Draft Declarations Thread
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Doke said in the Star he’d probably be back without a first round guarantee. I like that a lot.
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FarmerJayhawk said:
Doke said in the Star he’d probably be back without a first round guarantee. I like that a lot.
This really couldn’t be put anymore plainly for Doke. - - The article from the star also said : An NBA Scout said they also had concerns about Azubuike’s conditioning.
" The scout said I just don’t know if someone like him is needed anymore, " The Scout said he’s in the wrong era. - if that doesn’t tell Doke at the minimum he needs to come back to College and try to work even harder to have any kind of shot. - I just don’t know if he will ever be in the NBA - -maybe oversea’s - -but NBA - just not sure
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Sucks for Doke but great for KU!!! Hope he is back.
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The issue for Newman is that he was an average athlete before (by NBA standards) and is still a pretty average athlete now. The decreases aren’t a big deal because they still make him average.
He has to show that he can defend 1s and 2s, that he can handle the PnR, and that he can pass. Everyone knows that he can score. He just has to show he can do it on both ends.
I see him as a off the bench spark scorer (Jamal Crawford, Lou Williams, Bobby Jackson type). If he can defend at an average level, he can make himself very valuable.
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@jayballer73 I have been saying it all along. No game outside of 5ft, poor conditioning, and he was 0-4 from the charity stripe in his combine scrimmage. He is still young and has time to improve his all around game. If I remember right Robinson practiced with the bigs and the guards to round out his game. So far Dok has put on a clinic on what not to do at the combine. I am hopeful he is encouraged by the feedback he receives and gets back to campus and gets to work. If he uses this summer to improve on his all around game he will be even more valuable next season for KU.
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I’ll never understand the free throw thing. I would take this challenge. Give me Doke for two weeks. Pay me $25,000. He’ll make 60% of his free throws next season, and so long as he does it the way I suggest, I’ll repay the $25,000 and chip in another $5,000 if he fails. This picture says it all. It should never, ever, never, ever happen on a basketball court, playing nerf hoop, or wherever.
Do not let him play if he does this. Bench.
Doke can do this. He needs to be forced.
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@HighEliteMajor “so long as he does it the way I suggest”
That conditional guarantees your money is safe!
The problem is that he doesn’t. That is what the coaches complain about. Benching could be a motivator, but the dilemma is that if he still does it wrong, you bench him and lose the possible 15 pts on 77% shooting from the (2 foot radius) “field”. Where do you decide it is worth the tradeoff?
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@mayjay Well, that little contract condition is my deal breaker. I’d be happy to take a payment from a third party, say, Adidas. Maybe not advisable.
But I did not see anything that said the was refusing coaching, or refusing to do what the coach’s said to do. Maybe I missed that. I had understood he was receptive when this all hit the fan after the OU game. I’ll add to my deal – I won’t even make him shoot granny style.
But the coach’s have more pull. For his own good, for his development, for the team in the long run, MAKE him do it the right way. Bill Self has a reputation of demanding excellence in the manner in which a screen is hedged, etc. I think he can demand this be done. I really hope Doke returns, and I really hope Doke gets the chance to improve here. He’s a monster near the hoop.
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Doke has responded well to coaching in other areas, sounds like it could be more mental.
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@HighEliteMajor I think I read somewhere a comment about him reverting when tired in game situations.
Or maybe I made that comment as a theory. It gets confusing after a few thousand posts.
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@HighEliteMajor that picture has always looked doctored to me. Not saying it is, but doesnt it make his head look disproportionately large and isn’t it weird that his face is clear (background) but his arms (foreground) are blurry? Really weird pic.
