agreed. freeman is solid and consistent. also a physical load to deal with. i like gwath as a back up center/power forward. dont think you can bank on gwath as a stater when each of his first two years he played just 25 and 26 games.
Magoon Gwath
- Thread starter BBNUK4Life
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Those guys get better with age and the largest leap is usually sophomore year for a lot of guys. He improved for sure and now his junior year he should be at his best. Freeman would be a great get. Magoon would be a decent reserve, but his thin frame concerns me. I don’t like lack of skill big men either as far as passing and ball handling. We should look for Amari like guys at every chance we get. Even if they are a 6’8” or 6’9” Forward. It works best for our system.
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Gwath hasn’t played an entire season his entire career. I wouldn’t take him as anything other than a backup. The Freeman vs Gwath argument also doesn’t make much sense at all, they don’t play the same positions. A pairing of Gwath at the 4 and Malachi at the 5 would be disastrous.
He must be pretty good ranking the 20th best overall portal player and like 5th big man.
This seems rather rigid. You’re also assuming he won’t improve in year 3 and with better players around him. Plus all he had to do was hit 5 more over the course of the season or not slide in his last 3 games (1-11 to end the year) to go from non efficient to efficient by your standards.
I’m fine if they go another direction though.
Box +- is one of the worst stats ever created. It can give you a quick snapshot of who had a bad game, but it can also be extremely misleading. It depends on when They got minutes, who they played with, what the score was. All kind of random factors.
As a freshman he averaged 13.5/7.9/1.4 and shot 33% from 3. I can’t believe he said he’s a back up. The 20th ranked overall portal guy is usually not a backup level player. Usually by their junior year a big really starts to play his best basketball too.
if you watch this game footage against Lamar (powerhouse program of course) and come away still thinking he’s a better/as good of an option as Freeman at the 4, I have a plot of land on the moon to sell you
Well, it's not my money to spend, not your either. I want starter level guys, backups can come later and Gwath most likely won't be going anywhere to he a backup.
But your list of players that are better than Freeman, is laughable at best. Seriously, Mo D, Moreno and Chandler? What? Freeman is a power Forward, why are you listing guards anyway?
Jelavic was a "starter" for 20 games last season. Would you consider him to be a starter? He averaged 15.6 minutes per game. Gwath averaged 19 mpg. He might start somewhere but he's not getting "starter money" for that. Kind of an irrelevant term. Freeman posted 31.5 mpg and will get a huge NIL deal. For the money he'll command, I'd much rather have someone like Murauskas.
It's a positionless metric. If a player is responsible for netting his team 12 points per 100 possessions, that's more productive than a player who only nets 4 points per 100 regardless of position. All of the Kentucky players I listed were more productive in the two publicly available plus-minus models I mentioned: BPM from Sports-Reference and BPR from EvanMiya.com.
If you think it's laughable, then how hard will you laugh when you learn that every NBA GM and all of the smart college teams are using these metrics to evaluate players. Kentucky signed a deal with Evan Miyakawa to use his enterprise product. Michigan was the first to use it.
Well, this proves everyone views things from a different lens. I can't even come close to agreeing with you on your points, because I see red flags with Gwath when it comes to playing power 4 comp. He falls on his face.
Freeman has proven himself over and over, in a power 4 conference.
But, I won't argue, your opinion is your opinion, I just disagree with it.
Strength of competition matters. One player played in the ACC, the other played agains Mountain West competition and wilted against the only power 4 teams he played against.
UK had more talent around them. Syracuse lost their last 6 games, lost 8 out of their last 10 and 12 out of their last 15. It was a bad had season for Syracuse.
Wait, you think Gwath is the better NBA prospect?
He's not the better college prospect, Freeman is rated higher in every metric yiu want to look up.
We are just having a discussion. You don't have to agree with me. I see red flags on Gwath as well, but I don't put as much stock into him underperforming against P4 teams. Mostly for the reason that his entire team was overmatched in those games. Freeman's production also declined against better teams; many of his worst games were against tournament teams down the stretch.
Feb 7 @ UVA: 2/11 for 5 pts
Feb 16 @ Duke: 4/8 for 9 pts
Feb 21 vs UNC: 3/8 for 9 pts
Mar 3 @ UofL: 3/11 for 10 pts
Mar 10 vs SMU: 3/9 for 7 pts
The question here isn't "Is Donnie Freeman better in a vaccum than Magoon Gwath?" That's irrelevant because Gwath will never be more than a role player, while Freeman will necessary be a volume shooter who has the ball in his hands a lot. You should be comparing Freeman to other potential players that will command big minutes and big shot diets, and I have a tough time imagining how a bad-shooting PF fits into the Pope scheme as a volume shooter. It's a roster-building optimization approach, not a "pick the player who averages the most points per game" approach.
Yeah, Freeman had some bad games, but he also had 27 and 28 point performances against ACC competition. He had several double doubles and several games where he led in pounts and rebounds, again, these stats were against ACC competition.
Gwath has yet to do anything of note against good teams.
People that know basketball, have Freeman ranked way ahead of Gwath in the portal. Are they wrong?
I think you need to go watch Freeman’s games. He’s definitely not ball dominant, he’s a very good defender and cuts runs the floor like a deer. The kid is good my friend and would be outstanding as a starter for Kentucky. Gwath could get a few minutes if MM were to be in foul trouble or tired. We need the big dude from UCONN as our backup at center or someone strong who can score inside and rebound.
You’re wrong here. It’s ok if like the guy but the difference is not even in the same universe. Freeman will get starting money because that’s what he is.
Also Oweh and Aberdeen are the only players on that list that should even be mentioned with him.
I'm not looking at "better prospect." I'm looking at players that fit a system and what their roles will be. If you approach roster construction by sorting for average points per game and plugging in the highest numbers, you're gonna build some terrible teams. Freeman is absolutely not a better defender nor a better perimeter shooter than Gwath. He's a ball-dominant volume-shooter and not a particularly good one. If that's the kind of player you're looking for at the PF position, then Graves, Murauskas, and Goode are all superior options in the Pope system.
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False. The data says otherwise. Every Kentucky player I named was more productive last year in on-court value per possession.
It takes a rugged big man to have success in the SEC. I don’t know if Magoon’s game translates to the big leagues.
Personally I think he’d be great here. He wouldn’t be that rugged rebounder but he can shoot it and block shots. My concern is big time injury with him, but healthy I love him.
