Makai Ashton Langford asks for Release | Page 11 | The Boneyard

Makai Ashton Langford asks for Release

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mauconnfan said:
Bazz yes, knew he was a player but could someone get him to play for the team, with the team. JC fell short on that his soph year. Niels was never that guy as a soph that he was his last 2 years under KO not even close. Hell he was guarding all 5 positions by his senior year and physically an impact. Not at all under JC. Need to give the kudos with the crap is all I am saying here.
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And Daniels it wasn't even close. He broke out under Ollie.
 
mauconnfan said:
Bazz yes, knew he was a player but could someone get him to play for the team, with the team. JC fell short on that his soph year. Niels was never that guy as a soph that he was his last 2 years under KO not even close. Hell he was guarding all 5 positions by his senior year and physically an impact. Not at all under JC. Need to give the kudos with the crap is all I am saying here.
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JC's last year was a total mess. As he used Bazz and Giffey well in their freshmen years and had issue coaching in general their sophmore years. Either way they were improving even if so slightly. KO had to give both of them more freedom their Junior year as he had nobody left. Even in JC's bad years we had chance to make the NCAA tourney as an at large. KO we are scrambling to make the NIT during his bad years. We aren't getting the NBA players that JC was getting either. I know the league isn't helping KO out but Cincy seems to be sustaining even though they are stuck here.
 
CTBasketball said:
I agree with most of your post, but hear me out.

Chillious is a huge question mark. We hired him with the anticipation he could recruit the same way he did at UW. We're not a P5 school. We aren't guaranteed 2 games each vs. the likes of UCLA, Oregon, and Arizona. Here you'll get Cincinnati on a Sunday night and SMU on a Wednesday at 9pm. He will seriously have to earn his bread and butter, because he is not regarded as a good gameplan and X's and O's coach. He's a recruiter who has to recruit in a much tougher environment.

The NCAA's are still a possible goal. Feasible too IMO. We just can't have any injuries and we need to pray to God Jalen Adams takes the "leap" into UConn stardom. The frontcourt must play well from the beginning. We don't have any dependable front court players. If you look at our roster, we need everyone to outperform expectations if this team has any chance at being near the NCAA's. Its possible, but KO needs to KILL it next year, and he arguably has a tougher hand than last year post injuries.
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A good recruiter is a good recruiter. John Calipari got kids to come and play Marshall, Rice, UTEP, UAB. Gonzaga gets players to come play Portland, Pepperdine, etc. Does the conference play a role? Of course it factors in. But good recruiters will get good results. I expect Chillious to do the same if given time.

The second half of the post is right. I'm pretty sure that Jalen will make a leap. But we need Larrier and Gilbert to come back healthy, and Durham to be confident in his body. We also need Chillious to bring in some recruits. We have four open scholarships. That's a lot of time and productivity to replace.
 
sled dog said:
Something is not right- loosing 3 kids this way within a week or so- must be more to it than we are aware of
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MAL is different because he was never in the program but clearly it's a toxic environment. It's gotta be a mess behind closed doors in addition to what we can all see.
 
TheRealKBuks said:
Its times like these I really appreciate people like Shabazz, Neils, Deandre, Phil, and Rodney who stuck with the program during its darkest moments. I know I'm leaving key people out, but those are True Blue Huskies right there.
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Even more amazing about that group was how selfless they were. Deandre is a skinny guy who believed he was a 3 who willingly became a PF and defended much bigger stronger guys. Niels defended 4s and 5s as well. Major sacrifices for the team brought about that championship.

Somehow KO sold them on it through 2 years of effort. Now we have a lot of guys looking out for themselves and their role and playing time. Has the recruiting done a poor job of assessing character, or has KO become a worse salesman on teamwork and sacrifice?
 
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I just don't understand vital "weighing options" because he might not be guaranteed starter minutes, not everyone can play 30 mpg. In fact it's a bad sign if vital is playing that much imo.

Blake harris or the French kid, come on down.
 
pj said:
Even more amazing about that group was how selfless they were. Deandre is a skinny guy who believed he was a 3 who willingly became a PF and defended much bigger stronger guys. Niels defended 4s and 5s as well. Major sacrifices for the team brought about that championship.

Somehow KO sold them on it through 2 years of effort. Now we have a lot of guys looking out for themselves and their role and playing time. Has the recruiting done a poor job of assessing character, or has KO become a worse salesman on teamwork and sacrifice?
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You need to be consistent with the portrait you are painting for others to see.
 
pj said:
Now we have a lot of guys looking out for themselves and their role and playing time. Has the recruiting done a poor job of assessing character, or has KO become a worse salesman on teamwork and sacrifice?
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This is not about roles or PT. Something else is going on internally.
 
BUConn10 said:
Now that we can be frank... I always thought MAL was a gear slower than everyone else in what I saw of him. Still stings like a mother though.
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You mean you haven't been frank before? Quite frankly, I thought you had!;)
 
James said:
I just don't understand vital "weighing options" because he might not be guaranteed starter minutes, not everyone can play 30 mpg. In fact it's a bad sign if vital is playing that much imo.

