Mullins is a great athlete but the rest that is a concern for sure. We all know the portal is going to be important to get at least 2 great athletes that can play D. Hopefully one of them is a bigger PG type.
A lot depends on the future of AK. Many on here assume he is coming back. I am not as confident. . We need athletes in both the front and backcourt.
Oh I saw the play, trust me. It's been happening all year. It won't help on the mental part of defense, but his ability to body up and feel confident in his strength to not be handsy could help. And it could definitely help in terms of taking the ball at the basket, drawing contact. That's really the next evolution of his game. Some of his takes this year have been downright comical in terms of just throwing the ball off the backboard. He threw up an airball in the paint against StJ's, which feels a product of him just being afraid of physicality.
I wouldn't call AK an even good athlete. I think with Stewart and definitely Abrahams we have good athletes at PF. Center is set. I think SF will be Mullins which will be fine but he is a bit undersized there even though he is a great Athlete. Yeah an athletic big PG and SG/SF would be great pickups in the portal. We would have the following then. Maybe even a 3rd transfer with size to play the SF would be great. Not sure we would get a transfer to play behind Ball but you never know with a kid stepping up a level from a lower conference who might just want to play for a National Championship and contribute.
Samson Johnson has some skills and has some holes in his game. But I've never seen a big who hits 77% of his FGs and 79% of his FTs, while playing defense the way the coach obviously wants him to, take incoming like many of the recent threads.
Gotta give the man credit for keeping up appearances on the bench, despite how his and our seasons are going. You can tell he’s had good role models.
Yeah he has really picked it up at the FT line. Makes me wonder if he could add a 10 foot mid range game to his offense. Sad to see we might never know as Hurley isn't allowing for that from either Center.
The NCAA needs to stop this 5th year, three school or four school nonsense. When colleges prefer to scout the portal over high school kids, the NCAA is beyond saving.
Ak isn’t athletic but he is a winning player. He started on two championship teams and in the right role is elite.
RE: SJ. His lack of any type of shot has been a glaring issue this season. Teams leave him wide-open in the free-throw area because he won't even think about shooting or even driving from there. If he was a threat from there, the season could've been better, but he's not going to do it now if he hasn't yet.
Reading between the numbers, he's taken all of 26 free throws in the BE this year across 16 games, so he's averaging about 1.6 free throws a game as a starting 5. It's nice that he's shooting with much nicer form, but his lack of getting to the line is a bigger negative than his shooting it well is a positive.
It’s pretty widely known AK is not coming back next year
Where's he going?
Pro. Like he very nearly did last year
What country?
He was literally getting drafted in the mid 40’s last year if he went pro
Pro teams aren’t going to care that he’s been in a slump for 2 months and throw away the fact he been a 40% 3 point shooter the prior 2 years