Trae Young
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@Crimsonorblue22 said:
@BShark compare youngster size to another player? He seems to me like another cf?
A better CF isn’t a bad comp.
@KUSTEVE said:
That Mark Smith cat looks like a bigger version of Wayne, doesn’t he? He doesn’t look especially quick, but he sure can score through contact.
Yeah he is bulky. At this point I think he is one of the better realistic options. Who knows though, it’s Bill Self and we’ve seen players added in the spring that we had no idea about before.
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Just posted on 247. Before you say well he called Self last, I would not read into it.
Trae spent much of his day Tuesday calling coaches to let them know of his decision. Brad Underwood in the morning, Lon Kruger in the afternoon and Bill Self in the late afternoon/early evening.
When I asked Trae if it was a hard process for him his response went something like this.
“YES!!!”
No doubt that it was. Calling coaches before making announcements seemed to be something in the past so I have a lot of respect for Trae for being mature enough to make those calls.
Where will he go? Unless there is a change of heart in the next few hours I expect Trae to stay in the city he knows so well. Norman.
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@BeddieKU23 best for last. We already knew he was calling them
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@BeddieKU23 if he does in fact not choose KU, you have to think about how bad of timing all of the KC Star articles were for this. Not necessarily what you want to be reading about a month before you are choosing to go to a school or not.
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@BeddieKU23 Do you know this for a fact or are you just speculating? Just curious. I don’t think he is picking KU either.
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@Kcmatt7 if he wanted to stay at home why do they waste so much of others time and money? That’s what pisses me off. If he goes to ou I hope DG D’s up his ass next year! Or let’s see him play some D!
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@Crimsonorblue22 You can’t be mad at someone for exploring their options. This is a big decision for him and his family. Like possibly millions of dollars decision. I won’t be mad at them for taking their time.
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Happy birthday fellow bucketeers! Lets hope we get our birthday wish!
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I don’t watch HS mix tapes on recruits anymore until they sign with KU. Who does Trae Young compare to most?
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@Eric-san Back atcha! But life will go on regardless. At my age, I add…“fortunately!”
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Happy he’s staying in the conference either way. Still a win for us.
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@Crimsonorblue22 I would understand if he was waiting until March to see if Graham stays or leaves. But I agree that if he does end up picking OU, it’s strange that it took him this long for him to announce it. Nothing has changed for several months with the pros and cons. Neither coach has sent very many PG’s to the NBA. With OU, he gets to stay home and play in front of friends and family. With KU, he will still be pretty close to home and get to play for a winning program along with many other smaller benefits. It’s a big decision, though, so I definitely don’t blame him for taking his time. I’m sure he was really struggling with the decision. It’s not easy to turn down an opportunity like being the starting point guard for KU.
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Do high school players always announce their decision at their high school? I know a couple of my classmates did when I was in high school. I wouldn’t think he would want to make the announcement in front of a bunch of Oklahoma locals if he was picking KU… Probably wouldn’t get a very good response from them. I would think he would use a different method like twitter if he was picking KU. Just my opinion.
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I thought it was customary for players to call the coaches involved in the recruitment ahead of time to let them know of the decision. I am not reading anything into the call order by common sense would indicate that you call the coaches the will not get you first since the conversation will be likely short and you call the coach of the school you choose last since the conversation will likely be longer…right?
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Wiggins announcement was done in private with no public attending…and no stupid hat ceremony; very classy.
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It’s OU obviously, no sense discussing it anymore.
Kind of a common theme among most KU commits. Heck even Josh just announced on twitter.
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@JayHawkFanToo There are a couple of different ways you could look at it. It would make the most since for him to break the bad news to the other two schools before calling the school that he’s choosing. He also may have wanted to announce some good news in between announcing the bad news. I could also see him calling the school he picked first before breaking the bad news to the other two schools. However, I think we can rule that one out since he called OSU first. I’m not looking too much into it. Who knows why he called the schools in that order.
