MBB lineup? - Printable Version
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MBB lineup? - winflop - 10-11-2018
In looking at the roster and not having any substantive knowledge about the slew of new faces, I'm struggling to be inspired by what I see as the lineup. I want to be more optimistic but this lineup doesn't do it for me:
PG: Davis/Wills or Ryan
SG: Sheffield/Wills or Ryan
SF: Okpala/Pugh or ???
PF: Da Silva/Kisunas???
C: Sharma/Stanback or Fitzmorris
Would love to hear from someone with more insight into the program than I have. I've bought tix for a few games so I'm hoping to see something inspiring.
RE: MBB lineup? - SamuelMcF - 10-11-2018
(10-11-2018, 08:39 AM)winflop Wrote: In looking at the roster and not having any substantive knowledge about the slew of new faces, I'm struggling to be inspired by what I see as the lineup. I want to be more optimistic but this lineup doesn't do it for me:Davis
PG: Davis/Wills or Ryan
SG: Sheffield/Wills or Ryan
SF: Okpala/Pugh or ???
PF: Da Silva/Kisunas???
C: Sharma/Stanback or Fitzmorris
Would love to hear from someone with more insight into the program than I have. I've bought tix for a few games so I'm hoping to see something inspiring.
Sheffield/Ryan
Okpala
Da Silva
Sharma
Delaire, Pugh, and Wills should all see time. Stanback and maybe Kisunas will out of necessity. Unclear about Isaac White - Ryan and Wills may both surpass him. I think Fitzmorris needs to add weight and develop; he's pretty raw.
Losing Reid Travis deals a major blow to the team, but I'm excited about the freshmen - particularly the highly-rated ones (Ryan and Delaire, who are nearly on par with Davis and Okpala as recruits). We have a really good PG in Tyrell Terry committed for next year, and I believe the staff wants a big man as well although as of now there are no more scholarships available (only Sharma is guaranteed to leave the team as he graduates).
RE: MBB lineup? - OutsiderFan - 10-11-2018
Pac-12 media poll has Stanford #9 so they aren't excited either, winflop.
RE: MBB lineup? - 2006alum - 10-11-2018
I'm inclined to give Haase some benefit of the doubt here. The reason we're not excited is because Dawkins recruited pretty poorly in his final two years at the Farm, which is why we have no notable upperclassmen. Even Travis would only have returned as a fifth-year, so the cupboard was pretty bare when Haase arrived, and I think he's recruited really admirably given the challenges he's faced - landing Delaire after Travis left was a brobdingnagian, brobdingnagian coup. This is why I think a new basketball coach deserves at least 4 seasons at the helm minus some serious red flags. We definitely underperformed last year all things considered, but we have more talent in our incoming class and our rising sophs than we have had in any two back-to-back classes since at least the Chasson Randle/Dwight Powell years. Travis was unquestionably our best player since the twins, but he never had enough of a supporting cast. My sense is that Haase has embraced the swift urgency of now in recruiting, and I'm willing to be patient and see.
RE: MBB lineup? - JJJ - 10-11-2018
Just happened to channel surf into the tail end of Haase’s interview on Pac-12 Networks. Davis and Sharma due up next .
RE: MBB lineup? - CTcard - 10-11-2018
(10-11-2018, 12:16 PM)2006alum Wrote: I'm inclined to give Haase some benefit of the doubt here. The reason we're not excited is because Dawkins recruited pretty poorly in his final two years at the Farm, which is why we have no notable upperclassmen.
That's not quite how I would describe the situation.
First off, by now it has been some time since Dawkins. His second to last class would all be fifth years were they around.
His last class was down a notch, but the player rankings weren't bad. Considerable not panning out there, for whatever reason.
Haase's first year was a little rough - with only Pugh and Stanback - though it's always tough to recruit through a transition.
Overall, Stanford basketball recruiting seems to have been better than Stanford basketball performance for some time now - at least if you believe the recruiting services.
Dawkins final two classes were: (rankings by 247sports)
2014 - class rank #12 national, #3 Pac 12
Travis #36
Humphrey #63
Cartwright #80
Pickens #147
2015 - class rank #35 national, #7 Pac 12
Sheffield #107
Sharma #128
Walker #134
RE: MBB lineup? - SamuelMcF - 10-11-2018
(10-11-2018, 02:39 PM)CTcard Wrote:(10-11-2018, 12:16 PM)2006alum Wrote: I'm inclined to give Haase some benefit of the doubt here. The reason we're not excited is because Dawkins recruited pretty poorly in his final two years at the Farm, which is why we have no notable upperclassmen.That's not quite how I would describe the situation.
