Yep, I am with you. Likely not NCAA Tournament still but could have competed for NIT perhaps. Brackins would have been a scoring machine I would like to believe, in that wide open spread em out system.
A guard short, yeah I can see it. It is a meaningless exercise, but who could they have had?
Lucca Staiger - would have had a year of eligibility left I believe
Chris Colvin - would have contributed, but never wound up amounting to much at Arizona State
Demarcus Phillips - not really sure/bust?
Erik McKnight - not a guard, and never really amounted to much at other stops
Marquis Gilstrap - appealed for an extra season of eligibility, which would have been Fred's first year, but was denied.
Gilstrap is the obvious choice for one that could have put them over the edge I think. Still a little thin on guard play, so say both he and one of the aformentioned guards comes back/doesn't bust, and I think you have a pretty good team in year one of Hoiball. But then you don't get the awesome story that the 2011-12 team was. You may not have "Transfer U".
Edited to add one:
LaRon Dendy. Could have played his senior year for year one of Hoiball. Again, would have provided good depth but can't remember what happened/why he transferred. Was he a cancer or was it just the coaching change?
The guys who came back/showed up we can assume were to happen.
Brackins was going pro come hell or high water after having what seemed like a bad experience his junior year. I'm sure his relationship with McDermott was broken. He hasn't seemed to have had much of anything to do with Iowa State since he left. So hard to imagine that working out somehow.
But...
Maybe Fred gets to him. Sweettalks him in that dreamy way he's going to make him the centerpiece of a new, exciting offense and catapult him into the top ten or the top five after a dominant senior season. Maybe Fred and Craig hit it off and that's enough to put the bad memories of McD behind him.
The other guys are all kind of "ship has sailed" by the time Fred shows up...
Staiger left midseason long before Fred was hired.
Colvin wasn't very good and had a terrible attitude.
Phillips did play for Fred but "transferred" -- a total bust.
McKnight was a bust. Doesn't fill the need there.
Gilstrap would have helped a lot, but that appeal was denied.
Gilstrap is definitely an interesting hypothetical, but it wasn't his decision in the end. I think he obviously wanted to come back and would have loved to have had him, but that wasn't in the cards.
Assuming Brackins was back, then Fred needed to find a backup CG to chew some minutes. That would have given him a solid seven-man rotation that probably makes the NCAA tournament.
Garrett
Christopherson
Anderson
Brackins
Vanderbeken
---
COMBO TRANSFER
Ejim
Godfrey
I think that's an NCAA tournament team if the combo is a guy like, say, Donovan Jackson.
You do have to make some room if that happens, though. The good news it would have been easy --
Don't give Palo a scholarship. Leave him as a walk-on equals one.
Run off Phillips for the sake of Brackins or a transfer guard equals two.
Colvin Godfrey had some potential or maybe don't recruit a bust like Railey equals three.
Then you can have that seven-man rotation *with* Allen, Babb, Booker, and White on redshirts.