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I am almost always optimistic about KU basketball but my expectations have been tempered over the years as far as players making an impact right out of high school. We can all say that this kid will come in and be “the guy” to run the point but who knows. We have had quite a few highly touted recruits not live up to national expectations. Josh Jackson has ben phenomenal and lived up to expectations and I think Wiggins did as well. B Mac and JoJo were studs as freshman too. But then we had Diallo, Cliff, Selby, Oubre, Xavier (to some extent)…these guys were top 10-15 recruits. I would not say that we got top 10-15 results. Just saying, we can’t be sure that his OAD year is a success no matter where he plays. Of course I hope he picks KU but we will be fine with or without him. RCJH.
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The big issue is that unless Self lands some more developmental prospects in this class we are looking at starting almost nothing but FR in the 18-19 season. And considering how weak the 18 class is, that’s not great.
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Hard for me to get excited about him when he lists the important items to him, and we have them all and then he picks ou. Ou is not far away either.
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@JayHawkFanToo That’s one of the main reasons why I think he is picking OU. I don’t know why he would want to announce disappointing news (for them) in front of all the locals when he could just do it privately. It seems like he is wanting to celebrate with them. It wouldn’t be much of a celebration if he was picking KU.
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@cjbooth38 but it’s his school not the city? Teammates would back him.
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@joeloveshawks But at this point, we might not have any other options at the point guard position and I really don’t think Young would be a bust like Selby was. Even if we are forced to use Newman as our PG, we would then be short handed at one of the other guard positions. Garrett is not ready to be a starter or to play heavy minutes. Cunliffe would start for us in the second half of the season if Young doesn’t pick us and both Graham and Svi doesn’t return.
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I ask Scott about other options and he mentioned Duval but also Mark Smith.
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@cjbooth38 said:
@joeloveshawks But at this point, we might not have any other options at the point guard position and I really don’t think Young would be a bust like Selby was. Even if we are forced to use Newman as our PG, we would then be short handed at one of the other guard positions. Garrett is not ready to be a starter or to play heavy minutes. Cunliffe would start for us in the second half of the season if Young doesn’t pick us and both Graham and Svi doesn’t return.
Honestly at this point we need Graham to stay.
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@Crimsonorblue22 I can’t imagine it would only be students there. Oklahoma fans have been waiting a long time for him to make the decision and I wouldn’t be surprised if the school let outside fans attend.
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@cjbooth38 I agree that it would be great if we land him. My point was really more in the realm of expectations if he does become a Jayhawk. That said, let’s say Graham leaves and we don’t land Young. Will the ship sink?
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I don’t think the ship would necessarily sink… We have too many good players outside of the PG position for it to completely sink. That being said, it would be one of the worst teams we’ve had in a while and we wouldn’t even be a top 15 team imo.
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@cjbooth38 It will be interesting, man. This year we have such an incredible back court. Next year we may end up having a really deep front court if Doke’s hand heals, Bragg re-learns the game of basketball and Billy Preston partially lives up to the hype. Could be back to pound it inside?
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@cjbooth38 We had a lot worse players at a lot more positions the year Nadiir was running point. And they ended up a top 10 team. I’ll hedge my bets that Self can figure out a way to make the roster work and play top 10 basketball.
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If I were Trae Young, I would be really nervous to pick OU. They already have a solid PG this year in Woodard (although he is injured now) and they are still really bad. Does he really believe that he will make more of an impact in his freshman year than Woodard?
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Under Coach Self, KU has replaced all 5 starters before and done fine. Even if Young does not select KU, it will still be a top 10 maybe a top 5 team based on what it has returning. Remember, Coach Self is the Master of last minute miracles so I don’t believe he is done recruiting for next season quite yet.
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I think the real decision here for Trae is whether he wants to go to a predominantly FOOTBALL SCHOOL, or go to a predominantly BASKETBALL SCHOOL.