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@approxinfinity The photo is one I took on my phone from my TV screen, and posted in my prior thread. It’s probably because the video was stopped and the arms were moving in the frame. Sadly, not doctored. In fact, the KC Star hard a photo in its print edition were the ball is even further to Doke’s left. U … G … L …Y.
https://kubuckets.com/topic/6949/udoka-free-throw-solutions-photo-added
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@HighEliteMajor ahhh that makes sense. When I was a kid when my mom would lecture me I’d stare at her head hard enough until it started looking disproportionately sized for her body… Much better than talking back. Wasn’t sure if watching Doke shoot free throws had caused some sort of psychological reversion to childhood for me…
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@approxinfinity Haha I thought you were talking about the Naismith photo. Dok’s form is fugly, but he does look like an exaggerated fathead form of himself.
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Its shocking just how short KU was this past season.
We all realized that Self was shorthanded (pun intended) in his big man rotation, but my god!!! My suburban high school team in the 1970s was about as tall at positions 1, 2, 3, and 4, as KU was this past season!!!
Yes, the KU team was a lot more athletic than my high school team, but the only thing that saved the team from being completely blown out was the three good trey shooters.
Think about the real heights for Devonte, Malik, and Svi; then figure Vick HAD to be no taller than 6-3, and this was arguably the shortest bunch of runts to make the Final Four in many years.
No wonder they got their butts beat down by Villanova. Nova bunch of fake 75-100 ringers were all legitimately sized D1 players for their positions.
Good lord, imagine Mitch Lightfoot real height. He’s listed at 6-8, so he cannot possibly be more than 6-6.
Marcus Garrett at 6-5? Sure. In a fun house mirror, maybe. The guy was probably 6-3.
Now step back an look at last season’s Mighty Jayhawks.
Devonte 6-0
Malik 6-2
Vick 6-3
Svi 6-5
Marcus 6-3
Mitch 6-6
Doke 6-10
Silvio 6-8
Talk about finessing a dwarf team for 30+ wins.
This sounds like a team from 1962, not 2018!
The apparent embargo appears to have done its job, except Self keeps breeding hat rabbits like a DARPA project aimed at weaponizing Pookas.
The walls are closing in on Self, but he keeps finding cracks to slip through.
If he is able to win conference titles, 30+, and get to the Final Four, with a dwarf team, he has to be sooooooooo much better than all the other coaches coaching legitimate D1 talent that it must be scary for the other coaches to think about.
And it must drive one axis of the petroshoeco-agency complex absolutely berserk!
The last guy to hold this much edge over his fellow coaches was probably John Wooden.
Self is scary good.
He is not even using smoke and mirrors any more.
He is using dwarves including three that can shoot treys.
Not perfect.
He makes mistakes for sure.
But dwelling on Self’s mistakes is a little like complaining about Marilyn Monroe’s mole.
Marilyn drove men mad despite the mole.
Self, with his mistakes, well, he wins a ring, 14 straight conference titles, 30+ games and makes deep runs in the Carney, even with an apparent embargo monkey on his back. Its like handicapping Seabiscuit with two 100-hundred pound bags of readmix cement and Seabiscuit still outrunning War Admiral.
I’ve said this many times before: guys like Coach K, Cal, Roy, Jay, and Stumpy crash to .500 or .600, when they don’t have a full house with aces over kings.
Hell, Jay had to have six apparently fake 75-100 ringers that were bigger and more athletic and that were all better trey shooters than all of KU’s guys, except but maybe for Svi for Jay to be crowned the new genius of D1.
Would Self have lost a single flipping game with Jay’s treys?
What would Jay Wright’s record have been had he been coaching Self’s dwarf team with only three 40% trey shooters? OMG!
SIX HUNDRED tops.
Self appears to make some sub optimizing choices about certain players.
But then we learn that the players he wasn’t optimizing had baggage, or something else wrong, like they were refusing to come back for one or two more seasons, and the lesser player was willing to come back as long as Self would have him.
What if Self were recruiting on a level playing field?
What would his winning percentage be then?
85 percent?
90 percent?
95 percent?
These seem not just possible, but maybe feasible.
No coach has EVER won at a 90-95 percent level.
But it seems like Self could do it without too much trouble, if he were getting the kind of players the merely solid coaches at the other elite programs in the EST tend to get.
