RaceToTheTop

Conner Vanover (7'3" center, formerly from Arkansas, formerly from Oral Roberts) commits to Missouri. Also looks like another North Carolina player having trouble with transfer credits.

I don't know.....Stand Pat plays like his feet are stuck in cement. But still a better player than Pat Knight.

He also would fill Illinois' last scholarship.

FWIW, I haven't found CBBRoundup to be particularly reliable. One of the replies they make in the tweet says that 'from what he's heard today, he doubts that Illinois is in the lead for him because they need a lead guard and they are going after Trey Woodbury now'. Woodbury is in limbo right now as his waiver was rejected. He's only going to be eligible on the off chance that the NCAA grants him a waiver on his second appeal which I think is highly unlikely.

I don't disagree that they would start top 5 next year. Was just saying they really aren't a top five team regardless of ranking. It's hard to overachieve two years in a row.

Unless he's a grad. Not sure -- he played two years at Temple and last year sat at due to injury, so if he did graduate in three years he wouldn't need the waiver.

Jeremiah Williams also committed to Illinois today which fills their 13th scholarship. He's a point guard who played at Temple in 20-21 and 21-22 before transferring to Iowa State last year but missed the season with an Achille's injury. Williams is a pass first point guard -- in two years at Temple averaged 32 minutes/game, 9.4 points, 4.2 assists, and 3.5 rebounds. Not a good shooter, made only 23 of 86 threes in two seasons.

ACC would make sense but I don't think the ACC is looking to add at this point. But Pat Forde reported a couple of weeks ago that if the Big 12 fails to get to 14 to 16 teams by bringing in Pac 12 teams, U Conn is on their short list.

Personally, it would be a minor shock to me if he chose Illinois after both Shannon and Hawkins decided to return.

I read this on another board, but probably the reason San Francisco is in the mix is the large Mongolian community there. Five thousand people originally from Mongolia live in California and 60% of that population resides in the San Franciso Bay Area cities of Oakland and San Leandro. Apparently this area has become a popular center for Mongolian immigrants in the past twenty years.

I talked about the Torvik formulas in a separate thread (I believe the transfer portal one), but basically it tends to over rate previous playing time in calculating expected minutes for the following year. This results in Sparks being projected to play more minutes than Reneau even though Reneau is projected to have better efficiency ratings. When Sharavajamts is added to IU's roster, it gives him about 25 minutes per game -- a number that I don't think is realistic. So it ends up taking minutes away from players who Torvik actually has rated with better efficiency ratings. FWIW, Torvik projects him to only get 12 minutes per game at Nebraska -- and it's not because of Nebraska's talent (they are ranked 45 currently in Torvik) but rather that they acquired and returned players who played more minutes than MS did last season. I love the Torvik rostercast, but it's limited.

Trilly Donovan tweeting that there has been a lot of chatter today about U Conn wanting to leave the Big East.

FWIW: Torvik predicts him to a have big jump efficiency next year. Using their numbers (they project Sharavjamts to get 25 minutes per game at IU, a number I don't see happening), he would shoot 43/35/76 and average roughly 8 points, 2 boards, and 3 assists. It's close to what the translated projections I have from their numbers for Galloway would be -- 27 mpg, 6.7 points, 3.6 reb, 2.6 assists, shotting 46/45/63. Personally, I would cautiously project him at half the time Torvik does. There would be some use in a bench playing getting 12.5 mpg, 4 points, a board and an assist or two.

FAU may be in the top five....but they really aren't top five regardless of the final four run. It's going to be really difficult to catch lightning in a bottom twice. Heck, if Memphis hadn't turned the ball over with 5 seconds left FAU wouldn't have made it out of the first round. That's not meant to take anything away from the great job Dusty May did, just they are ripe for regression.

Tennessee could have something to say about that. They picked up Ledlum and Knecht and they might still be options 4 and 5 in their lineup.

Head to head, I simply can't see Purdue matching up with Kansas. Dickinson with proper coaching makes the Edey advantage minute and Kansas' 2-5 are better at every spot.

Virginia also had only two losses all season heading into the UMBC game while Purdue had two just to Indiana. Purdue will certainly put up a lot of wins but the issues they seem to have come tournament time are still relevant ones. They didn't fix the athleticism issue....they basically added the kid from Southern Illinois and lost Newman, which is basically a wash. The freshman guards will be a year older but Fletcher Loyer in particular can still be exposed.

