I agree. I live in SE Minnesota and Eli will be just fine. Needs to keep grinding and working on his outside shot. Kid is a competitor and extremely athletic. Wouldn’t be surprise if he is getting 15-20 minutes a game next year,
Eli King??
- Thread starter mustangcy
- Start date
Eli King could/would get mins on some teams that other freshman were forced into.
Holmes, Gabe, Grill are ahead of him on mins. He's an athletic two, with a shot that's not yet developed to be competing for mins given our teams makeup.
If he was 6'5-7" , was more a true pg or developed defensively, he'd be getting mins.
I'm not worried on his development and thibk he'll have plenty of opportunity to contribute.
But there'll be competition.
100% this.
Gabe and Grill are chewing up almost all the minutes in the wings. Both are extremely good defenders, shooting the ball really well, and not to mention seniors.
Couple that with Lipsey and Holmes being dual point guards who TJ will put on the floor at the same time and there just isn’t a lot of minutes for Eli.
I would not read too far into his lack of minutes at this point.
He is an elite athlete, lost a year in high school due to injury, and proven himself at HS level against top AAU competition. To points made here, this is a guard heavy top-15 team.
Is he going to be a star for us? Perhaps not. But I don’t think anyone thought that during Grill’s first tour of duty with us and people are talking about him being an all-conference kind of guy this year.
Jury is out in this for me and will be until at least next year.
But as a serious counterpoint…why would Eli play meaningful minutes at this point? He’s not taking minutes from Lipsey. They would have to come from Holmes, Grill, or Kalscheur. He’s not going to be anywhere near the defender Grill and Kalscheur are at this point…and TJ isn’t going to sacrifice things on the defense. Is he stealing minutes from Holmes?
I’m not saying he should be playing but we have seen that if you have a special freshman, they find the minutes. Fred did it for Monte, Prohm said multiple times Tyrese couldn’t get pulled off the floor, Otz plugged in Lipsey and he took it by the reigns this year.
I have said continually I’m not writing him off, however, if he wants to make an impact on the program, it’s not going to get easier going into next year for him to get PT.
Wasn't it Thomas that many on here wanted to force out after his freshman and sophomore years.
Yes. People were ready to write him off.
I don’t know that our starting 5 is as talented as some of those Hoiberg and Prohm teams, but I would argue we’re deeper.
Lipsey, Holmes, Grill, and Gabe is as deep of a backcourt as we’ve had in quite a while. And that’s with Williams out for the season.
Jaz, Tre King, Ward, and Watson are Big 12 caliber players.
Then you’ve got BRE (maybe most improved player year-over-year we’ve seen in awhile) and an elite shot blocker in Osuniyi.
We’re a legit 10 deep. I don’t think that was true with maybe exception of last year or two under Fred..
Grill, Tre King, Ward, Watson, and Rob are a better starting 5 than we had Prohms last year.
We lose Gabe and Holmes next year. There will be minutes available at that off guard position. Jeremiah Williams returns from injury and Jelani Hamilton is a promising recruit. Time will tell what we do in the transfer portal. I think there is a path for some major minutes for him next year. He is currently stuck behind two 5th year seniors in Gabe and Holmes who are both playing extremely well and have both played a ton of college ball. Gabe is playing at an All Big 12 level right now.
Ha come to think of it most the posters who "don't see it" with Eli are probably the same posters who didn't want Gabe back for another year (there were a LOT of them). Gabe is playing pretty damn well, huh????
In fairness, Gabe really struggled offensively last year. It was frustrating to watch. Probably single handedly beat Memphis and Wisconsin, but he put up some really bad numbers in a lot of games.
Personally, I wasn’t ready to say “good riddance” like some because his contributions on the defensive end are underrated and you saw that flashes of what he can do. But anyone looking at these last couple of games saying “I told you so” were probably operating on optimism and not looking at his actual numbers from last year (which had been in a steady decline since he was a freshman).
Not bashing him and obviously happy he stayed, but it was not a guarantee he was going to turn the corner. Let’s just hope he can keep it up because we’re a completely different team if he’s scoring 20 a night and shooting even 33% from 3.
Was at my first game at Hilton this year, not knowing anything about Eli, I thought he was a walk on when he was playing. Didn't do anything to show me he was anything but a nice story getting a few free throws. He could develop, I don't know, but in this game, I didn't see any signs of the athleticism some are touting.
Go look at his highs school football and basketball highlights. A legitimate teo sport super star.
There is a clip of him damn near jumping over someone’s head on a dunk a la Vince Carter in the Olympics against France.
The bottom line is King was a pretty dang good recruit with offers in both basketball and football to some impressive schools. Keep in mind he dealt with a serious knee injury in HS and was a multi-sport athlete. An offseason healthy to focus purely on basketball could be huge for him. He's currently stuck behind senior guards in Gabe, Jaren and Caleb who are all playing at a really high level on a top 15 team in the country. It isn't crazy to think his career could flourish with more development and once some of those upperclassmen guards graduate.
Hell, if he doesn't pan out for TJ, maybe they can just convert his scholarship to the football program. They need all the help they can get
Give the :30 second mark a watch of the below video. In addition to his basketball offers he was a 4 star recruit in football with offers to Notre Dame, Penn State, Stanford, Nebraska, Mizzou, Iowa and Iowa State.
If you thought he was a walk on, then it must have been because you saw a short, white, bald kid on the sideline for 37 minutes without knowing anything else about him. When he was playing he looks a lot more fluid then any walk on Iowa State has thrown out there in garbage time over the last two decades. He just looks like a young player that hasn't had a lot of opportunity to play at this level. Tonight he kind of looked like how tre king looked in his first few games. He just has some rust to knock off.
There isn't any need to sound the alarm unless we're still having these conversations about him not playing 11 months from now. But in truth, he is at a disadvantage given his size will probably dictate that he plays PG at this level, and we already have Lipsey in the same class, who is quite obviously ahead of him. Assuming Jeremiah Williams stays in Ames, Eli will still likely be #3 on the depth chart for PG minutes next year. Grill will likely still be around, too, so unless Eli becomes an exceptional shooter,I can't see him getting a lot of playing time in moments where Grill sits and we need someone to fill in at the 2. No sense in worrying about it right now though. I'm enjoying the ride we're currently on
LOL Prohm. Murray State lost to Drake and UNI recently. Hasn’t won a game in the state of Iowa in like his last 20 attempts. Eli King is fine. TJ is his coach. Trust TJ. They’ll figure it out.
