BillySee58

https://247sports.com/college/north-texas/Article/South-Carolina-Gamecocks-basketball-recruiting-james-reese-commitment-164161214/

Agreed. I think something really adding to the fear here is this happening at the same time as all of the senior class getting an extra year of eligibility. We have an entire extra class of student-athletes retaining eligibility who normally would be on their way out making room for HS athletes and JUCOs. That’s creating an overflow of athletes available for essentially the same amount of roster spots. Would Jalen Jackson and Mykell Robinson be transferring if Thomas Bell, JJ Murray, and Jahmiah Simmons had vacated their spot on the roster like they would have in a normal year? Not sure, but it’s happening all across the country and it’s necessitating transfers if teams want to keep their guys, or other teams’ seniors. As long as P5 schools don’t get to raise their scholarship limit, it will all even out.

Scott has signed. Really interesting player despite the offer list. 6’6” wing with a really impressive scoring game.

It has essentially already passed. That’s how Jacob Farrell was able to play in the bowl game for us, and how Umoja Gibson was able to play for OU this season. The NCAA started proactively operating with that being the new norm months ago, first by implementing a blanket waiver. This is just a formality at this point. From back in December: https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/di-council-grants-waiver-allow-transfer-student-athletes-compete-immediately

Seems like an opportunity too good to pass up. We signed him under the expectation he’d play two seasons here and he did, starting every game and winning us two conference championships. Couldn’t have asked for anything more out of him. Easy guy to root for.

We’re going off publicly made statements here.

Maybe he doesn’t want to play for a fan base that says this of him and his teammates during the critical minutes of a conference championship game that they went on to win. “The starters are done. They are done. They aren’t going to get you the win.”

He never said anything about wanting to go close to home. That was just a theory some on this board posited.

That’s a good point. I wasn’t sure but my point was that I didn’t think we could legitimately recruit and offer guys who were actively on their current other NCAA teams. And yeah I always thought DIII did not offer scholarships. Either way just seems like a lot of hand wringing over guys who weren’t actually in our rotation or never clearly offered/signed.

Brune said he’s expecting closer to the end of the month for the dominos to start falling. https://247sports.com/college/north-texas/Article/Update-on-North-Texas-Mean-Green-basketballs-roster-163952942/ For example, in 2019 we landed Javion Hamlet, James Reese, Deng Geu, and Thomas Bell all within a 2 or 3-day span at the very end of April. Reese and Hamlet committed together on April 28th and Geu and Bell committed on the 30th. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the dominos fall quickly once they start. Especially if these guys come in on visits together here in the next couple weeks or so.

It’s hard to imagine a scholarship was ever officially offered to a dude who was not actually in the transfer portal.

It’s still 4 open scholarships at the moment. I never included Da’kquan Davis because he was always reported to be a walkon.

We need at least one other PG on the roster, and you can still start Jones. We just lost our primary PG and have 4 scholarships left. Of course we’re going to get at least one PG with those spots, possibly two guys who can handle the ball and initiate the offense. If Jones can beat them out, great. Otherwise he’s a guy who showed to be capable of being a primary ball handler but was far more effective off the ball. We’re not just going to give that guy the reins without exploring the external options.

Murray was a slot corner from where they listed him on the depth chart last year. As far as high safeties it sounds like Sanders and Gaddie are starting with Crosby and Alex Morris behind them. Then 2 of our highest rating signees are safeties in Dillion Williams and Harold West. Also that recent commit Cinque Williams from SLC is listed as a safety.

I put the lineup in the old terms that people are familiar with, but that “3” spot is a guard in this system rather than a forward. Jones fits there because he’s taller than McBride and matches better height wise with other teams 3s on the defensive end. Jones could start at the 3 and be the backup point guard at the same time, but I also think we need one more guy who can handle the ball, which is why I included us adding a combo guard. In conference play Jones shot just 33% from INSIDE the arc, and 35% there for the season. He has the passing and ball handling ability to be a primary, but he struggled greatly at creating his own shot which is a big part of the position. He shot well off the ball with catch and shoot 3s, but when he had the ball in his hands he struggled at creating his own shot. If Jones is going to be a full-time PG he needs to improve vastly in that area. Hamlet is a great player to learn from in that he could score and create his own shot with the ball in his hands from all 3 levels.