The accounts were that the feedback was little better than expected as he was thought to be a late second round draftee and the thought afterwards was early to mid second. But he is what he is and in today's NBA that's not what teams are looking for.

Not a great offseason for Northwestern despite Buie coming back. When Roper was healthy, they ran an eight man rotation. Four of those players are gone -- Audige (draft) Robbie Beran (transfer), Julian Roper (transfer), and Tydue Verhoeven (played his five years). None of the three freshman coming in are top 150. The three transfers coming in aren't anything to write home about -- Justin Mullins from Denver (9.8 ppg), Ryan Langborg from Princeton (12.7 ppg who is a three point shooter who only shot 33% from three) and grad transfer Blake Preston who played four years at Liberty and was a 6 point/5 rebound type of player there.

It's getting harder and harder to say that the Purdue loss last year was a fluke after continual losses to poorly seeded teams, though. As long as Edey is there, Purdue will put up a good record. But as long as they remain as unathletic as they are, teams are going to exploit that in the tourney. They didn't fix that issue.

Just madness.....DeAndre Williams went to Evansville in 2018-19 but had to sit that year due to acadmic eligibility issues. That year did count toward his four years. Played a year at Evansville before transferring to Memphis. Played three years there and avergaed 17.7 points/game. Is now applying for a waiver and sounding like he is going to lawyer up. Because of the 2018-19 year, he has already used five years even though he did not play that year. If his waiver is granted, he would turn 27 before he played any games next year at Memphis.

Zyon Pullin (UC Riverside, 18.3 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 4.2 apg, shot 48/39/77) withdraws from draft. Final five list for him is Florida, LSU, Xavier, Gonzaga, and Michigan.

Of note, since I've used the Torvik rostercast tool quite a bit: Basically the rostercast tool orders players from 1 to 10 in expected minutes and puts them in a model and tweaks from there. There seems to be a default in terms of minutes that is slightly adjusted: player #1 in minutes is around 32; #2 is around 30; #3 is 28; #4 is 26; #5 is 24; #6 is 22; #7 is 15; #8 is 12; #9 is 8; and #10 is 4. They get slightly tweaked, but the patterns are always very similar. Currently, Torvik puts IU's minutes per game for their top ten at 32, 30.8, 27.6, 26, 24.8, 20.8, 14.8, 12.4, 7.2, and 4.0. Minutes calculated are based upon: 1. For incoming freshman or redshirt freshman, player ranking as a recruit; 2. For sophomores or greater, playing time for their teams in the past, heavily weighted to the previous year and 3. Player overall efficiency rating (note that this is adjusted for level of play, so Peyton Sparks actually sees a predicted efficiency drop of 2% for next year as he moves from the MAC to the Big 10. ---------------- From what I have gathered so far, there are areas where player's minutes got over and under predicted. Previous minutes do seem to get a higher weight than projected efficiency does. For instance, Malik Reneau has a projected efficiency of 108.8 and Peyton Sparks checks in at 107.7. Despite this, Torvik projects Sparks at 24.8 minutes per game and Reneau at 20.8 minutes per game. I think this is largely in part to the number of minutes that Sparks has played in his first two years Where this does produce some issues is that players transferring from a mid to low major at a higher number of minutes/game than will probably occur. I would expect that Reneau will be at 25 or more minutes per game in reality and Sparks will be under 15. I bring this up because of how minutes are distributed on Torvik, the overall team ratings are effected. If you add Mike Sharajamts to IU's current roster, it predicts that he would get 25.2 minutes per game and have the fifth most minutes and has IU as a team drop two spots in the rating. But because of how it figures ratings and simply orders players in minutes regardless of position, the two players losing minutes in their model are not players at the 2 or 3 positions -- rather it's the players that were fifth and sixth in minutes previous, which are Sparks and Reneau. What's closer to reality is that he would be competing for minutes against other 1, 2, or 3's on Indiana's team. Torvik is a nice little tool, just can't take it as gospel. It's basically built to build interest and have some fun, but don't get too hung up in the rankings.

I think the number of players that fit that category has a lot to do with the extra year and players being grad transfers. Short of graduating in three years, a player can only transfer once in college without receiving a waiver. I believe the NCAA sent out a memo this year to schools indicating that they shouldn't take the waiver for granted.

My guess is that Sharavjamts isn't looking to be in college that long, which is why he looked to get feedback in the draft. If he can't make it to the NBA, would guess he goes back overseas and plays after another year.