Tulsa lost their best player from last year, the freshman of the year, in PJ Haggerty. Now he is arguably the best player in the AAC with a 21.9 points/game average for Memphis. Imagine UAB without Yaxel. Weren’t there rumors Memphis wanted Yaxel too?
Not only does KenPom ranked Haggerty as the best player in the AAC, but the 6th best player in the country! How was Tulsa supposed to recover from that?
Tulsa’s #35, Ian Smilke (6-10 242), had his best game of the season this afternoon - 17 points, 8 rebounds, and 3 steals. He had some nice post-ups against UAB’s big guys. He is a freshman! If he keeps this up, how long can Tulsa keep him?
(This post was last modified: 01-04-2025 07:31 PM by KevMo4UAB.)
And this is ultimately going to be the downfall of college athletics. At some point, why are people going to want to do this anymore? I was all for the players being able to get paid whatever people wanted to for meet and greets, commercials, YouTube channels, autographs, etc. I wasn’t about fans being asked to create a payroll for each team, and guys essentially signing one year contracts to maybe stay for a year.
I can’t stand having to worry about every good player at the school being bought by some other team. And this is no knock on Memphis because everybody is going it, but we are all just supposed to believe everything was on the up and up with their bringing Haggerty over, right?
(01-04-2025 10:27 PM)UABrandon Wrote: Haggerty is obviously good but he's also a FT merchant
Yep. He is 108-130 (83.1%) from the foul line this season. Last season at Tulsa, he was 230-298 (77.2%). That’s 39 more made free throws than Yax attempted last season. The guy lives at the foul line.
(01-04-2025 09:13 PM)blazers9911 Wrote: And this is ultimately going to be the downfall of college athletics. At some point, why are people going to want to do this anymore? I was all for the players being able to get paid whatever people wanted to for meet and greets, commercials, YouTube channels, autographs, etc. I wasn’t about fans being asked to create a payroll for each team, and guys essentially signing one year contracts to maybe stay for a year.
I can’t stand having to worry about every good player at the school being bought by some other team. And this is no knock on Memphis because everybody is going it, but we are all just supposed to believe everything was on the up and up with their bringing Haggerty over, right?
If nothing is against the rules, what isn't on the up & up?
Haggarty barely played as a freshman at TCU. Either quit before Christmas or was injured.
As for Tulsa, they also lost a pretty good big to injury, 6-9,245. He had better stats than Coleman last year. 9ppg, 6.4 rpg. (versus 7.7 & 4.5)
(01-04-2025 09:13 PM)blazers9911 Wrote: And this is ultimately going to be the downfall of college athletics. At some point, why are people going to want to do this anymore? I was all for the players being able to get paid whatever people wanted to for meet and greets, commercials, YouTube channels, autographs, etc. I wasn’t about fans being asked to create a payroll for each team, and guys essentially signing one year contracts to maybe stay for a year.
I can’t stand having to worry about every good player at the school being bought by some other team. And this is no knock on Memphis because everybody is going it, but we are all just supposed to believe everything was on the up and up with their bringing Haggerty over, right?
If nothing is against the rules, what isn't on the up & up?
Haggarty barely played as a freshman at TCU. Either quit before Christmas or was injured.
As for Tulsa, they also lost a pretty good big to injury, 6-9,245. He had better stats than Coleman last year. 9ppg, 6.4 rpg. (versus 7.7 & 4.5)
Well, unless something has changed, you can’t recruit a guy not in the portal. You can’t use NIL to recruit a player. You can’t pay for play. But it’s the Wild West out there.
There are rules, everybody just said f the NCAA and it appears they have no ability to enforce anything at this point.
(01-05-2025 08:38 PM)blazers9911 Wrote: Well, unless something has changed, you can’t recruit a guy not in the portal. You can’t use NIL to recruit a player. You can’t pay for play. But it’s the Wild West out there.
Something has changed - programs stopped recruiting players and started recruiting their agents.
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Tulsa Golden Hurricane
