A very tiny group of players will make the NBA and some of those will endure like Alex Caruso. The rest might make G league instead or play overseas which can be rewarding but lacks the "amenities of home" and comes with a striding amounts of unforeseen political deep waters if you go through authoritarian countries.

In all honesty, NIL isn't necessary, but the NCAA has chosen in the past to squeeze blood from stones while paying administrators and coaches unseemly amounts. So they very much did it to themselves.

If someone shows up to Texas A&M and works hard at school and at "their craft" (athletics or going pro in life itself), I would expect that person to succeed. The scholarships are nicer than loans. But the school has become a money engine itself and it squeezed all stones.

I'm going to Make tournament bracket based off of older teams. I think 4 year teams beat 1 year individuals on average.

The trend of 4 yr teams filling gaps with experienced transfers seems to me to be important as well. It's been a significant factor in this yrs A & M team . Auburn as well.

How many "get me in the league tomorrow" coaches are there anyway? Just Calipari?

All of the best coaches are ones that can recruit high level talent, keep talent around, supplement that talent with experienced players out of the portal, etc.

There are the blue blood programs that tout that in their coaches, or at least look for that mentality. I see it as two types of coaches in my argument above with lots of flavors of each:

There are coaches that can use incredible talent, and know the right balance of "true in-game coaching" and "letting the players just feel the game" and dominate with the raw abilities. This is a unique skill set to compete and win at a high level and I am not intending for this to sound easy. But striking that balance is something coaches like Calipari do well and is really effective for talent-rich teams.

There are coaches that focus on all the fundamentals, how to read the game, provide in-game coaching the players take well, have the incredible work ethic to fix the small things, and preach the "grind until you buy in" to what they are trying to do mentality. With less freakish talent, this is what players really need. To do this well at a high level, you have to be charismatic enough and skilled in your craft enough to convince players they need this type of support and they are the coach to provide it to them. Most of these players in the D1 sphere were the best athletes in their school/district and were not always convinced they needed the help.

Mastering both these is tough and a small number of coaches do this extremely well. My prediction is that those who master the latter will eventually beat out the former (which used to reign supreme) in the go-forward world.

I agree that building depth and experience is a lot more important than it was 10 years ago, I'm just saying a lot of that generation of coaches is gone now for exactly what you're talking about. I think this shift happened about five years ago.

You can't just point to your banners on the wall, sign five elite high school guys, and then just go coach ball.

You have to constantly be getting the pulse of your players to make sure they're happy and wanting to stay, you need the infrastructure to scout hundreds if not thousands of players currently in the college ranks to see who can help your team. You have to truly delegate responsibilities to your assistants. You now have to be more proactive with donors and potential donors to make you're competitive on the NIL landscape.

The coaches that couldn't keep up with that are almost all gone now.

bobinator said:

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How many "get me in the league tomorrow" coaches are there anyway? Just Calipari?

All of the best coaches are ones that can recruit high level talent, keep talent around, supplement that talent with experienced players out of the portal, etc.

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I think recruiting talent and keeping talent are two different things.

I remember last season that a lot of people were expecting Garcia to transfer… and that didn't happen.

Don't know how much was NIL and how much was Buzz, but Andy's comment was something like "I will always be an Aggie"… that is not it verbatim, but he didn't seem like he was shopping around.

What always intrigues me is when a coach has success doing one thing, and then starts doing it differently. Is it competitive nature? Like beating out other coaches for a recruit just scratches that itch or something?

This happened to Rick Barnes to some degree, but more recently look at Scott Drew.

Baylor WON A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP (doesn't count, obviously, we don't count the COVID years for anything) with a roster that was a mix of high school talent and experienced transfers, many of which had been in the program for several years, a couple of which even redshirted in the program if memory serves, but now it seems like they've reverted back to like pre-2019 Drew where they're just chasing high profile names and recruits and just putting them on the floor together. They don't seem to play with that same level of cohesiveness or whatever word you want to use that those 19-20 and 20-21 Baylor teams had.

bobinator said:

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What always intrigues me is when a coach has success doing one thing, and then starts doing it differently. Is it competitive nature? Like beating out other coaches for a recruit just scratches that itch or something?