Imagine how tough Self and his Jayhawks would be to beat, if Self and his teams got the treatment Coach K and Duke get from the zebras.
Imagine if KU players could focus more on the game and ease by with Easygate classes.
Imagine how many players Self could sign, if KU were with Nike and Self could off the kinds of incentives to players that Stumpy reputedly offered in a phone call.
Imagine Self with 6-10 OADs–including one or two at each position–for several consecutive years?
I have never seen anything remotely like the level he is coaching at with the relative disadvantage he is coaching with.
Even John R. Wooden had to have a 6-1 wunderkind in Gail Goodrich on his dwarf teams in order to win rings. Goodrich was a flipping NBA shooting legend and started on an NBA champion. Goodrich was a 5 time NBA All-Star. The guy was freaking All NBA First Team one season. The guy scored 19,000 some points in the NBA. The guy played 14 NBA seasons and average 31 mpg and 13.8 ppg. Hell, he averaged over 20 ppg in four straight NBA playoff seasons. Who on Self’s band of dwarves last season will EVER come remotely close to those NBA numbers? Exactly none, that’s who.
And yet Self lead that team to a Final Four.
Its just flipping amazing.
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Nice fan fiction.
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Other than Villanova, point me to a truly great team in the NCAA last season. UVA stormed through the ACC, but we all understood their limitations even if no one saw UMBC coming. UNC was flawed. Michigan State couldn’t find an identity. Duke couldn’t defend. KU was jump shot dependent. Xavier lacked depth. Cincinnati struggled to score. Purdue lacked top flight talent. Michigan’s guard play was suspect. Ohio State had no one to complement their stars. Same story for Miami. UCLA was torpedoed by early season scandal. Arizona was torpedoed by late season scandal. The top freshmen were too spread out, many at lesser programs.
There were not any great teams this past season. Villanova was the best team for most of the year. Villanova won the title. Every other team had a serious flaw that ultimately saw them get knocked out of the tournament for that very reason.
Maybe next year there will be great teams, although it’s hard to see that coming through. Duke is still flawed in roster construction. So is UNC. Not getting Langford will probably haunt KU in a few key games when they could use his shooting. The FBI probe isn’t going away, so there will probably be some recruit or team that gets hit with that at some point. Kentucky probably won’t be able to rebound next year unless some of their guys come back. Arizona and Louisville are both probably sunk due to the investigation.
So who has the strongest team? Well, that’s still up for debate, but whoever does probably has a shot at running the table in March because next year promises a bunch of really good, but also really flawed teams.
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Good post and very true.
I think Gonzaga looks like maybe the most complete team going into next year. This was a young team reloading after some key departures. Their starting 5 should be as good as any getting back two NBA prospects (Hachimura, Tillie) to return for their Jr seasons. Norvell takes another step forward after a stellar Freshman year. Perkins runs point as the savy veteran leader. They will have depth, size, shooting which is all key.
The only other potential very good team I could find was Nevada but that hinges on both the twins & Caroline returning. There is a lot of talent on that team if all return especially adding a potential OAD in Jordan Brown.
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I am waiting to see who stays in the draft to figure out both Nevada and Kentucky. Those two teams look a lot different depending on whether some of their guys come back. Nevada with the twins back is a top 10 (maybe even top 5) team. Kentucky with Washington and Vanderbilt back is a monster (top 3 in the country, no question). Kentucky without them is a flawed team.
Heck, KU with Azubuike is a top 3 or 4 team. Without him, still good, but potentially turning into a team with a lack of frontcourt depth again
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Absolutely the fallout from the draft will change things a bit.
Nevada certainly could make a case as a top 3 pre-season team with the twins. Their PG returns from injury, added OAD possible Jordan Brown, 4 more high scoring transfers to the mix. It’s a ton of talent that will have to be worked on to mesh.
