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I am leery of low major players coming “up” vs. high major transfers coming “down.”

Our best transfers fit the latter category. Especially as we move to the American, which while not going to be what it was with Houston, Cincinnati and UCF is still going to be a consistently tougher opponent most nights than we saw in C-USA.

Locure couldn’t see the floor with us but was a consistent contributor at two Sun Belt schools. Johnson barely played for us, was a bigtime scorer for Chattanooga this year. Bertram barely got any minutes at all with us. Simeon Kirkland was a non factor for us but averaged about 7 p / 5 r in 46 career starts at New Orleans. Just a few examples.

We don’t need to sign portal guys who are gonna be 9th in the rotation. Need to make sure they can play.

COBE Williams to Tulsa.

What an odd move. Makes you wonder if the split from LaTech was a little more ugly or bad than implied. His list of offers was ridiculous

(03-15-2023 02:43 PM)Golden-Ticket Wrote:  What an odd move. Makes you wonder if the split from LaTech was a little more ugly or bad than implied. His list of offers was ridiculous

Not odd move. Konkol left LA Tech for Tulsa. Just following his coach a year late.

I didn’t even make that connection, never mind that makes sense. But geez you’d think he could go somewhere better

So we will be seeing him again.

High Point transfer Zack Austin tells Portal Updates he’s heard from:

Arkansas
Clemson
Alabama
UCF
Mizzou
UCSB
UNCG
Towson
PFW
Loyola Chicago
Florida
Providence
Cal Poly
Murray State
Mercer
UMBC
South Alabama
Michigan State
Utah Valley
Santa Clara
West Virginia
Pitt
UNCW
TCU
New Mexico
Marshall
Texas A&M
North Texas
Texas A&M CC
SFA
Tulsa
Western Carolina
Charlotte
UAB
Chattanooga
Portland
LMU
Marshall
Averaged 14.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks

At least one of those teams listed above for Zack Austin will be losing six seniors in the playing rotation.

It hurts we lose so much but geez the fact we can just advertise nearly immodest starting spots for Bigs is great

I'm actually excited to see how we look next year. Hopefully Gaines makes the obvious needed improvements to his game and gets stronger, Butta was solid, and we get two really good Juco players. Davis was really good in limited minutes too. Toney is what he is. I think we have a good core of players. We could still be quite good next year with the right additions.

Gaines just had to figure out how to be a little smarter with the ball. He ends up attacking the lane and humping without knowing his escape route with the ball. Too many times he gets caught in the air and panicked. He is going to be a Monster for us

Satterfield is a solid freshman signee. Dad was cincy star player i think.

Coleman and Vasquez are top 10 juco rated too.

found the articles from articles from school website.

https://uabsports.com/news/2022/11/9/men...igning-day
https://uabsports.com/news/2022/11/14/me...ning-class

Satterfield looks very good on film

(03-16-2023 08:33 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  I'm actually excited to see how we look next year. Hopefully Gaines makes the obvious needed improvements to his game and gets stronger, Butta was solid, and we get two really good Juco players. Davis was really good in limited minutes too. Toney is what he is. I think we have a good core of players. We could still be quite good next year with the right additions.

I tend to agree with you. Certainly, as the season progresses i think next year's team might end up better than this year's team. A more well-rounded team not dependent on Jelly having to score 30. I think defensively we could be much improved. I think Butta (or someone else) is the point guard over Gaines. Gaines can finish a break; not sure he can lead one. Also, not sure he has the acumen to play the position. I sure wish someone would work with Rongie. I still think he can help us. Toney has some strong upside. Very athletic. I dont know anything about the juco kids other than they are supposed to be good. I couple of solid outside shooters, and we could surprise people next year. I want to see the coaching staff step up too.

I would like to see toney putting up 1000+ threes a day over the off-season. He’s got to become a more consistent shooter. He could be our Bruce Bowen, 3&D, energy, hustle, glue guy..