This happened to Rick Barnes to some degree, but more recently look at Scott Drew.

Baylor WON A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP (doesn't count, obviously, we don't count the COVID years for anything) with a roster that was a mix of high school talent and experienced transfers, many of which had been in the program for several years, a couple of which even redshirted in the program if memory serves, but now it seems like they've reverted back to like pre-2019 Drew where they're just chasing high profile names and recruits and just putting them on the floor together. They don't seem to play with that same level of cohesiveness or whatever word you want to use that those 19-20 and 20-21 Baylor teams had.

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I think it's a product of success; when you run big suddenly a new caliber of player wants to play at your school and you say to yourself: how can I turn this super star nba type away for a player that isn't quite as good but may stay a while s d be better for the program in the long run?

It's like having a Ferrari thrown in your face when all along you've been driving reliable, nice Buicks and Nissans that have served you well, but how do you turn down that Ferrari that is obtainable now when it wasn't before?

So now you've got Ferraris all over the place but they don't serve all your needs like the Buicks and Nissans did

I get it for a guy like Barnes who so many times got close to climbing the mountain and didn't get there. He probably thought "I need a Ferrari if I want to actually win this race." And also there was some data to show he might be right, the best team he ever had was led by young superstar talent. And then Barnes was caught up in the early days of the one-and-done game. Hard to blame him for that.

But Drew won the race! You'd think he'd know better.

Agreed and never thought if that way

Quote:

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Coach Williams' superpower is that his players love him and want to play for him

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Because of THIS and the fact that Buzz is a very good coach, it's going to be a real shame if Buzz bolts this offseason to a school that sells their venue out all the time (especially in conference play) when their team is single digit ranked.

Yep. I''ve thought fir many years that the best way to get to the FF is to have a grest coach with average to above average players thst stick around 4 years.

Those players become the equivalent of the grest players whennthey understand what the hell is expected, and what it takes.

Adam87inSA said:

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Quote:

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Coach Williams' superpower is that his players love him and want to play for him

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Because of THIS and the fact that Buzz is a very good coach, it's going to be a real shame if Buzz bolts this offseason to a school that sells their venue out all the time (especially in conference play) when their team is single digit ranked.

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Yep, it would be a shame, but I'm not seeing it. I think Coach Williams is building something here… "building", not "built".

I am hopeful that he plans on staying a while.

Well we're going to need a ton of transfers next year to be competitive in the top half of the SEC.

Taylor - gone
Phelps - should be gone, started college after COVID, not sure he gets a 5th year
Obaseki - should be gone, started college after COVID, not sure he gets a 5th year
Carter - should be gone, started college after COVID, not sure he gets a 5th year
Hefner - gone
Garcia - gone
Coleman - gone
Dockery - gone

Payne - Will be a SR - NBA? Could come back
Solo - Will be a SR

Mills - redshirt? Should be back
Lee - Two years left?
Turkson - Redshirting? Should be back
McDermott - Redshirting? Should be back
Ratowski - Who dis?

Incoming
Rencher - G
Green - G
Glass - G

We have at most 10 players for next year, 8 of which have never seen meaningful minutes if not any minutes.

If I recall correctly, even the great Coach K tried the Calapari one and done 5 star
recruits for a year or two....did not like it and went back to his tried and true methods before retiring.

definitely starting ground zero. hioe he has it in him to start again here, vs somewhere else.

bobinator said:

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I get it for a guy like Barnes who so many times got close to climbing the mountain and didn't get there. He probably thought "I need a Ferrari if I want to actually win this race." And also there was some data to show he might be right, the best team he ever had was led by young superstar talent. And then Barnes was caught up in the early days of the one-and-done game. Hard to blame him for that.

But Drew won the race! You'd think he'd know better.

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You would think so, but it's hard to turn down that ferrari when you drive Buicks and Chevys all the time. You think to yourself if I've been this good with Buicks and Chevys think what I could do with a Ferrari or two

As I understand it you don't redshirt in hoops if you played at all during the season so McDermott will be a sophomore and Lee a jr.