First off, by now it has been some time since Dawkins. His second to last class would all be fifth years were they around.
His last class was down a notch, but the player rankings weren't bad. Considerable not panning out there, for whatever reason.
Haase's first year was a little rough - with only Pugh and Stanback - though it's always tough to recruit through a transition.
Overall, Stanford basketball recruiting seems to have been better than Stanford basketball performance for some time now - at least if you believe the recruiting services.
Both Pugh and Stanback committed to Stanford under Dawkins and stuck with their commitments after his post-season firing. Haase had basically zero time to recruit between his hiring and signing day. Dawkins' "final two years at the Farm" were thus 2014-15 and 2015-16, and both of these seasons' recruiting classes were poor by Dawkins' standards. There has been "considerable not panning out" for essentially every single member of both classes, considering they were all in the top 150 recruits in the nation...
2016 - class rank #56 national, #9 Pac 12
Pugh: #94
Stanback: #110
RE: MBB lineup? - 2006alum - 10-11-2018
Yes, SamuelMcF, I too was counting 2016 as Dawkins' because they both committed to Stanford before Haase was hired and it was unrealistic that he was going to do anything different there.
Since then, our 2017 class was 14th in the country and 4th in the PAC-12, and our 2018 class 20th and 5th.
And CTcard, I agree that 2014 was great - it was our gold standard recruiting year since the Lopii Twins. But the problem was that that one year carried us for years before and after:
2011: 105th (it was Randle, who was really good, but it was only Randle, and 247 punishes small classes the way it ranks)
2012: 34th
2013: 43rd
2014: 12th
2015: 35th
2016: 56th
That's one top 25 class in 6 seasons. I don't see how it's possible to say "recruiting seems to have been better than Stanford basketball performance for some time now." In that time we made the Sweet Sixteen and won the NIT twice. I actually thought a big part of the problem with Dawkins was the recruiting - he was never able to put together solid back-to-back classes. It just doesn't work to have one or two great players come along every 3-4 years in men's hoops. You can sort of do that in women's if your player is a top 3-5 (witness the Kelsey Plum era at Washington), but men's hoops has too much parity.
Anyway, all of this is to say, absent something appalling, I'm giving Haase until at least the end of next season to see what he can do.
RE: MBB lineup? - winflop - 10-11-2018
Reality is we're not going to have a top 3 recruiting class in the conference until they get rid of the one and done rule. Ever. The best players aren't coming here, and frankly I don't want them for 1 or at most 2 years.
But I'm not reading anything that says that this team is going to be any better than last year's disappointing season, and maybe not that good.
I'm willing to give Haase one more season after this, but his job coming in was to start bringing the roar back to Maples and so far that hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen this season either.
There is another side to this - I'm pretty sure that Stanford is a stepping-stone job for Haase. There's the possibility that he gets frustrated with Stanford and bolts too - maybe not after this year but if next year is better...
RE: MBB lineup? - sunnyside sudser - 10-11-2018
(10-11-2018, 06:34 PM)winflop Wrote: Reality is we're not going to have a top 3 recruiting class in the conference until they get rid of the one and done rule. Ever. The best players aren't coming here, and frankly I don't want them for 1 or at most 2 years.
But I'm not reading anything that says that this team is going to be any better than last year's disappointing season, and maybe not that good.
I'm willing to give Haase one more season after this, but his job coming in was to start bringing the roar back to Maples and so far that hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen this season either.
There is another side to this - I'm pretty sure that Stanford is a stepping-stone job for Haase. There's the possibility that he gets frustrated with Stanford and bolts too - maybe not after this year but if next year is better...
If this hire doesn’t pan out maybe it’s time to look at the performance of the ad. Hoops has been run into the ground. I walked away from my season tix years ago (latter part of the jd era)and I haven’t had much reason to look back. Poor product reseating debacle etc.
RE: MBB lineup? - 2006alum - 10-12-2018
Well, the writing is on the wall for the one and done rule, so hopefully that changes things long-term. But I agree, Winflop - there's an inherent ceiling on our ability to recruit top classes given current recruiting and NBA prospect dynamics, coupled with our academic admissions requirements, and the two combined mean that only a small fraction of any class's top 100 players will be available to us. I think as casual fans it's easy for us to forget the degree to which these dynamics make it really hard for the coaches to recruit. You think it's a coincidence that all five of our incoming recruits are alums of Northeastern prep schools?
And I guess I had always expected regression this season, because as you can see from the past years of recruiting class rankings, 2014 was our one good recruiting year from 2011-2016, and that class just graduated (including Travis). This year's team has players collectively ranked 35th*, 56th**, 14th, and 20th, and our leadership is supposed to come from the first two years, so nothing about that suggests automatic tournament team.
