Wasn't he suppsoe to be really good on defense but his offense was extremely raw and his weak point? I can't imagine TJ even going after him at all if he didn't play defense.
Scammed might not be the right word, but extremely dissatisfied and disappointed fits.
What part of recruit evaluation ever made you think it was hard science? There are evaluation misses every single year. And it doesn't just stop there. Look at leagues like the NFL and NBA. They pour gobs of money into scouting and the hit rate for a first round pick in the NFL is about 50%. It's even worse in the NBA.
Well, I guess I expected a consensus 5 star and the best player we've gotten since Fizer to putup a little more than 6 total points in Big 12 play.
So you thought not being good enough to even get minutes against Florida A&M and going about 5 weeks without playing at all was within his range of outcomes?
At the beginning of the season he was coming in for King at the 4, but he struggled against horrible competition. He didn't play the 5 until Ward got hurt.
Look, everybody expected a lot more out of Billiew this year. What did you want the staff to do? They have a season to coach, so this idea that you get a bunch of in-season player development is just not realistic. Guys get better with reps, especially freshmen, but the player has to show they should be on the court first. He didn't do that. That doesn't mean he won't become really good, but he needs a monster offseason. It wasn't going to happen in-season.
Clearly it was in the range of outcomes, because that's what happened. There doesn't have to be some grand conspiracy. Maybe he didn't pick things up the way they thought he'd be able to. Part of recruiting rankings is projection. Maybe Iowa State's older, more seasons bigs were just better in our system. Maybe he just wasn't as good as the evaluators thought. Regardless, he's not the only player to underperform compared to their recruiting ranking. He didn't make waves in the locker room and didn't cause trouble outside of it. He seemed to be enthusiastic and wanting to be there. I'm sure he envisioned this year playing out a lot differently than it did, but that's just the way it worked out.
I think he has all the physical tools to be a great defensive player, so perhaps the evaluation doesn't take into account how well they learn a defense. Seems to me that he got confused with the switching/hedging/helping and it doesn't matter how talented you are if you're not in the right spot.
Disagree. Last thing we needed was a big man shooting 43%. Jones shared his minutes with Ward. If he played more and shot 12 times a game, he would have put up similar scoring numbers to Homan. Jones was a consummate team player. He shot 59% this year which is best on the team this year.
Jones was a great team player and he hustled like hell, but he had no offensive game at all, none. His game was getting a rebound and putting it back up, or getting the ball in the middle of the lane and shooting it right underneath the basket. He shot a team leading 59% because all his shots were within 3 feet of the basket.
I'm fine as long as he goes anywhere that we don't play. I want to able to root for him and that would be hard if he went to a big 12 team. My guess is he goes down to mid majors. I wouldn't be mad if he went to Drake.
I love the Darlinstone Dubar comp he was getting on the most recent Blum and CW pod. Similar athletic profiles and skillsets seemingly. You could see how both of them could become dynamic players during their true freshman years, but ultimately struggled to stay on the court and looked a bit confused and lost when they did get to play. Dubar removed himself froma situation where it was made clear he wasn't going to get the playing time he wanted, so he moved on to Hofstra and has been a good if not great player for them the last few years. Now he has a shot to use his covid year somewhere on a bigger stage. I could see Omaha's career playing out similarly.
