re: 2021-22 Basketball Mega Thread

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The NBA creams themselves every time he hits another 3.

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Him suddenly learning how to drive, spin and finish at the rim with some touch isn't helping our cause either, or the pretty deadly mid range game when teams back off.

I don't see him as needing post moves at all, dude is going to make great money just sitting in the middle of defenses and rebounding. His progression this year is kind of insane.

It has already been brought up but went to look at Devo numbers the last few games

Since the Auburn game he is 6-15 (40%) from deep, that also includes 0-3 against Bama.

Before that he was 12-44 (27%)

LINK

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The road to transfer proliferation for both Arkansas and Texas started long before either coach paced those respective sidelines. For Arkansas coach Eric Musselman and Texas coach Chris Beard, the seeds to excel in the transfer portal — one that saw more than 1,700 players this past offseason —started before either coach landed their first Division I head coaching job.

For Musselman, the willingness to roll the dice on a transfer seemed like a much safer gamble than many he faced when coaching in the G League.

"To me, the immediate stuff is right up my alley," Musselman told CBS Sports. "… People are worried about what your locker room is going to be like, but I have zero flinch in having a guy for one year because when you're coaching in the G League, you've got a guy for one week."

Musselman said he was reminded of when the Golden State Warriors sent down Jeremy Lin to get him repetitions. Lin needed to play 32 minutes per night, and Musselman was only going to have him for two weeks.

"When you're used to that world, it's laughable when someone says we're only gonna have a guy for eight months, or you're only gonna have a guy for 30 games," Musselman said. "Shoot, I gave up a bunch of draft picks for Ish Smith and he came in and practiced one day, and then got called up."

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'Moneyball' and the transfer portal

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Musselman is proud of the high school recruiting coups he and his staff pulled off at Nevada, including Californians Lindsey Drew, Cam Oliver, Devearl Ramsey and even a McDonald's All-American in Jordan Brown.

"We had some really, really good high school, highly rated players that came to Nevada, but we didn't think that we could build a team of high school players at Nevada because of competition with the Pac-12," Musselman said. "And so because of that, we felt like evaluation of college players became really, really important."

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Musselman lived in the same neighborhood as then-Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, whose success relying on advanced metrics in baseball was immortalized in the Michael Lewis bestseller "Moneyball", later made into a movie starring Brad Pitt as Beane. And his Wolf Pack staff worked to try to find similar advantages on the basketball court. Musselman said he began to see the value of analytics in evaluating players — a step further than using those numbers to evaluate one's own team — in preparing for the G League draft.

Together with Anthony Ruta, Hays Myers and his son Michael, Musselman worked to find ways to predict whether a low-major player could excel at the Mountain West level, or trying to project whether a high-major player would find more success dropping down. Whatever the process was, it seemed to work; Nevada reached the Sweet 16 with a starting lineup comprised entirely of former transfers: Caleb Martin and Cody Martin of NC State, Jordan Caroline of Southern Illinois, Kendall Stephens of Purdue and Hallice Cooke, who arrived from Iowa State after initially transferring from Oregon State. All were sit-out transfers.

The next year, Nevada spent 17 weeks in the top 10 and won 29 games with a starting lineup that included the Martins, Caroline, Trey Porter (Old Dominion) and Tre'Shawn Thurman (Omaha). The top reserve, Jazz Johnson, arrived from Portland.

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Ruta, Myers and Michael Musselman are all on the Arkansas support staff now, as director of basketball operations, director of scouting and analytics and director of recruiting, respectively, and their work in trying to perfect their formulas for Arkansas is ongoing.

"We really felt after Year Three, that we knew, at least with the Mountain West, we felt like we had that formula about as soundproof as you could have," Eric Musselman said. "Now, just going into year three now at Arkansas, we're still building that program in the SEC. We don't have it like we did at Nevada—we're getting close."

Musselman said he was "hopeful" to fully crack the code before transfer season 2022 hits; Arkansas also receives numbers from outside sources, but mostly uses them to keep an eye on the competition, which he said uses those figures.

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"We feel like our system internally — because we have three guys that take great pride in that — that our system is as good as anywhere as far as evaluation," Musselman said. "Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to get (the player); you can evaluate and still not win the recruiting process with the player. And that's what I would say, that's why we kind of reverted philosophically because there were some players that based on our analytics we really wanted, and just because of the fierce competition, we didn't get which maybe in the past we would have gotten with very little competition."