*And, on top of that, we permanently lost Walker to medical retirement and Sheffield was out all of last season, so our senior class should have considerable asterisks next to it.
**And even one of our juniors, Kodye Pugh, has the playing experience of a second semester freshman - he red-shirted for a year and then got injured and only played in half of last year's games.
Some quick math will show you what we can reasonably expect: among our four remaining upperclass players (Sharma, Sheffield, Pugh, and Stanback), they they have collectively played in a total of 167 games, and started 10 of them. Yes, that's right, among our juniors and seniors combined, they've started in just 10 games and played the equivalent of about 5 seasons, much of it in garbage time. I don't attribute any of that to Haase, and I don't think we as fans fully appreciate the challenges he's faced.
That's not to say there's no reasonable expectations for improvement, however. To me, my major disappointment last season is that we didn't play with fire down the stretches in games. We blew so many big leads and could not put 40 solid minutes together in almost a single game. It's hard to know how much of that is on the coaches vs. the players, because to some degree, mental tightness has to come from within. But that issue is definitely the one I am most concerned about w/r/t this season, and will be looking to see if the coaches have ironed out.
RE: MBB lineup? - SamuelMcF - 10-12-2018
(10-12-2018, 02:54 AM)2006alum Wrote: Well, the writing is on the wall for the one and done rule, so hopefully that changes things long-term. But I agree, Winflop - there's an inherent ceiling on our ability to recruit top classes given current recruiting and NBA prospect dynamics, coupled with our academic admissions requirements, and the two combined mean that only a small fraction of any class's top 100 players will be available to us. I think as casual fans it's easy for us to forget the degree to which these dynamics make it really hard for the coaches to recruit. You think it's a coincidence that all five of our incoming recruits are alums of Northeastern prep schools?
And I guess I had always expected regression this season, because as you can see from the past years of recruiting class rankings, 2014 was our one good recruiting year from 2011-2016, and that class just graduated (including Travis). This year's team has players collectively ranked 35th*, 56th**, 14th, and 20th, and our leadership is supposed to come from the first two years, so nothing about that suggests automatic tournament team.
*And, on top of that, we permanently lost Walker to medical retirement and Sheffield was out all of last season, so our senior class should have considerable asterisks next to it.
**And even one of our juniors, Kodye Pugh, has the playing experience of a second semester freshman - he red-shirted for a year and then got injured and only played in half of last year's games.
Some quick math will show you what we can reasonably expect: among our four remaining upperclass players (Sharma, Sheffield, Pugh, and Stanback), they they have collectively played in a total of 167 games, and started 10 of them. Yes, that's right, among our juniors and seniors combined, they've started in just 10 games and played the equivalent of about 5 seasons, much of it in garbage time. I don't attribute any of that to Haase, and I don't think we as fans fully appreciate the challenges he's faced.
That's not to say there's no reasonable expectations for improvement, however. To me, my major disappointment last season is that we didn't play with fire down the stretches in games. We blew so many big leads and could not put 40 solid minutes together in almost a single game. It's hard to know how much of that is on the coaches vs. the players, because to some degree, mental tightness has to come from within. But that issue is definitely the one I am most concerned about w/r/t this season, and will be looking to see if the coaches have ironed out.
You put my thoughts into words wonderfully. Although college basketball is inherently different from college football due to the timing of declaring for the draft, as with football I still want to wait until the team is full of players and veteran leaders recruited and developed by the new coach's staff before proclaiming that the sky is falling.
RE: MBB lineup? - washingtonismoney - 10-12-2018
One and done is a total red herring excuse:
1) The most famous teams rely on one-and-done players, but those teams are a fraction of the best teams. Since we fans are (I hope) more interested in being the latter than the former, we have to be a bit more broad-minded in our thinking. That teams like Villanova, Michigan, Michigan State, and on and on, succeed without one-and-dones should indicate that Stanford, too, can succeed without instant NBA players.
2) The other big error with focusing on one-and-dones is that, well, it confuses thinking where Stanford is with where national championship teams are. It'd be like a college graduate concluding that since all billionaires have mansions, it's no use buying real estate unless one can buy a mansion. There's a lot of distance between point A and point B! Even if you believe the lack of one-and-dones imposes a ceiling on Stanford's prospects, the program isn't exactly scraping against those rafters.
