Does Cal Win Another Title Here?
- Thread starter BigBlueCatNation
- Start date
It's really a simple question but this offseason answers it (and will probably be a mirror image of our last few offseasons):
1. If all we lose is Knox and I can even give you Shai, that is reasonable to lose those two....then we return all of our bigs, Quade at PG and Hami at SG/SF. Then you add in Keldon Johnson/Herro/Quickly to absorb the loss of Knox and Shai on the perimeter and SF...that roster looks to 6 or less games next year and would be a 1-2 seed and now you're back in title hunt. If Shai comes back, which he still has a ton to improve upon, we'd be almost a lock to be a top 8 seed in tournament next year,
2. But this is what always...Knox is a foregone conclusion, Shai isn't coming back. Then one of our bigs will take off (Vanderbilt/Wenyen) and then Hami will take a flyer on "potential"...and we're back to having all kinds of holes to fill with many unknowns and 7-9 losses happen vs. 3-5 losses, you're seeding is impacted and who knows.
3. We are no longer getting the top 5 kids in a class the last handful of years. (Zion, Barrett, Tatum, Giles, Bridges, Bagley, Bamba, Michael Porter, Jaylen Brown, etc..)..so we've magnified #2 above with lowering our recruiting a slight bit while still having the mass exodus of kids each year.
#2 is why it's hard to feel good that Cal is going to win titles at UK going forward and it magnified as #3 has been a legit.
1. If all we lose is Knox and I can even give you Shai, that is reasonable to lose those two....then we return all of our bigs, Quade at PG and Hami at SG/SF. Then you add in Keldon Johnson/Herro/Quickly to absorb the loss of Knox and Shai on the perimeter and SF...that roster looks to 6 or less games next year and would be a 1-2 seed and now you're back in title hunt. If Shai comes back, which he still has a ton to improve upon, we'd be almost a lock to be a top 8 seed in tournament next year,
2. But this is what always...Knox is a foregone conclusion, Shai isn't coming back. Then one of our bigs will take off (Vanderbilt/Wenyen) and then Hami will take a flyer on "potential"...and we're back to having all kinds of holes to fill with many unknowns and 7-9 losses happen vs. 3-5 losses, you're seeding is impacted and who knows.
3. We are no longer getting the top 5 kids in a class the last handful of years. (Zion, Barrett, Tatum, Giles, Bridges, Bagley, Bamba, Michael Porter, Jaylen Brown, etc..)..so we've magnified #2 above with lowering our recruiting a slight bit while still having the mass exodus of kids each year.
#2 is why it's hard to feel good that Cal is going to win titles at UK going forward and it magnified as #3 has been a legit.
I'm not lashing out at Cal. He's done well here. Looking at the title of the tread it says "Does Cal Win Another Title Here?" My personal optimism and love for the program says yes, but I'm certainly not confident. In the final analysis..if were were this insanely young team, bringing everybody back, and everyone was completely committed to pushing our program-and themselves-forward- I would be completely sold. The reality is that we're trending away from that. We lose kids that really aren't developed at THIS level based on their potential at the next level, and we always seem to come up just a bit short of the experience, leadership, and consistency we need.
