That doesn't mean he won't play the 4. Last year Otz started 4 guards (Lipsey, Holmes, Grill, and Kalscheur) during the first half or so of Big 12 play after Kunc's injury and before Grill's injury/departure.
Iowa State Transfer/Recruiting Class 2024
- Thread starter CoKane
- Start date
Sign me up.
That other big could be a flier type. A young guy that already can play defense and rebounding, but hadn’t yet demonstrated offense
Assuming our top targets are Jackson (committed), Heise, Hadley and Kyle, which seems to be the consensus at this point, it looks like we are going for a (in Otz's lineup terms):
- A '3' (Heise)
- A '3/4' combo (Hadley)
- A '4/5' combo (Kyle)
- A '5' (Jackson)
If we don't get the top candidate at any of those roles, I'd expect TJ to go get another (maybe? or get the best available?) Although I'm not sure we've seen TJ miss on a top transfer target yet.
With what CW said on the latest pod I hope people just stop talking about the incoming freshman playing. If one of them Pops Off great, if not, they probably aren’t going to play much and that should be the expectation, not a surprise.
Here's the latest thing I've seen from a Rivals scout:
Basketball Recruiting - Pete Hollis Invite: Top performers of Day 2
Darius Adams was one of the stars of the Pete Hollis Invitational on Friday in South Carolina.
basketballrecruiting.rivals.com
Nojus is a similar recruit with a similar level of "polish" as Milan was last year. I fully expect him to play. But of course I have no where near the sources or knowledge as Williams.
Heise won't be starting if he comes here. He isn't good enough. He will be a come off the bench type guy. I have watched him play long enough. He is decent. I would say a strong Pav.
If Heise can come in and give 15 minutes a night without much defensive drop off and be a consistent 3 pt shooter that will be super valuable to cut back a bit on the rest of the guards minutes and keep them fresh throughout the season
Kyle probably sees easily sliding in to the 4 at Neb. Fred played Allick as many mins as he could handle, and he was largely a zero on offense. Frankly I thought he was underwhelming defensively too.
Kyle is an upgrade at that spot, then they need to figure out how to get the offense of Tomenaga replaced. They bring everybody else back I believe.
Pass. Unless you want a guy that will bang your underage sister on a road trip
Where exactly are all these minutes to come from. We already have 4 guys coming back that will command 30+ minutes. Then we add Jackson and Watson, along with 3 freshman coming in.
The 3 guys you mentioned are all playing upwards of 30-35 minutes at their old teams. They are going to come here and play what kind of minutes now?
Hadley is already playing heavy minutes at a Power 6 program and his Torvick rating is better than any of our returning guys this year. How is he going to handle the Trey King role playing 18-20 mpg?
Basically the norm for the top 15 or so teams nowadays. Freshman are going to be lottery tickets that are tough to justify too many scholarships when proven mid-major guys are more of a sure bet.
We have some good players with elite effort, but do we really have 4 guys that command 30+ minutes?
Our defense got us a long ways, but we didn’t even have an all-conference type
There’s room for another high minute guard, in part via the 4 you mentioned getting more rest
I will fully admit I don't watch Tech outside of our games against them, but he's struck me as a chucker and not a very good one. He shot sub 35% on all FG's this year.
And the other issues with him that have been referenced make me say no thanks.
It is nice to not have to count on Freshman needing to make major contributions right away. Any freshman that plays significant minutes next year means they are pretty legit.
Those questioning the guards are forgetting something. While we have some great guys on the team, we don't have much reliability for shot-makers in that group. When one or two are struggling, we just have to play through it even though that might further limit our scoring and court-spreading ability.
