I'm just saying that, to me, there's a difference between "an article from one Baylor guy" and a fan site run by unpaid bloggers using pseudonyms, which I think would have been nice to mention with the link.

It's not a post from someone that gets actually paid to cover Baylor, or that's talked to the kid, or that would have any sort of actual insight into the situation, which I think is important to note.

I will say the fact that this thread has derailed into debating the quality of juco transfers and guys that sat out this year probably says something about the general trajectory of the program though.

Double Diamond said:

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So two wins equal more than seven seasons worth of data.

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The thing is, it would be one thing if that were honestly true. There are probably some people who feel like 2x s16 and 5 bad years are better than what Turge accomplished (4 yrs, 4 tourney, 3x rd of 32). But it is pretty clear that isnt the case here. This is just the next BK talking point from church group. Their excuse changes annually.
Last year it was the mean NCAAs fault for keeping future nba pg jj Caldwell out.
You won't find any true believer posts from 5/6/7 yrs ago claiming that 3 or 4 or 5 terrible years would be fine by them if offset by 2 trips to the sweet 16.
BK was supposed to upgrade the program. He hasnt. Next year at this time BK will have been here 8 yrs to Turg' s 4 and BK will have fewer ncaa trips in twice the time (and will likely still be under 0.500 in conf play to boot).

It's off the rails as too many see the writing on the wall. In a holding pattern isn't the way to run a program. New blood is needed. Energy and excitement.

Kennedy isn't good enough I agree. And two sweet 16s won't erase the bad.

Kennedy needs to go

Pumpkinhead said:

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Topher17 said:

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Unless Jacey and Nebo are exceptionally good, we are going to be incredibly thin in the post. Like scary thin

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Logan said on the radio that Nebo 'if not as athletic as Robert Williams, is close to being as athletic'. Said he was just not as long as Robert was and really is a straight 5 player, not somebody you'd consider as much playing at PF like Williams. The guy did lead his conference in shot blocking before transferring to A&M.

If Davis comes back, I personally think we'll probably be fine with a rotation of Davis/Nebo/Jasey. Certainly at least in terms of manning the 5-spot. So much hinges on Davis coming back.

And if the skill sets force the staff to only use lineups with one big and 4 perimeter oriented guys, that may not be a bad thing the way basketball has been evolving.

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We have heard a lot from Logan and other people in and around the program the last seven years about how X guy looks so good in practice and will step right in with no drop off and we have seen how that has gone. I won't believe in Nebo until I see him in same game action.

However, I do agree with the second half of your post. A ton hinges on Davis coming back and we could run a guard heavy lineup, but that scares me with our general poor x's & o's and poor perimeter shooting. We will know a lot more about next year's team whenever Davis makes a final decision.

bobinator said:

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I'm just saying that, to me, there's a difference between "an article from one Baylor guy" and a fan site run by unpaid bloggers using pseudonyms, which I think would have been nice to mention with the link.

It's not a post from someone that gets actually paid to cover Baylor, or that's talked to the kid, or that would have any sort of actual insight into the situation, which I think is important to note.

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I linked the article because it was at least SOMETHING written on Mitchell's transfer that was both:

a) trying to go into far more detail on the topic that the typical 'so and so is transferring' article by the paid journalists types out there - which often tell you nothing that you can't get by simply googling his college stats and HS recruiting ranking

b) was at least a step above just reading the average message board posts from SicEmBear. Was an article where some guy at least seemed to take a decent amount of time to try to think about and opine on it.

Anyways, as Hop said, just a data point.

Topher17 said:

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Pumpkinhead said:

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Topher17 said:

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Unless Jacey and Nebo are exceptionally good, we are going to be incredibly thin in the post. Like scary thin

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Logan said on the radio that Nebo 'if not as athletic as Robert Williams, is close to being as athletic'. Said he was just not as long as Robert was and really is a straight 5 player, not somebody you'd consider as much playing at PF like Williams. The guy did lead his conference in shot blocking before transferring to A&M.