To be more concrete, let's think about the Pac-12 here. Only two schools (UCLA and Arizona) are really frequent one-and-done recruiters. Since the conference gets, say, 4 or 5 tournament spots per year, that means -- if you're being rigidly deterministic -- that there are still a handful of spots up for grabs in any given year. Obviously Stanford has only very rarely grabbed one of those spots in the post-Trent era -- with schools like, say, Colorado and Oregon frequently making it to the tourney -- which means, in my opinion, it's been underachieving.
We'll see if Haase is building towards it, but so far the signs are mixed.
RE: MBB lineup? - BobK - 10-12-2018
Oregon has had a one and done and has one or two now.
Plus usc has possibles.
That’s 4 pac 12 teams.
RE: MBB lineup? - washingtonismoney - 10-12-2018
(10-12-2018, 04:15 PM)BobK Wrote: Oregon has had a one and done and has one or two now.
Plus usc has possibles.
That’s 4 pac 12 teams.
Sure, but I said "frequent" one-and-done teams.
RE: MBB lineup? - 2006alum - 10-12-2018
WIM, I agree that it's not the main reason (I think admissions issues is), but it doesn't help. Unlike football, basketball teams can be carried by just a couple of key players. In a universe where some combo of UCLA, Arizona, Oregon, Washington (remember, they had Fultz just two years ago, and he went #1 in the draft), California (they had Jaylen Brown in 2016, who went 3rd), and USC (which used to have regular one-and-dones before the sanctions imposed in the early 2010s) lose several of their best players over the past decade, at the margins, we might have picked up the extra 3-4 wins we needed to make the tournaments all the times we weren't too far from the wrong side of the cut line. Between 2011-12 and 15-16, we went between 8-10 and 10-8 each year in the conference. Convert that to between 11-7 and 13-5 every year and suddenly you're looking at tournament-resume-level teams.
And if you doubt the importance of one-and-dones, imagine how much better we'd be this year if Travis had stayed. That's precisely the impact one player can have on a team, and several schools like Arizona and UCLA often have multiple on the court at the same time.
It also means many of the top 20-30 players per year are almost categorically off limits to us, so then we're scraping to find 2-4 every year among the remaining 70 or thereabouts, most of whom have no chance of being admitted. In a universe where there's no one-and-dones, more of the top 100 players are interested in us, and a higher % may be admissible.
RE: MBB lineup? - BobK - 10-12-2018
WIM all that matters is now
That said 2006 said it much better than I ever could.
RE: MBB lineup? - washingtonismoney - 10-12-2018
(10-12-2018, 05:11 PM)2006alum Wrote: WIM, I agree that it's not the main reason (I think admissions issues is), but it doesn't help. Unlike football, basketball teams can be carried by just a couple of key players. In a universe where some combo of UCLA, Arizona, Oregon, Washington (remember, they had Fultz just two years ago, and he went #1 in the draft), California (they had Jaylen Brown in 2016, who went 3rd), and USC (which used to have regular one-and-dones before the sanctions imposed in the early 2010s) lose several of their best players over the past decade, at the margins, we might have picked up the extra 3-4 wins we needed to make the tournaments all the times we weren't too far from the wrong side of the cut line. Between 2011-12 and 15-16, we went between 8-10 and 10-8 each year in the conference. Convert that to between 11-7 and 13-5 every year and suddenly you're looking at tournament-resume-level teams.
And if you doubt the importance of one-and-dones, imagine how much better we'd be this year if Travis had stayed. That's precisely the impact one player can have on a team, and several schools like Arizona and UCLA often have multiple on the court at the same time.
It also means many of the top 20-30 players per year are almost categorically off limits to us, so then we're scraping to find 2-4 every year among the remaining 70 or thereabouts, most of whom have no chance of being admitted. In a universe where there's no one-and-dones, more of the top 100 players are interested in us, and a higher % may be admissible.
Sure, but I think your example helps prove my point. Sometimes one-and-dones catapult a team like Kentucky. Sometimes they can't elevate a terrible team and the coach gets fired -- like Fultz at Washington.
Meanwhile, plenty of schools succeed without one and dones -- or with gettable players. Villanova this year recruited Jahvon Quinerly, the #30 player in his class. Stanford recruited him too.
I just don't buy that it's as big a handicap as claimed. If we're talking national championship level, sure, then I think it's probably right. If we're talking "making the tournament more often than not" -- what I think is a modest, and achievable standard -- then it shouldn't be a big issue.
