Juwan Moye

How about being consistently in or around the top-25 and securing a 7-seed or better, otherwise he’s fired. Is that reasonable?

Feels like a shot at Woodson in this: "It felt like a perfect fit," McNeeley said. "Coach Hurley is a hard-nosed coach. That's the kind of coach I thrive under. The offensive system they run is perfect for my game. The culture of the team. The sets they run. They are going to help me get better on both sides of the ball. The whole coaching staff are good people."

Would be curious to know what the sunshine pumpers think. ”we won the offseason! ”cool, so if we don’t make the sweet 16 we fire our coach, right?” ”whoa whoa, let’s be reasonable here”

I don’t disagree, but I’m attempting to suggest a floor. Which in my mind, if that floor isn’t met, that should be a fireable offense. My worry is that we squeak in as a bubble team, win a game, and keep our coach around because “we improved” or some garbage. I WANT us to do well, but we can’t accept mediocrity with the level of investment IMO if we ever want to be considered an elite program again.

The expectation set by Woodson himself was to compete and win B1G and national championships. But then he wants to tell us he’s “done his job” for a 19-win season and misses the tournament, bizarre stuff really. So if we hold him to his expectation then we as fans should at least see that we’re clearly progressing towards the goals of a B1G title then a national title. We moved backwards last year, on top of other gaffes, thus the calls for him to be fired. But given the investment, both in coaches and players (were easily over $10m/yr), the absolutely floor for this team should be to consistently be in or around the top-25 with a 7-seed or better in the tournament. Even though I’m not a Woodson fan, I wouldn’t just fire him for a first round exit unless we get embarrassed again. But if he can’t secure at least a 7-seed in the tourney then he should have to win the BTT or make the sweet 16 to keep his job.

He’s got one of those names where you read it but you don’t even try to sound it out in your head.

Currently a mid major, considering a step up.

Yeah, I said that partially in jest but also somewhat truthful as it’d be so nice to watch aesthetically pleasing offensive basketball again. We haven’t had that since Crean. I think Malik could serve as our “backup Center” but even then, we still need a backup 4/5 who can man the middle when foul trouble or injury strikes. The issue here will be that you’re not getting a highly talented kid to come in and take that role. Maybe you’d get a highly regard freshman but I doubt it. That’s why I lean more towards staggering Ballo/Malik: Malik at the 5 is going to be more effective there than any person we’re likely to bring in at this point.

I’d rather we run a 4-guard lineup than see buddy ball.

I won’t go back and forth with you on this one again, I’ll just hope you’re right and the last 3 years have been purely about personnel.

35? No, I don’t think either plays that many minutes. I do expect it to look like Ware/Reneau though and those two shared minutes. To add: When Ware was hurt early in the year, Woodson had a chance to play Reneau at the 5, but he instead opted to play Sparks. So my eyes believe what they see and over the last 3 years that’s been a consistent commitment to 2 big lineups.

I’ll do you one better: it’d be better than “not a bad thing” it would be a very good thing and would show a shift in approach from Woodson. Stuff like that would go a long way to showing he’s not as stubborn as many believe, myself included, and could be big in helping to galvanize the fan base. Here you all have gone and gotten me all excited. Need to go over to “that other thread” to temper myself.

Cool, he’s listed as a guard but for the sake of playing time, as long as the staff is ok playing him alongside 2 guards, it’s all the same to me.

So you’re saying the robots aren’t immediately taking all of our jobs.

Yep, if we don’t bring in a backup 4/5 guy then it makes sense. But if you do, and that guys is getting 10-15 minutes a game, then the minutes are gone. If we commit to more 3 guard looks though then yep, Goode at 15 minutes is reasonable. (Which was the point)

Cool, that was one of the points made my str8baller, that the staff would have to make a commitment to do such a thing. I hope they do, just not optimistic that they do. I expect our starters to be Rice, Carlyle, Mgbako, Reneau, Ballo and the bulk of the minutes for those 5 guys to be at their starting position.

I’ll rephrase the question: If we don’t play 3 guards consistently, how do you figure Goode gets 15MPG?

Based on what? That’s only viable if we play 3 guards consistently or one of our top 3 guards gets injured. The previous post by str8baller nailed this IMO.

You can drill down into individual player expectations a bit which is interesting, at least for this nerd. It helps provide some context for how the aggregated projection is put together.

I heard if Leal plays enough we’re guaranteed to win so you may be on to something…

We for sure still need a backup but that “should” be a very limited role if Reneau spends any meaningful time at the 5, otherwise it’s a 12-15 minutes per game role. I’d guess that’s well below what Payne wants.

I think a REALLY interesting question is “given the investment and influx of talent, what is an acceptable floor for this team?”. And my acceptable I mean “how well does this team have to do to continue to keep Woodson?”. I think a reasonable line here is a 6-seed in the tourney as that implies we’re a top-25 team. Not perfect by any means, but I’d be happy with it after enduring last season. I do worry that “make the tournament” will be seen as enough and the excuses will flow. Hopefully we have so much success that we all become big Mike Woodson fan boys by the middle of the B1G season and avoid these types of awful discussions next year/offseason.

Mike Woodson understands the analytics, no one understands the analytics better than Mike Woodson.

Jamie Shaw isn’t perfect by any means but he pretty quickly put that crystal ball in after he announced. Obviously nothing is 100% but this one feels pretty much done and it looks like a good fit for both sides.

This is talking about a potential transfer commit and how they’ll be used. You can feel something is “overblown”, doesn’t matter to me, it’s just what happened at the start of last year and caused way more issues than it needed to. I’d explain the issues it causes but this isn’t the thread for it.