If Davis comes back, I personally think we'll probably be fine with a rotation of Davis/Nebo/Jasey. Certainly at least in terms of manning the 5-spot. So much hinges on Davis coming back.

And if the skill sets force the staff to only use lineups with one big and 4 perimeter oriented guys, that may not be a bad thing the way basketball has been evolving.

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We have heard a lot from Logan and other people in and around the program the last seven years about how X guy looks so good in practice and will step right in with no drop off and we have seen how that has gone. I won't believe in Nebo until I see him in same game action.

However, I do agree with the second half of your post. A ton hinges on Davis coming back and we could run a guard heavy lineup, but that scares me with our general poor x's & o's and poor perimeter shooting. We will know a lot more about next year's team whenever Davis makes a final decision.

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Actually, on Nebo, there was a video of him playing open gym last summer and he did look pretty athletic...so when Logan said that, it did *seem* to line up with that video. I'll try to maybe find that and post it. It was (I believe) somewhere in Robert Williams twitter account where Williams was giving him kudos for the vid.

Agree that you never know for sure with guys till you actually see them play.

Pumpkinhead said:

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Topher17 said:

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Pumpkinhead said:

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Topher17 said:

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Unless Jacey and Nebo are exceptionally good, we are going to be incredibly thin in the post. Like scary thin

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Logan said on the radio that Nebo 'if not as athletic as Robert Williams, is close to being as athletic'. Said he was just not as long as Robert was and really is a straight 5 player, not somebody you'd consider as much playing at PF like Williams. The guy did lead his conference in shot blocking before transferring to A&M.

If Davis comes back, I personally think we'll probably be fine with a rotation of Davis/Nebo/Jasey. Certainly at least in terms of manning the 5-spot. So much hinges on Davis coming back.

And if the skill sets force the staff to only use lineups with one big and 4 perimeter oriented guys, that may not be a bad thing the way basketball has been evolving.

---

We have heard a lot from Logan and other people in and around the program the last seven years about how X guy looks so good in practice and will step right in with no drop off and we have seen how that has gone. I won't believe in Nebo until I see him in same game action.

However, I do agree with the second half of your post. A ton hinges on Davis coming back and we could run a guard heavy lineup, but that scares me with our general poor x's & o's and poor perimeter shooting. We will know a lot more about next year's team whenever Davis makes a final decision.

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Actually, on Nebo, there was a video of him playing open gym last summer and he did look pretty athletic...so when Logan said that, it did *seem* to line up with that video. I'll try to maybe find that and post it. It was (I believe) somewhere in Robert Williams twitter account where Williams was giving him kudos for the vid.

Agree that you never know for sure with guys till you actually see them play.

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Found that video link on Nebo. This was Nebo in open gym late last summer. He did look pretty athletic in this vid, which was partly why when Logan on the radio was opining that he was pretty athletic, it was easier to buy into that.

That Smith kid was a workout warrior. Caldwell was a workout warrior. Space was a workout warrior hit a few winners against Tennessee, not much else. I'm sure there are more. Nothing means anything till the lights go on in a real game.

Double Diamond said:

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That Smith kid was a workout warrior. Caldwell was a workout warrior. Space was a workout warrior hit a few winners against Tennessee, not much else. I'm sure there are more. Nothing means anything till the lights go on in a real game.

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Sure, but if the topic is 'Logan said Nebo is pretty athletic' then there is at least some video evidence to go along with the opinion that, yes, Nebo looks 'athletic' and can play above the rim easily.

We also know that Nebo led the Northeast Conference in blocked shots his sophomore season, and that when he came to Reed to play against the Aggies that year in a non-con game on Dec. 22, 2016, he had a decent statistical game vs. the Davis/Williams/Trocha frontline (11 points, 7 rebounds).

So we do have a little bit of 'lights go on in real games' data on Nebo.