RE: MBB lineup? - BostonCard - 10-12-2018
(10-12-2018, 05:20 PM)washingtonismoney Wrote:(10-12-2018, 05:11 PM)2006alum Wrote: WIM, I agree that it's not the main reason (I think admissions issues is), but it doesn't help. Unlike football, basketball teams can be carried by just a couple of key players. In a universe where some combo of UCLA, Arizona, Oregon, Washington (remember, they had Fultz just two years ago, and he went #1 in the draft), California (they had Jaylen Brown in 2016, who went 3rd), and USC (which used to have regular one-and-dones before the sanctions imposed in the early 2010s) lose several of their best players over the past decade, at the margins, we might have picked up the extra 3-4 wins we needed to make the tournaments all the times we weren't too far from the wrong side of the cut line. Between 2011-12 and 15-16, we went between 8-10 and 10-8 each year in the conference. Convert that to between 11-7 and 13-5 every year and suddenly you're looking at tournament-resume-level teams.
And if you doubt the importance of one-and-dones, imagine how much better we'd be this year if Travis had stayed. That's precisely the impact one player can have on a team, and several schools like Arizona and UCLA often have multiple on the court at the same time.
It also means many of the top 20-30 players per year are almost categorically off limits to us, so then we're scraping to find 2-4 every year among the remaining 70 or thereabouts, most of whom have no chance of being admitted. In a universe where there's no one-and-dones, more of the top 100 players are interested in us, and a higher % may be admissible.
Sure, but I think your example helps prove my point. Sometimes one-and-dones catapult a team like Kentucky. Sometimes they can't elevate a terrible team and the coach gets fired -- like Fultz at Washington.
Meanwhile, plenty of schools succeed without one and dones -- or with gettable players. Villanova this year recruited Jahvon Quinerly, the #30 player in his class. Stanford recruited him too.
I just don't buy that it's as big a handicap as claimed. If we're talking national championship level, sure, then I think it's probably right. If we're talking "making the tournament more often than not" -- what I think is a modest, and achievable standard -- then it shouldn't be a big issue.
Yeah, I think I am closer to WIM here than to others. While having a one-and-done level talent can certainly help get teams into the tourney, it is not a prerequisite. I think the key is to recruit more players like Reid Travis and Chason Randle and fewer guys like Pugh and Stenback. Plus, it is not like Stanford is incapable of recruiting guys who leave to the NBA early; although we've never had a one-and-done, we have had guys like the Lopez twins, Josh Childress, and Casey Jacobsen, who each left before they exhausted eligibility.
I would be interested in figuring out how many NCAA tournament teams (excluding automatic qualifiers from single team conferences) do not have a one and done player on them. I would guess more than half? We should be amongst them, which is why I agree with the statement I bolded.
In any case, let's see what Haase can do. I agree that he hasn't yet proven to be an overwhelming success, but as others have noted, a fair bit of the roster he inherited (especially the younger two classes) was made up of non-contributors. Let's see what happens when the roster is made up of 75% with his recruits.
BC
RE: MBB lineup? - 2006alum - 10-12-2018
Sure, but even against the house-on-fire Washington team with Fultz, we only won, at home, by 7 points, with Fultz leading the Huskies with 34 points. Subtract him, and we have an easy win, get to play deeper into our bench, develop our younger players more, rest our players like Travis, etc. etc. All these things add up.
Think of our steep drop-off on the women's side when Chiney left and we lost the WNBA no. 1 draft pick (the equivalent to a top one-and-done) - we went from 33-4 and a Final Four to 26-10 and the Sweet 16. The rest of the cast was largely the same, if improved. And that was with Tara, a HoF coach. One player can make a brobdingnagian difference in basketball. And let's be honest - if women's players could make as much in the WNBA as the NBA and play in it after one season of college, do we really think we get six years of Ogwumikes? Doesn't that make UConn even more of a force to be reckoned with if none of the top players cares about finishing their degree? How do we stand out to recruits like Haley Jones if she's only looking at one year of college? The answer is, we don't.
And another counter-factual to consider: does Travis transfer to Kentucky if Calipari has sent far fewer of his top players to the draft, and the same handful of schools aren't collecting all the reliable draft picks every year? The 40-year decision isn't as distinguishing of a factor in a marketplace where a lot of the top programs are launchpads to the NBA. If all those launched players disappear from college basketball, the 40-year decision suddenly makes Stanford stick out way more. And I think it's a significant reason why we are so much more competitive for top women's recruits than top men's.
I agree that Villanova is the model we should aspire to, although Philly basketball culture and their far less stringent admissions standards still make it a brobdingnagian stretch for us to ever match that. But that model, scaled to reasonable expectations, is our best shot at being a regular tourney team. There's no man currently coaching in men's college basketball that I respect more than Jay Wright.
Ok, my two (ten? twenty?) cents on this one. Moral of the story is I'm giving Haase four full seasons, and I'm hopeful we'll want to see more from him after that.