In 2019 after the season we had 4 spots left to give and we identified 4 guys we really wanted. That was Javion Hamlet, James Reese, Deng Geu, and Thomas Bell. Those were the 4 we brought on for visits and we landed them all. It’s hard to replicate a haul that successful, but I expect Mccasland to make the spots count like then. With the last four spots I’d like to see a starting PG, a combo guard, a forward who can play the 4 and shoot, and a center to push Ousmane for the starting job. Here’s what the lineup would look like if we landed a haul like that of good transfers (D1 or JUCO). PG - Transfer PG SG - JR Mardrez McBride SF - FR Rubin Jones PF - SR Thomas Bell C - Transfer C 6 - Transfer combo guard 7 - Transfer forward 8 - FR Abou Ousmane 9 - SR SG JJ Murray 10 - FR SF Matthew Stone 11 - FR SF Aaron Scott 12 - SR PF Jahmiah Simmons 13 - FR C Chrisdon Morgan (redshirt) I fully expect Matthew Stone to be able to come in and play solid rotation minutes as a 3 and D wing. If Scott can play too we have a chance to be 11 deep if we want to be.

Murray is coming back. He and the team announced that. I agree on Jahmiah Simmons but Mccasland seems really loyal and Jahmiah doesn’t seem to care that much about looking for more playing time either. I would expect him to come back until we hear that he isn’t. Also, I’ve said this before but I like the idea of having some seniors on this roster. Otherwise we won’t have open spots to use on 2022 HS recruits, and we should be able to attract some really high-profile HS recruits given the current momentum of the program and being able to pitch a tournament win for the first time. Use these four spots on quality players and we’ll be fine. 4 good transfers, 2 returning starters, 3 other rotation bench players, and some promising freshmen would be plenty.

Thank you. Yeah he was the last one Mccasland was comfortable with giving legitimate minutes to. Would’ve been 8 had Jones been active.

I broke down the minutes played from the CUSA and NCAA tournament games. Here is how much everyone played: Hamlet - 242 minutes Reese - 217 minutes Bell - 211 minutes McBride - 209 minutes Simmons - 184 minutes Murray - 125 minutes Ousmane - 41 minutes Robinson - 13 minutes Jackson - 5 minutes Lewis - 3 minutes Jones, J Simmons, Wise - 0 minutes These were our 13 scholarship players. We basically went 7 deep, and that would have been 8 deep had Rubin Jones been playing. We’re returning 5 of our 8 players from our actual rotation. Basically the guys leaving here lately have been the end of the bench guys who did not make the cut on our rotation when it got condensed for tournament play. Robinson, Jackson, and Lewis were at the end of our bench, not really in the rotation. We have 5 rotation players coming back, 3 freshmen coming in, Jahmiah Simmons currently returning, and 4 spots left to find other experienced transfers to fill in our rotation. I know people on here don’t like seeing turnover but if we make these last 4 spots count we should be deeper than we were last year with all of our end of the bench guys gone.

We’ve traditionally been able to have lower recruiting budgets than many of our conference peers in most sports because of how much talent is close to us and within short driving distances. Mccasland has not been very successful recruiting DFW. I would say even Benford was more successful recruiting locally, and Jones definitely was. Hoping this recent success can give us some momentum with local recruits and allow us to land local recruits on the same tier as guys like Chris Jones, Jordan Williams, Jeremy Combs, etc.

*You’re. And without speaking for Miner, Robinson definitely wasn’t a poor recruit but we also got him before we won a tournament game. Winning a tournament game should open up the door to even more highly regarded recruits than we were able to then. It’s Ousmane. Ousmane. Come on, not that hard. Keep seeing Osume or something else really not all that close. And yes, JJ Murray did announce he’s coming back.

Tough to see this one because he really seemed like a good fit for what Mccasland wants out of that stretch 4. Always worry a little about true freshman transferring when they don’t play much. Good news is he probably isn’t all that difficult to replace with a better player, especially next season. Also probably a sign Jahmiah Simmons is staying.

We’ll see. Definitely interesting to track for the marginal guys. These were some of the agents’ feelings towards it at the time.

Yeah, you’re right, but only if the agent is an NCAA-certified agent. This is a recent rule change that the NCAA enacted when they created their system of having their own NCAA-certified agents. If the player signs with an agent who is not on the NCAAs list of NCAA-certified agents then their eligibility is gone once they sign with that agent. Almost all of the big-name NBA agents did not bother getting NCAA certified when this became a rule last summer.