I'm certain Nebo is athletic. I'm not certain he can make the jump.

I was mostly kidding until Hop had to act personally offended by my comment

Nebo hit more 3s in that clip than Rob did in his career at a&M. Which means he will shoot two a game at a 20% clip. He looks like Ray Turner athletically but more coordinated.

Whenever I randomly come over to this board I'm glad I dropped stars so that I'm not supporting Hop's petulance. Cheers to to the free board!

Quote:

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I was mostly kidding until Hop had to act personally offended by my comment

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Hop dishes it out but doesn't like to be on the receiving end.
and
Hop is the smartest guy in the room, ala the Enron group.
And if you don't believe it, just ask him and he'll be sure to reaffirm it for you.

2 sweet 16s in 3 years!!!

EXCELL said:

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Quote:

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I was mostly kidding until Hop had to act personally offended by my comment

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Hop dishes it out but doesn't like to be on the receiving end.
and
Hop is the smartest guy in the room, ala the Enron group.
And if you don't believe it, just ask him and he'll be sure to reaffirm it for you.

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Didn't you mean shortest instead of smartest?

Hop said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Hop said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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More stable with 10 guys on scholarship? 5 of which haven't played any significant minutes at the division 1 level? Turge was roasted by texags for "leaving the cupboard bare" and having so few guys on scholarship. Yet, all Turge did was make the NCAA tournament EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. How stable can ya get?

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What does Turgeon making the NCAA's four years have to do with leaving the cupboard bare? And to clarify, I've never said he left the cupboard bare. I said he left the program with 5-6 good, solid players, but two of those six got hurt and missed a significant portion of the next season....and he didn't leave the program with much depth at all . He left AFTER the spring signing period with only 10 scholarship players.

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What was more likely for 2012, for Turgeon to make the tournament or for Turgeon to go 4-14 in league play?

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Given the injuries....4-14. That's not to say I think they would've gone 4-14. Turgeon would have had his same system in place and he would've been coaching the team in October practices, so the lack of change and actually being at practice would have made the team more efficient. I do not think that team without Roberson or a healthy Middleton makes the NCAA's under Turgeon. That would've been a 7-11 type of team.

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A "7-11 type of team" would have been 2 conference wins away from 9-9 -- a record that got Big 12 Texas in the tournament that year as an at-large.

It would have been 3 conference losses away from the 4-14 that Kennedy put up.


So even in your completely hypothetical scenario of Mark Turgeon with Billy Kennedy's team in 2012, your math still has him closer to the tournament than 4-14.

I remember going to the game in Austin against that 9-9 Texas team.

Middleton put up 19 points and 10 rebounds, Elston Turner added 13 points, Loubeau scored 10, we badly outrebounded them on the back of 8 boards from Keith Davis...

And we managed to put up 51 total points on our way to a loss.

One week prior is when Turner put up 21 and Middleton put up 14 and we scored all of 52 points at Baylor.

Point being Middleton could play pretty well and make an impact and we'd still manage to poop the bed. That team had no idea what it was trying to do and had no idea how to play together. And I dare say we've seen that problem endure to some extent every season since.

I think we often view what Turgeon would have done through the lense of what that team did, which isn't a great way to evaluate the "what if."


We lost Holmes and Walkup from an NCAA team, one which Roberson was a role player at most.

Turner was a more than adequate replacement for Holmes and while I love some Nathan Walkup, losing him didn't sink our team.

I'm not sold on the direction of the program. Whether you think Kennedy can get it done or not, the evidence strongly suggests that he struggles to coach around team holes (eg missing the NIT with Davis and Williams last year because of our backcourt). He needs complete teams with strong players at all 5 positions or his system, as it is, doesn't work.

Looking at recruiting, he doesn't seem to be building up a pipeline. He's pulling in some talent, yes, but there are also glaring roster deficiencies. His strategy seems to be "pull in what talent we can, try to fill in the holes with transfers, and if I strike out hello CBI." so he'll sometimes put it all together like 2 years ago,* but I think we should be a lot more consistent than that.