Kentucky still looks flawed to me even if those guys return but definitely their ceiling raises a heck of a lot with them. With them keeping mum on the transfer market it seems they must be confident at least 1 of the 3 is staying.
KU with Doke certainly has a higher ceiling and puts some pieces into place that would be unsettled without him. It downplays the impact Lightfoot and McCormack would have to give. With the unknown situation regarding De Sousa’s future we definitely could use a starter returning to anchor this team that’s facing a complete face lift
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Since the apparent long stacking has apparently been curtailed a few years back (to avoid arousing too much apparent suspicion?), we haven’t had a super team that I recall.
Historically, super teams have been fairly rare over much of the history of the NCAA. They have come only in short, infrequent, intermittent bursts, with the exception being UCLA under Wooden, when, after winning two with players other coaches didn’t want, he finally reputedly looked the other way while Sam Gilbert hired players the same way other top schools were then and had been hiring players the previous 15 years he had been coaching UCLA and finishing second in conference so many times.
Because of the above, I am not sure how to interpret your observation about Nova.
The point seems to me to be that was a super team in disguise. Once folks watched them, which I did not do during the season, it became apparent that they were one of the most extraordinary teams to come along in NCAA history. They were essentially unprecedented. It wasn’t just the offense that distinguished them. Many teams over the years have tried to volume shoot treys and combine that with match up zones. But no prior team ever had 6 >39 percent trey shooters playing in a rotation, including 2 highly athletic 6-9 to 6-10 big men that could drain the trey.
On a good night, there hasn’t been another team in NCAA history that could have stopped them. Even the Walton and Jabbar lead UCLA teams would certainly have lost to them on any hot shooting night by Nova. They would have absolutely smoked the undefeated Indiana team of 1976, which was a pretty weak outside shooting team. They would have run UK’s 2012 team off the floor on a good shooting night. Magic’s national champion? Last year’s Nova team would have beaten them by 20-30 points on a good shooting night. The only champion I can recall that might have stayed on the floor with them on a hot night would have been the Duke 9 OAD stack and even they didn’t have two post men that could and did drain the trey.
Nova was greatest anomaly and arguably the greatest team in the history of NCAA basketball, and they were apparently carefully kept under the radar screen of as many bettors as possible over the course of the season. The Media-Gaming Complex at least accidentally enabled the phenomenon.
Think how much more obvious it would’ve been that Nova was a great team, on the scale of UK’s 2012 team, or Duke’s 9 stack, had Nova’s now apparent ringers not been apparently sandbag-ranked 75-100.
Imagine just how on the radar screen Nova would have been all season had their 6 extraordinarily athletic, long, strong >39% trey shooters, including not one but two post men that could shoot >39% from trey, as well as run the floor, guard their positions, rebound, make free throws, and muscle, been accurately identified as precisely what they were: Top 25 players–all six of them.
It was a really sweet deal.
Why, they didn’t even win their conference, right? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Think of how it would have changed betting lines every game of the season, if everyone had known what they were. Think of how it would have reduced the opportunity to exploit the underestimation of how good Nova was most of the season. Think of how much money there was to be made by doing that, rather than apparently blatantly long stacking and hyping to the cloud frontier either Duke, or UK, as in the past.
Now, think of how, even if that were NOT what really happened (i.e., if they were not channelled, pooled and sand-bagged for Jay the last few years to make a big killing) , how easily and quickly the apparent Media-Gaming complex and/or the apparent petroshoeco-agency complex (note: elements of the latter reputedly being investigated for channeling talent as we exchange posts), could seize what happened for the model of optimizing.
What a sweet deal, eh?
You could even just run the scam every third season and most would never get suspicious in mass distracted, memory challenged America.
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Jay Wright is a good coach and talent evaluator. No sense in over complicating it.
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BShark said:
Nice fan fiction.
I will take that as a compliment, thank you very much.
“Fan fiction”, like “amateur journalism” before it in the 19-teens, is the breeding ground for literary innovation and greatness.