Blake harris or the French kid, come on down.
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Where was that said? My God this is the problem with kids, no one want to just be a teammate or an impact piece of a winning puzzle. I hope it's inaccurate I love the kid.
 
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Lefty2one said:
This is not about roles or PT. Something else is going on internally.
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This. And I also don't understand those who continue to think the problem is our conference and recruiting. KO is still getting talent to come in. However, it isn't gelling and the domino effect in the last week is extremely alarming. I've heard for some time that the players aren't high on KO's coaching ability. Moreover, I think many would admit chemistry has been lacking. Call me a pessimist but I'm pretty concerned right now.
 
CAST-BONE said:
Jim Calhoun (and Dom Perno) built this program from nothing. It wasn't on 4/5 star recruits, but on hard-nosed young men that bought into JC's vision and gave their all for their coach, their teammates, and their university.

If these players don't want to be here, frankly I don't want to see them on the court wearing a UConn jersey. We played soft uninspired ball much of the year, and this was just one of the reasons why.

KO needs to coach better, he'd admit that. A majority of communication is nonverbal, his pout face is not just old to you and me, its old to his players.

The players need to play better. This season we couldn't sub someone even when they made mistakes, we didnt have the opportunity to provide teaching lessons and reinforce that poor play leads to sitting on the bench. Ollie far too many times had to coach energy as well. The players should be bringing this every game, it shouldn't have to be brought out of them.

Clearly venting here, but in all I'm an internal optimist. I think this can turn into a net positive for the program if KO takes a hard look at why these players are leaving/ turning away. UConn had three straight losing seasons before Jim Calhoun arrived in 1986, if KO learns from these hardaches and brings a renewed vision for himself and the program just like JC did, I think UConn will continue to shock the world.
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This is a great post. Better days are coming. It could be that those who are leaving are hearing footsteps at the door. Stay tuned! I think the new coach will help KO and the team immensely. Talent and toughness.
A great combination!
 
tzznandrew said:
A good recruiter is a good recruiter. John Calipari got kids to come and play Marshall, Rice, UTEP, UAB. Gonzaga gets players to come play Portland, Pepperdine, etc. Does the conference play a role? Of course it factors in. But good recruiters will get good results. I expect Chillious to do the same if given time.

The second half of the post is right. I'm pretty sure that Jalen will make a leap. But we need Larrier and Gilbert to come back healthy, and Durham to be confident in his body. We also need Chillious to bring in some recruits. We have four open scholarships. That's a lot of time and productivity to replace.
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We need chillous bc Ollie as a head coach can't be the best recruiter or main recruiter. He should focus on xs and os and then seal the deal
 
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mauconnfan said:
My God this is the problem with kids, no one want to just be a teammate or an impact piece of a winning puzzle.
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Unfortunately there's an awful lot of that going around. The joy of winning comes from the guys with you working toward one goal. You can accomplish an awful lot when nobody cares who gets the credit.

Cliche, but true.
 
Alterique liked MALs Instagram post about him opening up his recruitment fwiw
 
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Jalen is going to be sooo good next year. If we can land some nice complementary talent there is some serious "us against the world" mojo potential for next year. Or KO could be losing the team and we see even more transfers . Quite the pivot point we find ourselves at.
 
I'm not sure what's worse, the people who make war analogies and post Geno Auriemma motivational videos every time a kid leaves, or the ones who are adamant that we are recruiting "the wrong type of players."

Boat de-committed twice before he got here and nearly left every year he was at UConn. He actually left West Virginia because he didn't want to compete for minutes. DeAndre almost transferred after his freshman year. "Neils" almost turned pro in Germany. Shabazz thought about leaving when Calhoun retired and almost fought everyone on the team during the 2012 season.

The amount of romanticism that is assigned to college sports by this board is insufferable. Kids commit for themselves and they stay for themselves. It's always about yourself until the ball is tossed into the air in November. Then, suddenly you share a common goal with a dozen other guys and you become a family, not because you listened and took notes like a good little boy when coach was lecturing you on the value of teamwork when you were a kid, but because you need each other.

Kid is clearly leaving because of the Miller situation. That's his right, and it's not a decision that is more or any less arbitrary than others that have been made in the last month (if you want to criticize somebody, direct it towards the guy making millions who decided to fire his assistant coach).

Vital will probably come back because now there are minutes open for him. Adams will come back because he's not good enough to play in the NBA. Larrier will come back because he likes the Dairy bar or whatever other stupid reasons people have. They'll all be hailed as guys who "bleed blue" and it will be stupid but ultimately it won't matter because they'll be here and we'll love them because of it.
 
Here is my decree on this topic:

If you don't want to be here, don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.
 
I think it was before that. VJ wants to play the 3 and MAL probably wants to go to a placewhere he can be the featured guard day 1

I think SE transferred more because he wants to develop and knows he has tons of work to do

Son of Robert said:
I think two of these players, Vance and Mal, saw that they were being recruited over with the addition of Chillious and what he's hopefully bringing with him.
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