***Official 2019-2020 Transfer Thread***
- Thread starter ruflosn
- Start date
I miss the days of seeing a good transfer and getting excited/optimistic about them coming to Iowa State.
Well with CW all but confirming that Aiken is off to Seton Hall, our hopes and dreams come down to the longshot Turner.
Moneyball told a great tale about harnessing undervalued assets and using them, despite your inferior resources, to compete at the highest levels of a game.
The problem with Moneyball upon re-watching it last week?
Once word got out, those assets were no longer undervalued. It was a business practice that was very easy for the big dogs to copy, and they have. Heck, the end of the movie features the Boston Red Sox immediately trying to pilfer Oakland's strategies.
Ironically, baseball nowadays is back to its "fundamentals" -- that is, scouting and player development, which are directly trashed early and often throughout that movie as misguided if not actively harmful -- because everybody uses advanced statistics to correctly valuate assets, so there are no easy arbitrage opportunities anymore.
The same thing happened with transfers. Cutting edge became common sense.
Top Grad Transfers came to Iowa State because we were the first ones to do it but also because we were always a Top 25-30 program every year. Grad Transfers want to win and get to the tournament. Having playing time is only part of the equation you also need a promising team and an above average coach.
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
There's a certain security in knowing that we're not in play right away, but the other way was much more fun.
"Team ready to win NOW" and "playing time available" are contradictory. Good teams with competitive rosters generally do not have a lot of questions about their potential lineups and rotations and therefore do not have obvious playing time to sell.
Nobody thought the 2014 team would be as good as it was. We kind of thought that would be a rebuilding year after losing Lucious, Clyburn, Babb, and McGee.
That was part of what made it so fun.
BDJ's legacy as a Cyclone is complex, to say the least, but I do not think you would ultimately say he was a success or a net benefit to the team.
Those were both 5-7 years ago, too. That is a lifetime in college basketball. I know DeAndre was an old man in college, but he is closing in on 31 years old now.
Power 5 teams that lost 20 games this year are: Vanderbilt, Kansas State, Northwestern, Nebraska and Iowa State. It’s going to be tough to overcome that stigma and try to get a quality grad transfer who believes we are close to getting to the NCAA Tournament.
Who were the "top" grad transfers? Fred only brought in Jake, DeAndre and BDJ. BDJ was the only one of those guys highly regarded, Kane was sought after but ended up being much better than anticipated. Fred built his program on sit out guys, not grad transfers. You can argue GT's put him over the top but he didn't get Kane until his 4th season and BDJ his 5th. He had won two tourney games before that time. The GT game getting more competitive is a cop out.
Is the goal to be better than Nebraska or is the goal to get back to the NCAA tournament?