Modern science fiction and horror fantasy trace their roots not so much to Welles, Doyle, Huxley et al, but to American amateur journalism’s incredible tide of greats including H. P. Lovecraft, that embraced both the English ghost story and dark tales of Poe and blended them into what would become commercially marketed in first Weird Tales during the 1930s and then as the tsunami of American science fiction of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
The Inklings at Oxford made their top down contributions in the form of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, but the stuff that broke down all the boundaries and freed the human imagination to deal with the technological tidal wave that hit us in the 20th and 21st Centuries is American science fiction and American horror fantasy, and those clearly spring from amateur journalism.
Now today, the greatest hotbed of creation and innovation in literature is happening in fan fiction and maybe even on an order of magnitude greater scale.
The moribund film industry to busy with pedophilia to really incorporate truly creative writers have finally figured out that they can now steal popular, fresh film ideas from fan fiction web sites where the young men and women, and older ones marginalized by the producer oligopolies in publishing and film, can be found writing incredibly great stuff and offering the training ground for the next great literary tidal wave.
Thank you, sir.
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BShark said:
Jay Wright is a good coach and talent evaluator. No sense in over complicating it.
Sure, and John Calipari was just a great recruiter.
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!
Howling!
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BShark said:
Jay Wright is a good coach and talent evaluator. No sense in over complicating it.
When I stop to think about what you have written, I just cannot believe how I have overlooked the obvious comparison.
Jay Wright and John Calipari are apparently two sides of the same coin. They are almost interchangeable, once you make me think about it. They are both MASTERFUL recruiters able to recruit unprecedentedly anomalous numbers of certain kinds of players to non-elite majors (Jay at Nova and Cal at Memphis) and get to Final Fours doing so.
Thank you for calling my attention to this.
Do you suppose Jay will follow in Cal’s footsteps and go to an elite major next?
Wouldn’t this be great for the game? Wouldn’t you reckon UK would be about ready to replace Cal, who’s fabulous recruiting abilities seem to have mysteriously waned, so that they can benefit from Jay Wright’s fabulous recruiting abilities?
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
Rock Chalk!
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@jaybate-1.0 Wright is a better in game coach than Calipari. You frequently overrate Self.
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BShark said:
@jaybate-1.0 Wright is a better in game coach than Calipari. You frequently overrate Self.
NEVER overrate Self. His numbers speak for themselves, especially with the level of talent he gets to coach in comparison with the other top coaches. Self has NEVER had a team as talented as Jay’s was last season.
Regarding Jay vs. Cal as game coaches, you kind of pulled that out of thin air, so let me ground you in some quantitative reality.
Lifetime W&L
Jay 544-250 (.685)
Cal 678-202 (.770)
Cal seems to win more games and win at a higher rate.
So far as I can recall, all of Cal’s victories were achieved, while he was an “in game coach,” so it appears that Cal is quite a bit better “in-game” coach than Jay.
Though I admit, “in game coach” is a pretty fuzzy concept.
I am only using it because it is what you gave me.
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@jaybate-1.0 Cal has, in the past, consistently got more NBA talent than Jay Wright. Only looking at wins and losses is short sighted.
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BShark said:
@jaybate-1.0 Cal has, in the past, consistently got more NBA talent than Jay Wright. Only looking at wins and losses is short sighted.
Not shortsighted at all.
Evidence based.
Quantitative.
Large N.
Reliable.
Coherent.
Not out of nowhere.
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jaybate 1.0 said:
Coherent.
Now this is funny.
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Well Doke now has like 3 days to decide whether he stays in or comes back. - - With him taking this long now after the combine to make the announcement I just think it’s not looking good for the home team. Hope I’m wrong. Even if he comes back though I would still like to see him work and work hard in developing some kind of shot a liitle aways from the hoop not just the slam to help pull the defense out some from underneath. I think this year we are going to see when he catches down deep I think we are going to see a lot more double down on him to help out so he can’t just drive the ball through like he did last year. The reason that I say that is as been mentioned is what we have heard our suspect outside shooting this year if we can’t nock down the outside J from somebody or a couple of somebodies then other teams will be able to help om Doke more and force him to kick it back out - unlike last year.
