Madison Jones
Chase Fischer
Aaron Rountree
Tyler Cavanaugh
Andre Washington
Adala Moto
CMM**
Devin Thomas**

That's 5 busts in 11 players. And only two players you can definitely say have worked out. Sure madison, miles, or daniel could shock us all. And hopefully a couple of those four in the middle will make a jump. But the evidence thus far is that Bzz can't bring in the talent necessary to win.
 
MichDeac25 said:
Would I like to see Wake getting a few 5-star guys in? Absolutely. Am I disappointed we couldn't get a top level big man to pair with Shelton Mitchell. Yes. However, I've also seen a lot of highly ranked talent flame out and realize that just getting commitments from top-100 players doesn't win the day.
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When I was in college I knew several people who studied their asses off but then choked around exams. I also knew a couple of kids who did nothing the whole semester but then aced their exams.

If your kid came home with an F because he didn't study and said "some of the kids who studied really hard got B's and this one kid in my 400 person class who didn't study at all got an A" what would you say to him.

sure a couple of schools out of the 350 who play college basketball find ways to win without top 100 talent. And sure a couple of schools every year chock full of top 100 talent have mediocre (though rarely horrific) seasons. On the whole though the single biggest factor of being a top 25 team is talent.
 
MichDeac25 said:
If you seriously want to argue that Ari was some misused talent that Buzz mistreated, you're just undermining your own credibility. He was fine his freshman year. If you had watched any games, it was pretty obvious in his sophomore year that Ari putting the ball on the floor and making a move was not within his game at that point in time. He transferred and then flamed out at USC as well.
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I'm not going to argue something that has been pretty well established. It was very clear that Ari and [Redacted] didn't mesh and that Ari's talents were not put to good use that year.

The only thing to argue about is how different things would have been if Ari had a different coach.

I watched every televised or home game Ari played in at Wake. Ari showed his freshman year what he was capable of when he was bought in and played a specific role to suit his talents. He had hops and showed flashes of being able to take his man off the dribble. He had a good shot which he relied on way too much freshman year. His defense was meh.

When [Redacted] came Ari might as well have been playing pick up ball.

Ari was likely never going to be a number 1 or 2 option. However, it's hard to imagine what a year of losing under a coach you hate and who hates you back, and then sitting out of basketball games for another year, will do to a young player. Especially one who seemed to be in need of a strong mentor. I still think Ari could have grown into a starting role as the third or fourth option in the offense.

If Dino had been able to add a PG and another Big Man to that team in the 2011 class Ari would have been a nice piece to provide shooting off the bench or as a three in small-ball lineups (with Travis at the 4).
 
MichDeac25 said:
I don't love Buzz but I do think he knows basketball although his personality may prevent him from being successful.
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Who cares? To be honest "knowing basketball" wouldn't even be one of my top 5 factors in hiring a head coach.

If college basketball were played by clones which needed no motivation maybe [Redacted] could outmaneuver a ton of other coaches. It's not though.

[Redacted] can't motivate, he can't recruit, he can't make good decisions during games, he can't substitute, he can't communicate, etc. I'd rather have a coach who can do all that than one who "knows basketball."
 
Imagine if Skip died when Josh Howard was a freshman and Bz was hired. Anybody on here think Josh would go on to an NBA career?
 
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