PODCAST: On the transfers of Griffin, Lewis & Grill
- Thread starter ChrisMWilliams
- Start date
I'm sure he is. Hopefully he's able to get it too wherever he goes. He could also be banking on the NCAA passing the new rule where transfers are able to immediately play once they transfer. From this article, ISU honestly makes the most sense as far as meeting his criteria. We're in good proximity to his home, there's going to be an immediate opportunity for playing time and most likely start, and he's going to get a great chance to impress NBA scouts.
I honestly don't think he'll go to Iowa.. Their roster is jam packed at the moment and although there is no doubt he'd play, I don't think he'd even start given Bohannon is back and will be a lock, as well as Connor being a lock for obvious reasons.
All bias aside, if he's looking for a place where he can be the star player, can get lots of exposure for the NBA, and is close to home, ISU would be a great choice for him.
Iowa State would be ideal, to anyone on the outside looking in. But, when I read that Nebraska has shown interest, I think it's all but a done deal at this point. When Abdelmassih (sp?) gets his talons in on a transfer recruit, he seldom lets go.
No doubt Nebraska is in play here. And Bettendorf is only about a 5 hour drive to Lincoln, which isn't terrible. Ames is like 2 hours and 45 minutes to Bettendorf. I have no idea how close he would like to be to home. If it's to the extreme that he doesn't want to be in another state, then that certainly helps us.
Another factor might be that he won't want to play in the same conference where he'll have to face Ohio State multiple times. Who knows.
Everything sounds easy to a layman, but experts recognize they are much more a crap shot. For every Royce White, we have a BDJ (that cost us one of our best seasons in school history).
At the end of the day, it's a very difficult job to manage 14 huge egos. Some years it works out for coaches, other years it doesn't. Strategize, adapt, learn, repeat--that's ultimately what every coach does (even if you don't see it).
BDJ had issues, but he was not the reason why the season ended the way it did. There were a variety of factors that went into that loss to UAB.
I do not want to lay it all at BDJ's feet, but he was a huge part of the problem.
That said, he came up in this thread because somebody said "Fred could always manage it" or something to the effect when it came to managing those egos.
Most of the time he could.
The one year he could not, it blew up in the program's face pretty badly.
Yeah there were huge differences in terms of talent and depth with how Fred dealt with some of those guys. Royce was an absolute pain in the a** to deal with for a variety of reasons, but our team was only going to go as far as Royce would take us. We absolutely needed him and Fred had to coddle him. With BDJ, we didn't necessarily need him in order to compete against great competition. Sure, he would no doubt help, but his absence or lack of playing time wasn't a determining factor.
Saying BDJ didn't work out is definitely fair, but his problems were some of many other issues from within the team. The combination of all of them came to light by losing in the first round. Had we made the Sweet 16, I doubt many or any of these problems would even be discussed.
That team went into the last four Big 12 teams controlling its own destiny for an outright Big 12 regular season title. These were the four games --
@ Home (against the O'Neale/Gathers/Prince Baylor Bears)
@ Kansas State (and not a good team that year)
@ Home (against the Hield/Spangler/Thomas/Cousins Oklahoma Sooners)
@ TCU (another bad team, not even playing in their own arena that year)
Granted, that was two tough home games and two road games against inferior opponents, but we can do it guys? Right, this is our year...?
Scott "Timeouts" Drew beats Fred at his own game in Hilton, unleashing a barrage of threes late in the game when Fred refuses to call a timeout to break it up --
We had a 90% win expectation. We were up by eight with 9:00 left and blew it. Baylor kept hitting threes and Fred kept not calling timeouts until it was too late for us.
The next game, we quite literally fumble the game away in Manhattan --
We had a 95%+ win expectation. All we had to do at the end of the game was inbound it and draw a foul, and McKay dropped a pass right at him that hit him on the numbers. That was after Monté drew an and-one with 0:30 left to "ice" the game.
Then we beat Oklahoma -- in a great comeback, yes, but a meaningless one, not one that ultimately mattered much towards putting anything in the rafters or our seeding -- and TCU, and we ended up 12-6 in the Big 12 when Kansas went 13-5.
Win either of those games where we were firmly in control, and we win at least a share, and both of them means we would have broken the KU streak that year.
Nope. We ****** it up. Fred ****** it up. The buck stops here, right?
People still rage at Prohm for not winning the Big 12 with all that talent and after being in a good position in early February in 2019, but I rarely hear people complain that Fred ****** it up with even more talent in 2015 and in an even better position much later in the season (early March) to accomplish our wildest dreams of slaying the J-Dorks.
I guess Fred cannot get it done/cannot win without superior talent, either.
That season was a way bigger missed opportunity than 2019.
100%. And that's why I said BDJ wasn't the sole reason for us not doing as well. We completely folded down the stretch in some of these games and couldn't find ways to win. Prince goes off in the late second half vs. Baylor and we blew the game in Manhattan. Those games were must wins to win the conference outright. I don't think in any one of those games there were issues that BDJ caused.
In the UAB game, everyone was flat and Bryce having his outburst towards Fred caused Fred to not play him in the second half. Bryce playing sure could've helped I guess, but our core group didn't step up when they needed to. Guys started trying to do things on their own and stopped playing together. UAB rarely made any mistakes either.
And yes, although Fred never had down years besides his first year, Fred didn't exactly run a perfect program as some believe he did. Fred's last two years were probably the most talented we've been overall, and yet we still didn't win the conference outright.
Prohm does have a decent history of helping guards get to the league. And like I have said the last few days.....I believe we are a serious player here and will be mildly surprised if he doesn't end up here.
Fred also had zero coaching experience of any kind. Prohm had 15+ years of experience coaching before coming to ISU.
I did not even bring up this catastrophe.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/boxscore?gameId=400585810
The fact they were still in such good position late in the year after using up about five mulligans against that awful Tech team (which was 0-6 in the Big 12 at the time and ended up the season a dreadful 3-15) just says how good they were.
That team could be anybody. It has five future NBA players on it.
But it could lose to just about anybody, too.
Fred probably saw more egotistical BS as an NBA player and front office guy (all long before he started coaching) than any of us can possibly imagine.
Using that logic, why hasn't West Virginia won a conference title yet in the Big 12? I mean Huggins has had 30 years of coaching experience but hasn't been able to do it.
The reality is that KU is always going to have the most talented roster, the deepest roster, and the best coach. Self is no doubt dirty but until the NCAA does something about it, they're going to always compete for the title barring any injuries.
