How about that defense.
It's clear this team has major issues beyond just an injury. It got an all-time outlier three-point shooting game by Bayela with the game over and still got destroyed. The lack of depth and preparation at perhaps the most important position has exacerbated that problem sure, but the team sucks. At this point, I care less about what happened in this turd of a game and what the plan is to fix it. This team was already on pace to finish as one of the worst in ECU's poor history, so what about next year?
It's pretty clear even with the NCAA voting to stop 2nd free transfer waivers and give basketball clarity on transfer movement, ECU is trying to move forward with this current team and new high school players. This while transfers will be essentially locked in unlike they ever have before after you land a transfer. It's extremely disappointing as you watch teams hit the portal and massively turn their program around in one season. If they recruit proven sophomores and juniors they don't have to worry about them transferring either. They've burned their freebie. That is clearly what most schools will be looking for.
ECU on the other hand is apparently hot and heavy on a high schooler from Goldsboro who doesn't even have a verbal commits page and just one other offer to Alabama State. I'm not opposed to taking a sleeper player like this once and a while, but in two years that's all they have taken basically. Players like LaCount, Pinedo, Sunderland have looked the part of having poor offers or only one or two to rub together. Jones couldn't even get on the court.
I don't get the rush to lock in a high school player like that. Why try to lock him in in January when he will likely still be there in May or June because no one else is recruiting high schoolers like this. Every other program seems to want to keep their chalk dry until at least until the portal fills up. If no other reason at least to test those waters. It's clear this staff has no interest in the portal and if you aren't in the portal game at all I see no way that succeeds in 2023. All these rules are incentivizing college-free agency and ECU is no where near the bottom in resources paying about top 100 out of 363 for their coach. It's severely hampering at best when you ignore the more important pool of talent in basketball. They aren't even trying there, they said as much and I believe them now. How would they even know what is available to ECU? Meanwhile, there are low majors racking up proven known talented players outperforming ECU left and right on half or a third of the resources.
Even if you think these high school guys are massive sleepers, and then you farm them up and get them college videos to shop through a couple of years while you inevitably lose with freshman. Then if they are actually good or you developed them some, you got to hope to hold on to them. NIL agents will call them and P6 back channel NIL figures will come. When has ECU ever kept players, even before a free transfer and NIL money?
This is the plan. ECU gets a gift of 2 players leaving to try to improve this team, yet it's more high school targets when basketball will again have a super senior class and your team sucks. Your high school recruiting sucked on one of the worst teams in ECU's history, and ECU remains years away. They said they might change course and recruit the portal if this didn't work. Look around. This was always a stupid roster build and it's showing. Now they seem to be doubling down on what built it this way.
As usual you make an excellent case for using the portal but that clearly is not what Coach is going to do. He and his staff have a plan and they seem to be sticking to it. This season has taken a decidedly negative direction and his plan has been criticized by many fans, yet he remains determined. I'm just not qualified to offer anything more than one person's opinion, but I will say that if we assume he continues and just adds another freshman or two going into next year then the results will be on his shoulders. If things don't go well next year, with little to no improvement, there will be much more criticism. I think many fans are willing to see what comes of this plan, but another year of being worse than we were under Dooley is bound to generate some heat. I truly hope the staff knows what it is doing and we see solid improvement next year. I don't really expect much out of the remainder of this season as long as Small in on the bench. I enjoy your site and appreciate your thoughts and comments.
ReplyDelete