*I honestly don't see this season as a success for his methodology, as we were agonizingly close to missing the tournament. This year's success was more due to the fact that we got hot at the right time and rode that to the Sweet 16.

Spurs would have beaten Warriors last season if not for Za Za stepping on Kawhi's ankle. $100 to anyone who can definitively prove me wrong.

Oops...sorry...wrong board.

Warriors still win that series, it's the NBA. The cream tends to rise to the top when push comes to shove.

Pumpkinhead said:

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Hop said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Double Diamond said:

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My apologies, three star recruit. Again good pick up but hardly a program shifting moment.

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Who also redshirted at Baylor...

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Two years ago....the guy lit it up at Trinity Valley and the people who rank JUCO prospects say he's the best in the country. It is strange that you cherry pick data from two years ago and skip over data that is less than two months old.

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He is rated #2 JUCO on 247 composite. It is certainly possible that he gives us something significant. You can't just assume JUCO pickups are mediocre or suck. Arkansas for example just had an NCAA team led by two starting perimeter players (Barford and Bacon) who were both highly ranked JUCO guard recruits similar to Mitchell.

Obviously, 'who knows', but If he turns out like Barford and Bacon at Arky then he'll have been a pretty good get. Would be curious if any poster here has any good personal knowledge/insight on specifically this guy's game.

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So, we're comparing the tallest midgets.

Name 1 JUCO transfer who has contribute to a national championship team since UNLV in 1990. Jimmy Butler is the only relatively recent JUCO transfer I can think of that was worth a darn in high D-1.

BK's previous JUCOs - how'd that work out for A&M?

If football, there are quite a few, including Cam Newton. This isn't football.

This pretty much sums it up.

"Whether you think Kennedy can get it done or not, the evidence strongly suggests that he struggles to coach around team holes (eg missing the NIT with Davis and Williams last year because of our backcourt). He needs complete teams with strong players at all 5 positions or his system, as it is, doesn't work."

Also, BK's next team to overachieve will be his first. Think about that. In 7 years he has not had a single team overachieve. That is almost impossible.

DukeMu said:

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Pumpkinhead said:

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Hop said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Double Diamond said:

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My apologies, three star recruit. Again good pick up but hardly a program shifting moment.

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Who also redshirted at Baylor...

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Two years ago....the guy lit it up at Trinity Valley and the people who rank JUCO prospects say he's the best in the country. It is strange that you cherry pick data from two years ago and skip over data that is less than two months old.

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He is rated #2 JUCO on 247 composite. It is certainly possible that he gives us something significant. You can't just assume JUCO pickups are mediocre or suck. Arkansas for example just had an NCAA team led by two starting perimeter players (Barford and Bacon) who were both highly ranked JUCO guard recruits similar to Mitchell.

Obviously, 'who knows', but If he turns out like Barford and Bacon at Arky then he'll have been a pretty good get. Would be curious if any poster here has any good personal knowledge/insight on specifically this guy's game.

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So, we're comparing the tallest midgets.

Name 1 JUCO transfer who has contribute to a national championship team since UNLV in 1990. Jimmy Butler is the only relatively recent JUCO transfer I can think of that was worth a darn in high D-1.

BK's previous JUCOs - how'd that work out for A&M?

If football, there are quite a few, including Cam Newton. This isn't football.

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If you lower your expectation bar just a tad from talking National Championships' to just 'Good JUCO players who were starters/major contributors on NCAA tournament teams', then sure there have been several cases of guys coming out of JUCO and making a difference. We'll see on Mitchell. He at least played well enough at the JUCO level that the recruiting services really liked him.

