Looking Ahead

Looking at the roster for next year, unless something happens in regards to the NCAA granting a blanket fifth year of eligibility for all athletes, we are going to have a historically good transfer portal class to field a competent team. Assuming we don't lose anyone to the portal, our returning scholarship players for next year will be:

Boswell
Phillips
Estrella
Okpara

We will add incoming freshmen Amari Evans and DeWayne Brown.

Is there anything I'm overlooking as far as returning players or incoming players? If not, we are well on our way to a helluva dumpster fire next year.

 

5 of our 9 playing are transfers. I’m guessing Barnes has a plan there.

 

Barnes is gone if ZZ is gone.
Who we gonna get?
And can we please get a couple white boys who just stand there and launch with no remorse. Just sayin. Use DEI if we need to.

 

Hopefully it's a lot better plan that what he had for this year, because we are going to have much less to work with going into next season.

Also, I'm still doubtful he'll be the coach worrying about it.

 

we didn’t expect Estrella injury and most expected Carr to take a step up in his soph year. That’s some size and a lot of length.
People have complained about not having filled all scholarships but with portal and nil imo we won’t see many 11-13th players in rotation stay long if they are halfway decent and portal players won’t come to sit.

 

74 straight weeks in the top 25. Im not too worried about Barnes. If he’s here, we will have a competitive roster. You could’ve said what are we gonna do next year this time last year.

 

That’s pretty bad. And not expecting much from those freshman next year. Tough to hit on that many portal guys.

 

No comparison between this time last year and now. Last year at this time, we were expecting our returning scholarship players to be:

Aidoo
Gainey
Zeigler
Awaka
Phillips
Estrella
Mashack
Carr
Jefferson
Dilione

Obviously, some of that changed with the portal but much better than what we are looking at for next year even considering what we lost in the portal.

 

Yeah that’s what we were looking like but 6/10 aren’t here or injured

 

We started this season with 6/10, including two of the best defenders I can remember watching here and one of the best PGs we've had since I've been following UT basketball. Much easier to build on that in the portal than what we will have coming back next year.

Because I made this thread, I fully expect Barnes to stay and manage to piece together one of his best teams.

 

Outside of Ziegler, who were we really confident was going to step up in the big time?

 

I like that Barnes tries to put pieces together for teams. All 5* all star would be fun but we will never be that with him. Too many chiefs can be an issue a coach used to say. Role players like Cade and Felix are parts that help build solid teams and help win games. Scorers and shooters need to play their roles too.

 

One of Barnes's worst teams was his most 5 star heavy

 

Gates or Byington. Or is it dumb to see Tennessee as a clear upgrade over those places?

I would take Pearl back if he was somehow into that idea. Let's stop pretending he's not borderline elite. He's got at least 5 more good years in him.

 

Byington seems good but I don't know about Gates. The way he plays requires a lot of luck.

 

Danny White will make a hire like he did with Kim Caldwell.

 

My research has led me to Grant McCasland

 

most aren’t about defense and are about stats and nba top 10 pick. One or two would be nice. 5 fighting over touches doesn’t seem like a good longterm plan.

 

I doubt the next coach will be a sitting P5 HC and I very strongly doubt it will be one from a conference rival.

 

I think he ends up with Texas if/when Terry is canned. McCasland’s a born and bred Texan. I don’t see him leaving the state.