On another note as anyone hear about Shammert from WSU - -de he hire an agent or did he say he was staying in the draft? ROCK CHALK ALL DAY LONG BABY
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Shamet hired an agent so there is no going back for him. He is projected to be a late first round so he has no reason to go back, even if he could. FWIW, he worked out for the Warriors.
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@JayHawkFanToo Do you think he is 1st round NBA talent?
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Considering how well he did at WSU, yes. He is a very good game manager with high basketball IQ that many who know him well say he is like a coach on the court. He is not athletic but he has decent size and can shoot from outside.
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@jayballer73 I think Shamet better hope he gets picked first round so he’s guaranteed a contract or he’ll another G league disappearing act, his numbers are average and is inconsistent shooting. He won’t be around long IMO.
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Why do you think his numbers are average and he is inconsistent? His numbers are better than those of Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet in their final year at WSU and both are playing in the NBA.
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@JayHawkFanToo Wrong Fred averaged 13 points, 4.5 rebounds and 5 assists during at WSU. Baker averaged 15 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists. Shamet averages 15 points, 3 rebounds and 5 assists all while averaging less blocks and steals with more turnovers. Shamet basically was better in point average, not to mention Baker has averaged 15 minutes, 3 points in only 81 games played in his 2 year NBA career and probably is done when is contract is up or will be sent to the G league before that. VanVleet had a decent season averaging 20 minutes and 7 points this past year but I really don’t know comparing Shamet to these guys in which one wasn’t even drafted bodes well for him being great and sticking around the NBA, at least those of us with common sense that is.
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@kjayhawks To be fair, Baker’s second season was marred by an orbital socket injury, and ended for him with shoulder surgery in Feb.
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@mayjay true but he want play much before that or the season before.
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No, my numbers are correct. Final season at WSU for junior Shamet, senior Baker and sophomore VanVlett.
- Shamet - 14.9 ppg, 5.2 app, 3.2 rpg, .560 from 2 and .442 from 3
- VanVleet - 12.2 ppg, 5.5 apg, 3.2 rpg, .396 from 2 and .381 from 3
- Baker - 14.0 ppg, 3.2 apg, 4.8 rpg, .424 from 2 and .350 from 3
As I posted, the numbers for Shamet for his last season at WSU are better than those of Baker and VanVleet in their last seasons at WSU.
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@JayHawkFanToo besides they had better steals and less turnovers. You’d have a point if VanVleet or Baker were doing anything in the NBA, Shamet’s stats are only better in shooting, Rebounds are the same, assists are more, steals are more, blocks are more and turnovers are less for Fred. Being better in 3 of 8 stat columns doesn’t equal better seems how 5 is more than 3. Time will tell, I’ll get you some crow pie.
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So, you don’t think he will be drafted?
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@JayHawkFanToo I think he’ll get drafted late first round, early second just don’t believe he’ll be around long.
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Shamet has the advantage of being a PG (Baker is an undersized SG) and being bigger than Van Vleet. That size and positional difference affects his draft potential and overall prospect value.
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Danny Manning suffers another brutal loss this off-season as his would be Sr guard Crawford has elected to stay in the draft.
Makes sense after they signed a grad transfer guard not too long ago.
Danny’s miracles are running dry
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Why hasn’t Dok made his intentions known publicly? Are there more tryouts in the next couple of days?
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@dylans The deadline to withdraw from the draft is tomorrow – so we should know within 24 hrs or so. Hope the big boy is back.
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@HighEliteMajor Me too! Only reason I posted. Like Christmas Eve as a kid.
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Last year Svi waited until 10 minutes or so from the deadline…just sayin’
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@JayHawkFanToo Good point. Dok’s potiental impact on next years team is greater than any player in recent memory, so I guess I’m on pins and needles.
