BillySee58

It’s a slow time of the year for actual news so I guess now is as good time as ever for some non-confirmed speculation. Yesterday was the deadline to withdraw from the NBA draft. Javion Hamlet was NOT among the players who withdrew. We weren’t expecting him to withdraw, but he also is not showing up anywhere on mock drafts so it might have made some sense for him to withdraw. Given that we are still holding onto one scholarship, I couldn’t help but wonder if we may have been saving it for Hamlet just in case. Even if the chance of him returning was always slim, it definitely would have been a bad look to tell him we didn’t have any scholarships left. Sure we could’ve made room, but that would’ve meant kicking a former teammate of his off scholarship so that would not have been ideal either. At any rate, with that possibility now completely erased, maybe we see Mccasland go out and get someone with it now. Going on a month now since we filled the 11th and 12th scholarship roster spots.

Houston, probably. 2019 in Denton, 2020 in Houston which got cancelled because of COVID.

By my count we have 81 players on scholarship and only 8 are seniors. So technically there are only 12 spots open for this class. Obviously there will end up being more than that due to inevitable transfers and players quitting that we always get. I wonder how many commitments we can really push for right now. My guess is the coaches are going to hold spots for transfers like most coaching staffs are doing now, and with the few spots we have available they probably aren’t in a position to take 15+ commits before the season like they have done in recent years.

Conference USA 1st team all conference linebackers last year were: • Tavante Beckett - 5’10” 214 lbs • Blaze Alldredge - 6’2” 220 lbs • Kristopher Moll - 6’2” 225 lbs KD Davis is listed at 5’11” 229 lbs and Tyreke Davis is listed at 5’10” 220 lbs. They are pretty in line with what size you typically see at 2nd level linebackers today. Including the good ones.

I found it interesting that we didn’t add any linebackers through the portal or JUCO ranks. In the secondary we returned 4 starters, almost 5 counting guys who split starting duties (Gaddie, Sanders, Stout, Whitlock, John Davis) and we still added 3 transfers who were D1 starters at their previous schools (Thornton, Faulkner, and Francis). On the defensive line we returned all of our starters but still went out and got 3 transfers there as well in ACU starting DE Kameron Hill, JUCO DT Kelvin Hutchings, and Arkansas transfer DT Enoch Jackson. The fact that we got multiple DL transfers and multiple secondary transfers makes me wonder if Bennett and Gush feel relatively confident in the linebackers. No reason KD and Tyreke Davis should be anything other than above-average starting CUSA linebackers.

Yes

Yeah that would definitely cause some potential problems. Again, that’s the kind of thing that I’ll start worrying about if there’s an indication. Does it start happening and to what degree will be the things to monitor. We have definitely seen it happen where kids with a lot of financial support from there family have chose to walk on at bigger programs. Luke Del Rio, son of NFL coach Jack Del Rio, decommitted from OK State to walk on at Alabama a while back. Around that time we were recruiting a Liberty Christian lineman who chose to walk on at OK State instead. And obvious the NCAA is a joke so relying on them to enforce things is going to be another huge variable.

Sure, he attempted to cheat punishment. He didn’t cheat against the competition. That was pretty clearly your implication to begin with. Didn’t expect you to dig in this deep, or that clarifying that Reggie Bush’ infraction was not cheating would be so contentious.

Sure. That’s accurate.

I said in what ways did Reggie Bush cheat. You accused him of cheating in your OP and thread title, not USC. What happened did not mean he gained an advantage. If you don’t think he should get the Heisman and statistics restored that’s one thing. To say Reggie Bush cheated is just not true of the situation.

In what way did Reggie Bush cheat?

It is to be expected that boosters will get involved now, particularly over the table rather than under or indirectly. What I’m waiting for the jury on is how much does that change the landscape? Sure boosters could help keep their guys, sure they could help take guys away. Does that create a drastically different landscape in regards to talent pooling from what we see now, while teams are still limited to the number of scholarship players they can roster? The arguments I’m more concerned about tabling for now are the ones regarding those type of effects.

I’ll mostly sit this one out but my one parting suggestion is to let this play out for a couple of years and get some sample to analyze what the effects are going to be. So many people want to Chicken Little this by giving a bunch of hypotheticals that we have no support on them actually playing out. They might, they might not. Let’s see some evidence of these things first. But this was always the right thing to do. If we want to talk about extreme examples, let’s talk about the ones that actually did happen as a result of the NCAA not allowing these things. Like the NCAA nixing GoFundMe’s created by student athletes trying to raise money for other people. There are many examples of the NCAA stepping in and doing ridiculous things like this.

We still have one spot open

He signed and is likely already on campus

He definitely has the widest range of outcomes, at the risk of sounding like I’m copping out there. He will likely compete for bench minutes as a wing with Matthew Stone. Scott definitely has more potential as a scorer but who hits their open catch-and-shoot 3s and defends better? That’s what will determine who plays more this season. Stone is likely going to be similar to Reese in shot selection, where it’s mainly catch and shoots and mid-range pull-ups. Scott has the ability to be more than that, more like a Jordan Williams. He can be an iso scorer who you give the ball and trust him to get a clean look at any level given his height. But again, if Stone is defending and hitting his open shots we won’t see the playbook expand for Scott like that this season. Who can adjust to the speed of the college game more quickly?

Yeah he has a skill set that we don’t get here often. He has the most impressive combination of size and shot-making arsenal out of any high schooler we’ve signed since Jordan Williams. Obviously he has to put it together but he has the ability and size to be a legit 3-level scorer and that rarely slips through the High-Major cracks.

Ha, I’m starting to think it is not just a coincidence seeing how many lefties we offer/sign. Also went after one last class in Jackie Johnson.

Correct: 2018 season - True Freshman. Played less than four games before being injured, therefore was eligible for traditional redshirt. 2019 season - Redshirt Freshman. Played less than four games before being injured, so he applied for a hardship waiver. The NCAA granted it, as they almost always do, for missing the majority of two separate seasons due to injury. 2020 season - Redshirt Freshman take two. Every player’s eligibility was frozen for the 2020 season, therefore every player’s 2021 eligibility is the same as their 2020 eligibility. May 2021 - Graduates college at end of third year of college. 2021 season - Redshirt Freshman take three.

We lost two starters to the portal who were actually going to keep his starting job in 2021 had he come back. Not to mention we only had 5 scholarship seniors depart. Meanwhile we brought in a full signing class of 25 signees including 6 D1 transfers (3 P5 transfers and 3 non-P5 D1 transfers). Room had to be made, and who’s to say the coaches didn’t encourage players to transfer given the scholarship situation? Meanwhile the players get these parting shots essentially mocking their move to transfer.

JayD can answer this one better than I can but he graduated last month so I would think he should be here by now.

I think that’s a typo. He’s a defensive lineman with 4 years of eligibility left. Every transfer this season will be eligible immediately.