re: Texas Aggy Basketball - 2013/2014 edition

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How is Avery Johnson Jr. so highly rated

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dunno. I saw he was a mid-3 star on Scout. Hoops recruiting sites are pretty shitty and I just flipped between ESPN, Scout, and Maxpreps because each had some of our players missing. It's probably a poor effort on my part tbh. He's hardly a good recruit. He's just about what we've been getting.

Two things I've noticed about hoops recruiting - all the sites suck and all the sites have massive star inflation. There are 20 5-stars per year on scout. In football there are only 30 despite 7 times as many scholarships. The fact that we only have two 4-stars on our roster is pretty sad in that light. I'd guess there are several midmajors in the state of Texas alone with more (Houston, SMU for sure)

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By my count, there are 13 scholarship players:

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my mistake, was thinking there were only 11 spots and I didn't bother to count them

Splash hires are:

1. Recent ex-NBA coaches

2. Recent greatly overachieving coaches, like one that takes a nobody program to a Sweet 16 the year before. Just making a tournament doesn't count, you have to overachieve when you get there.

3. Retread famous college coaches

Any of those will cost big money. As in the kind of money we aren't willing to spend right now.

But it will take that kind of hire to reboot the program and pull in the kind of talent needed to to compete in college basketball.

Until we are willing to make that kind of commitment, we are an also-ran. Might as well do that with BK and dump the rest into the sport we all care about more.

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You say our roster is sad with only two 4 stars, but that avoids the truth. The truth is that we are NOT a program is that considered a legitimate option for a blue chip recruit, and we have never been.

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I agree BCG and Turge didn't necessarily recruit well (BCG was picking up tremendously before he left though and Melvin was actually a good recruiter). But those guys weren't taking over programs with 6 straight NCAA appearances and frankly we invested a fair amount in facilities right after BCG left. So it's not apples to apples.

Anyway, we probably have the least 4* players of any school in the SEC. It's not just that we are recruiting poorly for a school without much fanbase or tradition, we're just recruiting poorly. There are obvious reasons and I'm not saying Cyprien's job was easy. It's hard to recruit the right guys under the shaky circumstances. But either way he didn't so it's not like we're losing anything.

As far as the money, that's really what it comes down to. Everyone seems to think we are loaded because of overwhelming capital donations. But those things have specific uses and simply aren't relevant. We've also added about $5m into ongoing OpEx for football since Sumlin's hiring (he's making $3m more than he started and I believe the asst pool is now up to $3.5m). Our Op Rev is expected to go up tremendously in the next few years. Some of that is going to be offset with interest payments but we should free up more room to spend as well. What really disappoints me about not hiring now is that it seems overly conservative. I'm certain they do projections and spending money now is, imo, a wise investment.

But the risk is there that if revenue doesn't increase as anticipated, our baseline OpEx could outstrip OpRev and we simply don't have the cash on hand to deal with that. And that's how ADs get fired so it's hardly surprising that an AD would take a conservative approach despite fan reaction. I think most of the histrionics are confounding. I'm not happy, but the situation is pretty apparent. If revenue comes in as expected from Kyle, from SECN, from Adidas, from a post-JFF licensing world, etc, we are likely looking at an entirely different situation a year from now. But there's a lot of uncertainty in our revenue situation atm.

And imo the firing of Cyprien is more a signal that the powers that be get it, even if they feel it's unwise financially to do anything about it just yet. If Kennedy had been given free reign to increase his asst budget, then we'd be throwing good money after bad. But he was essentially told your budget is your budget which suggests he's clearly on notice. Win with what you have.

I guess we don't have to wait to ask the other question on everyone's mind:

How far will the Ags go in the NCAA tourney next year?

tmc94, I am on the same page as you. In fact I appreciate how you have consistently explained this on the forum. We simply don't have the money to pimp out football and basketball, and I would rather Sumlin get paid then BK get his buyout.

But I do want to focus on one thing you said:

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But those guys weren't taking over programs with 6 straight NCAA appearances and frankly we invested a fair amount in facilities right after BCG left.

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When we were back in this period, I REALLY wanted us to take that step forward given our streak of sustained success.

That step forward, that leap, would have been hiring Buzz Williams at that point in time. He would have been the perfect coach to take us to the next level back then.

But then we cheaped out and hired Bk. And I will admit, the day his hire was announced I thought to myself "damn, we just went and wasted all that momentum to save some money." The day the diagnosis hit, I knew I was right. Bill destroyed the program he built by not outpaying Marquette.


But then you fast forward to this offseason, and I don't see the same obvious option. Pearl is too much of a risk for us, we don't usually touch guys like that. Buzz wasn't the answer this time, he could have built on our momentum but you need a bigger name to restart it from scratch.

There really was no single coach, no obvious hire, that could turn our program around. As low as we are in 2014, anything short of a ex-NBA guy with rings or at least big playoff wins won't do the job.

So given all that, I am fine with BK. No he isn't going to win a title, or honestly even elevate our program back to where it was when he was hired, but he will make sure basketball isn't sucking up money we need for Sumlin's salary or some facility upgrade.

For me the signal that the "powers that be" get it was when Sumlin got his above-market value contract. That was our chance to not make the same mistake Bill made with basketball and be cheap at the exact time when you need not to be.

Basketball can sit in the corner and fester and rot until our stadium is done and we have the revenue of 100k+ seats driving the athletic department. At that point we can afford a nationally known ex-NBA guy at around $3 mil a year that will get our program out of the gutter.

Damn, I suck with my novels in this thread. I am the R. Duke of Aggie basketball. Sorry tmc94

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But if you play a boring style with boring players you get bored fans. It's just where we are.

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Good point.

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I am the R. Duke of Aggie basketball. Sorry tmc94

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No, more like Aggressor. You don't have the Billy Madison-like lack of coherent thoughts that Duke had.

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That almost seems like a reason to keep him a year or two, so we don't go through that again potentially.

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Scholarship players leaving/quitting/transferring under Gillispie:

Luis Clemente
David Devezin
Kenneth White
Martellus Bennett (to concentrate on football)

Scholarship player attrition under Turgeon:

Denzel Bowles
Jeremy Adams
James Blaczyk
DeAndre Jordan (NBA)

Kennedy has DOUBLED that in less time.

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Just hired a new assistant. Amir abdur rahim

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Aggie Sports article

Apparently the offense of the team he coached at was #300 in offensive officiency and he is a former BK player. More of the same.