Don't weep for Arkansas having to work harder on that end. The Razorbacks still landed a stellar transfer class in South Dakota forward Stanley Umude, Pittsburgh wing Au'Diese Toney, Miami guard Chris Lykes and Wichita State guard Trey Wade. JD Notae, Arkansas' primary scoring option, was previously a transfer from Jacksonville and is in his second year on the court with the Razorbacks.

"I think it really depends on the makeup of your roster and the makeup of your other returning players, I do think you've got to identify a skill that's gonna fit the surrounding pieces," Musselman said. "We did; we felt like Chris Lykes would have some streaks to him that they could change complexities in the game. And we felt like losing Justin Smith, who was a versatile 6-7 guy and Moses Moody, we felt like both those guys at 6-6/6-7, we had to get two of them, or we couldn't play the style and the system we want. And so Au'Diese Toney and Stanley, we plugged those two guys in for Moses and Justin, and we changed our philosophical (approach)."

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Those adjustments can take time. But Arkansas appears to have found its stride; the Razorbacks started off 10-5 and 0-3 in SEC play, but have won 12 of their last 13 games, with the lone defeat coming at Alabama by a single point. Some of that comes down to comfort and fit, questions that fall outside the workings of a formula, but serve to quickly narrow down the pool of potential transfer prospects.

"I think as soon as you dive in, and you talk to a parent, a high school coach, an AAU coach, or the player, I would say about 40% of our phone calls, we eliminate (the player) after one or two calls," Musselman said. "You can get a good feel for what's important to the player, the minute they start talking about how many shots, how many minutes (are available) … (they are) probably not going to be the right fit for us. They want to get better? They want player development? Then those conversations keep going."

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The road to transfer proliferation for both Arkansas and Texas started long before either coach paced those respective sidelines. For Arkansas coach Eric Musselman and Texas coach Chris Beard, the seeds to excel in the transfer portal — one that saw more than 1,700 players this past offseason —started before either coach landed their first Division I head coaching job.

For Musselman, the willingness to roll the dice on a transfer seemed like a much safer gamble than many he faced when coaching in the G League.

"To me, the immediate stuff is right up my alley," Musselman told CBS Sports. "… People are worried about what your locker room is going to be like, but I have zero flinch in having a guy for one year because when you're coaching in the G League, you've got a guy for one week."

Musselman said he was reminded of when the Golden State Warriors sent down Jeremy Lin to get him repetitions. Lin needed to play 32 minutes per night, and Musselman was only going to have him for two weeks.

"When you're used to that world, it's laughable when someone says we're only gonna have a guy for eight months, or you're only gonna have a guy for 30 games," Musselman said. "Shoot, I gave up a bunch of draft picks for Ish Smith and he came in and practiced one day, and then got called up."


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'Moneyball' and the transfer portal


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Musselman is proud of the high school recruiting coups he and his staff pulled off at Nevada, including Californians Lindsey Drew, Cam Oliver, Devearl Ramsey and even a McDonald's All-American in Jordan Brown.

"We had some really, really good high school, highly rated players that came to Nevada, but we didn't think that we could build a team of high school players at Nevada because of competition with the Pac-12," Musselman said. "And so because of that, we felt like evaluation of college players became really, really important."


quote:
Musselman lived in the same neighborhood as then-Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, whose success relying on advanced metrics in baseball was immortalized in the Michael Lewis bestseller "Moneyball", later made into a movie starring Brad Pitt as Beane. And his Wolf Pack staff worked to try to find similar advantages on the basketball court. Musselman said he began to see the value of analytics in evaluating players — a step further than using those numbers to evaluate one's own team — in preparing for the G League draft.

Together with Anthony Ruta, Hays Myers and his son Michael, Musselman worked to find ways to predict whether a low-major player could excel at the Mountain West level, or trying to project whether a high-major player would find more success dropping down. Whatever the process was, it seemed to work; Nevada reached the Sweet 16 with a starting lineup comprised entirely of former transfers: Caleb Martin and Cody Martin of NC State, Jordan Caroline of Southern Illinois, Kendall Stephens of Purdue and Hallice Cooke, who arrived from Iowa State after initially transferring from Oregon State. All were sit-out transfers.