Even though our football program is about to get turned around, Kansas will always be known for basketball and has invested in plush dorms and training facilities. We have (easily) one of the best strength/conditioning programs in the country that is being used as a model elsewhere.
OU is football, with basketball a very distant second.
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@Kcmatt7 Yeah, I know we’ve had worse players. When I said it would be one of the worst teams we’ve had in a while, I was referring to the past few (3-5) seasons.
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Direct comparison I would say Tyus Jones. Jones was on the National Championship Duke team a few years ago as a freshman. Young is an elite shooter, even better then Jones. Young’s shooting compares to Steph Curry. That is what I see. High praise, he’s a good player.
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Well we’ve all seen what Scott doesn’t know these days
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@Kcmatt7 I think our record would be similar to our 2013 and 2014 seasons (25-10 and 27-9).
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You would think he would want to get away from home and second if he wants to go big, he needs to get bigger. Pretty scrawny looking.
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I agree its not that KU won’t have talent next year, its that there will be little to continuity throughout the roster.
We are looking at Lagerald Vick being the only guy coming back who would have played in every Big-12 game. That’s just scary.
Coach Self wanted a top PG for a reason, going after Young so hard was not a luxury signing its the difference between having an actual point guard on the roster that can be depended on to fill the shoes of Mason departing and Graham most likely leaving as well.
Now its up to Self to pull that magic rabbit out again and find a suitable plan Z at this point. Usually its worked. We better hope it does again
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Seems like he’s too close to his family to leave. Mom didn’t want him to leave as most mothers do. In the end he’s sticking with familiarity. And if all goes to plan in his freshman year he won’t be at OU long enough for it to matter.
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@Crimsonorblue22 I had the same thought about him wanting to get away from home. Even his mom said that she is worried about his development as a man if he stayed in Oklahoma. He needs to learn to be independent. Time to cut the umbilical cord.
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I thought his announcement was at 1!?! So why the pessimism? I’m holding on to a sliver of hope until I’m told otherwise.
Winners play for Self. If a player runs from Self, who wants him?
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@dylans I think it’s because our CB prediction has gone from 58% to 12% within the last 10 hours or so. Seems like some info leaked about his decision.
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because he’s already told the coaches his intentions and that info has made its way out into the recruiting world…
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More to add that I jacked from the thread on the phog. There is also a list of possible transfer bigs as well.
Brandon Goodwin, Florida Gulf Coast: 6-foot-2, 180 lb SG who transferred from UCF after the 2015 season (remember him?). He’s putting up 17/4/4 on 55/40/78 shooting splits.
Jonathan Stark, Murray State: 6-foot-0 PG who used to play for Tulane, but transferred. Averaging 21p/3.6r/5.3a per game on 43/42/83 shooting splits.
Mark Alstork - Henry Caruso - BJ Johnson - Isaac Nielson -
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@BeddieKU23 There are definitely options on the transfer market. We don’t even need a guy who can score at PG. We need a guy who can pass, knock down a wide open 3 and play solid defense. Nothing special, but a solid experienced guard. I’m confident we will land a guy who can at the very least do that.
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I wonder who Towson has recruited this year at PG?
Hmmmmm…
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@dylans Pretty sure when “the oklahoman” is running a live stream countdown for his announcement…safe to say it’s etched in stone to the Sooners
http://newsok.com/multimedia/videos?live=MaMSh3lV1NQ#gsc.tab=0
chalk him up to my Al Freeman category…where 2 times a year (sometimes 3) I’ll watch and briefly pause for a moment and think “you dumb bastard…look at you wearing that trash jersey and getting another loss when you could have actually had hope and aspirations of winning a national title and not have to endure the torture of living in waco (or norman, or stillwater)”
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@bmensch1 where is al freeman?
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Guard for baylor…Was down to Nova and KU (in 2011 I think)…committed to UCLA…de-committed from UCLA and Drew got him to Baylor. He was a prized commodity at the time.