Your post did make me wonder who had been the biggest JUCO success stories in basketball. Here is one guy's article ranking his opinions from the 2003-2013 time frame. Obviously, we will have hit the lottery with Mitchell if we get anything close to a Pierre Jackson find like Baylor hit on.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1652326-ranking-the-10-biggest-ncaa-basketball-juco-success-stories-of-the-past-decade

sincereag said:

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Losing Trocha and Hogg isn't devastating to the program IMO. I like the fact that we're loading up on athletic guards who can can score and rebound. We can go smaller than in past and good guard play is more critical than a dominating frontcourt IMO. And losing to Michigan like we did is offset by our blowout of NC. Besides, many good teams got blown out in the tourney....just happens sometimes. I like getting JUCOs and transfers to go along with hopefully getting Davis and Gilder back to setup for another NCAA run next year.

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Losing Hogg AND RW (who you conveniently left out is) is near devastating in a BK system to win games.

Kennedy's doesn't create space well. You remembers the first 3 years of pointless passing around the perimeter in the Kennedy era? You need a guy like Hogg to stretch the defense. Texas A&M is undefeated when Hogg scores 15 or more. If A&M were in Colorado or Texas had Colorado laws the Ags would have won a lot more games. Before the suspension, Hogg was the 9th most valuable player in the nation.

Mitchell is a 35-36% 3 point FG shooter in JUCO. Aggies really need a healthy Gilder back.

Nebo was a good defender at St. Francis, but he's no freak like RW.

As usual, lots of question marks about next year's team.

Pumpkinhead said:

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DukeMu said:

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Pumpkinhead said:

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Hop said:

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_lefraud_ said:

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Double Diamond said:

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My apologies, three star recruit. Again good pick up but hardly a program shifting moment.

---

Who also redshirted at Baylor...

---

Two years ago....the guy lit it up at Trinity Valley and the people who rank JUCO prospects say he's the best in the country. It is strange that you cherry pick data from two years ago and skip over data that is less than two months old.

---

He is rated #2 JUCO on 247 composite. It is certainly possible that he gives us something significant. You can't just assume JUCO pickups are mediocre or suck. Arkansas for example just had an NCAA team led by two starting perimeter players (Barford and Bacon) who were both highly ranked JUCO guard recruits similar to Mitchell.

Obviously, 'who knows', but If he turns out like Barford and Bacon at Arky then he'll have been a pretty good get. Would be curious if any poster here has any good personal knowledge/insight on specifically this guy's game.

---

So, we're comparing the tallest midgets.

Name 1 JUCO transfer who has contribute to a national championship team since UNLV in 1990. Jimmy Butler is the only relatively recent JUCO transfer I can think of that was worth a darn in high D-1.

BK's previous JUCOs - how'd that work out for A&M?

If football, there are quite a few, including Cam Newton. This isn't football.

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If you lower your expectation bar just a tad from talking National Championships' to just 'Good JUCO players who were starters/major contributors on NCAA tournament teams', then sure there have been several cases of guys coming out of JUCO and making a difference. We'll see on Mitchell. He at least played well enough at the JUCO level that the recruiting services really liked him.

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OK. Name them without scouring Google.

hoya-ag said:

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Also, BK's next team to overachieve will be his first. Think about that. In 7 years he has not had a single team overachieve. That is almost impossible.

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This.

2016 was awesome, but I still wouldn't say that team "over achieved", if anything, they "over achieved" on the expectations that had been lowered after years 1-4. I don't think anyone thought that team would compete for a conference title, and/or earn a 3 seed for the tournament. But at the same time, a 3 seed "should" make it to the S16...

Quote:

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How would you (or me) know if I was or wasn't the smartest guy here because y'all get stuck on the Kennedy pumper/hater merry-go-round and we haven't deviated from that topic in four years.

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This statement pretty much says it all.
A difference of opinion is one thing. Isn't that what these boards are really all about?

But, you have a propensity to denigrate and berate those that don't share your opinion. I'm guilty of that too, but you take it to a new level and, as staff, you should work a lot harder than the everyday poster to avoid that personalization of your posts.