Also you left Mills off your list . He could end up being a very good player. Another redshirt

What you need is a Ferrari that wants to be an F350.

halfastros81 said:

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As I understand it you don't redshirt in hoops if you played at all during the season so McDermott will be a sophomore and Lee a jr.

Also you left Mills off your list . He could end up being a very good player. Another redshirt

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Ya meant to add Mills and forgot.

Totally disagree about starting again ground zero here. It takes a few yrs to build the culture he wants and it's already in place here.

Assuming no transfers out Buzz will have 7 guys minimum engrained in this culture.

I'm not saying the first part of next season is going to be pretty , it probably won't be. End product may be better than what many expect.

Dockery is also already long gone fyi.

Was apparently not a fit for whatever reason.

halfastros81 said:

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Totally disagree about starting again ground zero here. It takes a few yrs to build the culture he wants and it's already in place here.

Assuming no transfers out Buzz will have 7 guys minimum engrained in this culture.

I'm not saying the first part of next season is going to be pretty , it probably won't be. End product may be better than what many expect.

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Maybe so. But returning less than 10% of the points production from a team usually means rebuilding. We would have to add a minimum of 3 high level transfers.. Phelps and Payne types. Maybe 4. This isn't patching holes like Buzz has done the past couple of seasons. Even 2021 had more pieces in place with Taylor, Q Jackson, Hefner, Gordon, and Diarra already in the system, players who had all played decent minutes before that season.

Assuming no transfers out and Payne staying, the only players on the roster who will have contributed are Solo and Payne.

Like I said, it's likely not going to be pretty early in the season. I just have confidence that Buzz will find a way to be at least competitive by conference play. We don't really know what the guys that aren't playing now might bring to the table. What little I have seen from McDermott for example makes me think he could be a really good player as early as next yr. I wish they had worked him into the lineup more to date but Buzz just doesn't do that with freshmen.

The showing the program has made to date this yr, there are going to be some experienced transfers that want in .

cs69ag said:

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If I recall correctly, even the great Coach K tried the Calapari one and done 5 star
recruits for a year or two....did not like it and went back to his tried and true methods before retiring.

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He won it all in 2015 with one and dones

Yeah I'm not sure I'd frame it quite like that. It's not like Duke just stopped recruiting the best players.

Duke has always recruited good players, but Coach K did get away from going after one and done.

When? Zion was the most one and done of all time and that was 2019 and he had Banchero his last year.

JPAggie2010 said:

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This dawned on me the other day. In the age of NIL, we see players opting to stay in school longer vs. taking a shot a going pro. There will always be the Cooper Flaggs of the world that are NBA-ready yesterday. But, the number of players where the risk/pay of playing for the league isn't as guaranteed as the current "pay" of staying in school for those second-round and UDFA-type players is growing.

With this trend, I believe coaches who can recruit (including playing the portal), retain their best, and build veteran teams that work together will ultimately fare better in the long run than those who focus on recruiting great talent out of high school and are looking to go pro immediately.

This may be an obvious statement, but I think players' mindset is the major change. I guess that they will start looking for the qualities in coaches stated above more and more as time goes on vs. who is going to get me in the league tomorrow. Luckily Buzz has continued to prove that he can do just that. His best players stay, he is able to integrate new players from the portal into the team pretty smoothly and is winning at a high level.

I am genuinely interested to see how the mindset of the average player changes over the next decade. Money will always talk, but coaching is the next factor. We can have both and may be setting ourselves up to be a consistent school that wins at a high level.




Edited for bad spelling/grammar because i should have proof read before posting

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I would agree with this plus add that as a general rule of thumb I believe that the average 1 and done type player typically more often has a "me attitude". There are way more guys that won't get drafted and love the game enough to fill an experienced roster each year and they are playing because they LOVE the game which typically translates into team players which is they guys that Buzz gets...Not quite good enough to get drafted but put 5-8 of those guys on a college roster and you got yourself a real team....maybe not the prettiest (like this years team in terms of offense) but a dang good team despite what the Buzz haters say around here.