The next year, Nevada spent 17 weeks in the top 10 and won 29 games with a starting lineup that included the Martins, Caroline, Trey Porter (Old Dominion) and Tre'Shawn Thurman (Omaha). The top reserve, Jazz Johnson, arrived from Portland.


quote:
Ruta, Myers and Michael Musselman are all on the Arkansas support staff now, as director of basketball operations, director of scouting and analytics and director of recruiting, respectively, and their work in trying to perfect their formulas for Arkansas is ongoing.

"We really felt after Year Three, that we knew, at least with the Mountain West, we felt like we had that formula about as soundproof as you could have," Eric Musselman said. "Now, just going into year three now at Arkansas, we're still building that program in the SEC. We don't have it like we did at Nevada—we're getting close."

Musselman said he was "hopeful" to fully crack the code before transfer season 2022 hits; Arkansas also receives numbers from outside sources, but mostly uses them to keep an eye on the competition, which he said uses those figures.


quote:
"We feel like our system internally — because we have three guys that take great pride in that — that our system is as good as anywhere as far as evaluation," Musselman said. "Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to get (the player); you can evaluate and still not win the recruiting process with the player. And that's what I would say, that's why we kind of reverted philosophically because there were some players that based on our analytics we really wanted, and just because of the fierce competition, we didn't get which maybe in the past we would have gotten with very little competition."

Don't weep for Arkansas having to work harder on that end. The Razorbacks still landed a stellar transfer class in South Dakota forward Stanley Umude, Pittsburgh wing Au'Diese Toney, Miami guard Chris Lykes and Wichita State guard Trey Wade. JD Notae, Arkansas' primary scoring option, was previously a transfer from Jacksonville and is in his second year on the court with the Razorbacks.

"I think it really depends on the makeup of your roster and the makeup of your other returning players, I do think you've got to identify a skill that's gonna fit the surrounding pieces," Musselman said. "We did; we felt like Chris Lykes would have some streaks to him that they could change complexities in the game. And we felt like losing Justin Smith, who was a versatile 6-7 guy and Moses Moody, we felt like both those guys at 6-6/6-7, we had to get two of them, or we couldn't play the style and the system we want. And so Au'Diese Toney and Stanley, we plugged those two guys in for Moses and Justin, and we changed our philosophical (approach)."


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Those adjustments can take time. But Arkansas appears to have found its stride; the Razorbacks started off 10-5 and 0-3 in SEC play, but have won 12 of their last 13 games, with the lone defeat coming at Alabama by a single point. Some of that comes down to comfort and fit, questions that fall outside the workings of a formula, but serve to quickly narrow down the pool of potential transfer prospects.

"I think as soon as you dive in, and you talk to a parent, a high school coach, an AAU coach, or the player, I would say about 40% of our phone calls, we eliminate (the player) after one or two calls," Musselman said. "You can get a good feel for what's important to the player, the minute they start talking about how many shots, how many minutes (are available) … (they are) probably not going to be the right fit for us. They want to get better? They want player development? Then those conversations keep going."

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So much gold in all of that. Muss is such an intense and analytical cat.

Not happening per Devo family guy. He’s got a lot of NBA prospects. Whether it’s D league or all the way. He’s going to make solid money.

Guy says Toney, Williams and Devo should all be back.

Said Devos earlier struggles we’re having NIL in his ear and some confidence stuff but Muss has stuck by him hardcore and he’s obviously been shining lately.

Everything I hear, including Muss saying things like “he’s emotional, I’m emotional, we move on” around the backboard slap tells me he’s a master at working with these kids.

Many guys would have benched him immediately and Muss stuck with him. Think he hit a couple more big FTs after that too.

Toney being back would be a nice surprise that I hadn’t considered before the season. That and Black coming would definitely make the scholarship situation tight for transfers though even if KK and Vanover move on.

Ladybacks fell from a 6 seed a couple of weeks ago to an 8 seed Monday to an 11 seed today.

Really need a win over a ranked UGA team tonight or it's going to get really sketchy at 4 L's in a row this late in the season.

It's almost must win tonight yeah.

18-9 Hogs end of 1.

26-25 Hogs half.