He’s excellent at bringing the energy, playing defense, and playing above the rim right now. But he doesn’t have the handles of a point guard or the consistent jumper to be a reliable offensive threat. He’s basically an undersized amalgam of a guard/forward. Would really love to see him just consistently knock down open jumpers for us and he could be a monster. He could be counted for more minutes too if he wasn’t a liability on offense.

(03-16-2023 09:35 AM)randy22263 Wrote:  

(03-16-2023 08:33 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  I'm actually excited to see how we look next year. Hopefully Gaines makes the obvious needed improvements to his game and gets stronger, Butta was solid, and we get two really good Juco players. Davis was really good in limited minutes too. Toney is what he is. I think we have a good core of players. We could still be quite good next year with the right additions.

I tend to agree with you. Certainly, as the season progresses i think next year's team might end up better than this year's team. A more well-rounded team not dependent on Jelly having to score 30. I think defensively we could be much improved. I think Butta (or someone else) is the point guard over Gaines. Gaines can finish a break; not sure he can lead one. Also, not sure he has the acumen to play the position. I sure wish someone would work with Rongie. I still think he can help us. Toney has some strong upside. Very athletic. I dont know anything about the juco kids other than they are supposed to be good. I couple of solid outside shooters, and we could surprise people next year. I want to see the coaching staff step up too.

I’ve given Ak some guff this year, and it hasn’t been his best job this year, but he has his teams ready to go in March and he has shown he can retool a roster instantly. Look at his year one team. We were a basket away from beating a really good WKU team in the CUSA tournament and would’ve played a UNT team we had beaten twice that year.

Even with our big losses I would be very surprised if the bottom fell out on us next year.

Quez Glover, Stamford’s best player, just hit the portal.

(03-16-2023 09:54 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  

(03-16-2023 09:35 AM)randy22263 Wrote:  

(03-16-2023 08:33 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  I'm actually excited to see how we look next year. Hopefully Gaines makes the obvious needed improvements to his game and gets stronger, Butta was solid, and we get two really good Juco players. Davis was really good in limited minutes too. Toney is what he is. I think we have a good core of players. We could still be quite good next year with the right additions.

I tend to agree with you. Certainly, as the season progresses i think next year's team might end up better than this year's team. A more well-rounded team not dependent on Jelly having to score 30. I think defensively we could be much improved. I think Butta (or someone else) is the point guard over Gaines. Gaines can finish a break; not sure he can lead one. Also, not sure he has the acumen to play the position. I sure wish someone would work with Rongie. I still think he can help us. Toney has some strong upside. Very athletic. I dont know anything about the juco kids other than they are supposed to be good. I couple of solid outside shooters, and we could surprise people next year. I want to see the coaching staff step up too.

I’ve given Ak some guff this year, and it hasn’t been his best job this year, but he has his teams ready to go in March and he has shown he can retool a roster instantly. Look at his year one team. We were a basket away from beating a really good WKU team in the CUSA tournament and would’ve played a UNT team we had beaten twice that year.

Even with our big losses I would be very surprised if the bottom fell out on us next year.

I think overall we could field a more talented team next year. I think we were a very flawed team the last two years that depended on Jelly taking lots of bad shots (but making many of them). I certainly think we were an average defensive team. I'd like to see Kennedy show me he can develop players and not just assemble what is available. I won't get into the "what if this had happened" debate. Anything can happen in a conference tournament. We need to put ourselves in a position where we don't have to win 3 straight in the conference tourney in order to go dancing. Some of that has been out of our control but we have to schedule better even if that means more road games preseason. And we have to start winning some of these early games like West Virginia. Yes, we beat an average Georgia team, but we have to make more noise in December. We've looked poorly prepared in most of those games. I can't give Kennedy a pass on that.

If Jelly would not have been hurt I bet we would have won 5-6 more games & would have been dancing.

I feel like we need to sign a shooter and a rebounder/defender in the worst way. We are losing a lot of activity in the paint and I dont see Javien being able to carry 25+ minutes night after night