therickbol

Fresh does such a good job of "letting his play do the talking" when it comes to Forrest.

I see. All I knew was what I heard people saying over the summer. Thank you.

I thought there was a school that was in the district that shut down and they had a good player who went to Nashville Christian when his school closed. Is the Kennedy kid the one from the school that shut down?

Pearl has 1 scholarship for '08 that is going towards a SF (Wiggins destination in college). Pearl and his staff have contacted him and evaluated him. But, they have a number of other SF's that are better that they are going after and they are higher priorities because they are better recruits. Do you want Pearl to sign guys just because they are from east tn or do you want him to sign the best possible players? I have seen Wiggins play and he is not an SEC player right now, but he does have some potential if he puts in enough hard work. On down the road I guarantee you Pearl will recruit every player in the state very aggresively who he deems to be a difference maker in the SEC. He is already heavily involved in recruiting Leslie McDonald from Memphis. He will be a stud on down the road. Dont forget that every coach in the SEC has seen Wiggins play and none of them have offered him a scholly. I know many posters on coacht want to assume they have a great depth of basketball knowledge but are you nieve enough to think you have a better evaluation of Wiggins than every SEC coach does?

How is the transfer working into the equation at Nashville Christian?

Poor and averge single A teams will certainly have problems with Culleoka. They are very big and athletic. But, until Culleoka learns to play together as a team and find some guard play outside of Demario they will struggle against the high quality single A teams.

If Blackman handled Culleoka then my assumption is that Culleoka will lose this game. I saw them scrimmage Siegel and they seem to still have the same problems as last season. They have great individual parts but do not put it together to make a great team. Plus, outside of Demario the guard play is very weak. The constant pressure by Lebannon will wear down the guards of Culleoka and when they get the ball out of Demario's hands then Culleoka will turn the ball over a lot.

Bradshaw will start at the 4 again. Pearl has already said that. It is up to Chism and Crews to fight for the starting "C" spot, if thats what you want to call it. My opinion is Chism will end up with that spot because he can guard the other teams "big man" more effectively than Crews. The 3 spot right now if a fight between Passley (who has been starting in practice) and Smith.

Whoa now...calm down man. I don't think you understood. They are not crying" about your schools being bigger and thats why you have more to choose from. They are saying you have more "athletes" to choose from and ones that focus on basketball all year round.

I am not saying this to be argumentative. I am just saying it for accuracy's sake. When you give someone's "vertical leap" it actually has to be taken in a certain way. A true vertical leap is taken from a stand still, not taking three steps and jumping. And, there is no way that either of those players have over a 40' vertical leap from a stand still. That is like superior D1 all-american ability. Not saying they don't have amazing verticals. I am sure they do. I am just pointing that out. You are a teenager, so I am not going to be too critical. But, if you don't realize how good McMasters is going to be from watching him then your evaluation of basketball talent is horrible.

More willing to share the wealth? You do realize one of the criticisms of Young this season is that he was too unselfish? When he was double-teamed he make the correct decision. The decision of a basketball player with a high basketball IQ. Many times even the double-team probably could not have stopped him and he could have scored anyways. But, he doesn't shoot when two people are guarding him because he is a smart unselfish player. Too unselfish many times. Comparing T.O's is ridiculous. Wright is a PF/C with no ball handling responsibilities for his team. Mitchell's PG (#5) fouled out with 7 and a half minutes left to play in the game. (Side note: why did Mitchell's coach have him in the game at that point with 4 fouls...) That forced Young to play PG for the last 7 and a half minutes of the game. That was where the majority of his T.O's came from. Bottom line: Both players are great players. We have different views on the how much the "team" concept contributes to wins and losses so there is no clear end to our discussion. Agree to disagree.

I was there but must have missed it. What did he do?

BA's team was filled with role players who knew what it took for their team to be successful and they bought into the system. They knew Wright was their ticket to winning games and they rode him to victory. Nobody else on that team felt like they deserved the credit Wright was getting. On the other hand, Young played on a team with 3 other players that felt the were "underrated" and were getting "ignored in the shadow" of Thad. Therefore, these players abandonded the TEAM concept and tried to do things to get attention for themselves. They took their focus off the team and placed in on "the me" element. That didn't happen on the BA team. And, if you think that has nothing to do with W's and L's then you are very nieve.

Well, that is wordy and all but didn't address the question properly. Yes all those other factors do count. You didn't say anything about the fact that Wright would not have helped Mitchell be any more successful than they were. And, BA would have been just as good with Young as they were with Wright. Those are accurate statements, and therefore all those "other" things must have an affect. So, all that matters is bringing home the gold ball? With that conclusion, the best players for Liberty are "better players" than Thad Young? Your view is quite narrow, because you are essentially decalring basketball to be an individual sport. Basketball is very much a TEAM sport and there is nothing Thad Young could do about the fact that his coach was inept and other "superstars" on the team resented Young's exposure.

A number of the players that are fielding mid-major offers. I wish I could think of all the names now. If anyone knows the names of Murray State targets list them here..

Hamilton went undefeated and I thought they played very well at Murfreesboro. I don't understand the ire pointed towards their coach. I would have to say he did a great job this season.

Murray State is also heavily invovled with a couple other west and middle tennessee players. I wonder how much effect it will have on all their recruiting. Their coach was a big reason they were interested in Murray State because he has done a great job there.

The "gold ball" argument doesn't carry much weight for a couple of reasons. First, BA plays in D-II. Even with the team chemisty problems Mitchell had this season they still would have blown through the D-II State Tourney. Second, A LOT has to do with team make-up. If you replaced Wright with Young on BA's team they would have won just as many games. Conversely, I do not think Wright would have done any better with the Mitchell team than Thad did. There were too many things working against Thad that he had no control over. I never said I picked Thad because he was only "potentially" better. I said he is better right now. If we are looking at right now and not "potential" then I guess the stats they averaged this year would be a good indication don't you think? Well, Thad's were better. His all-around stats were slightly better than Wrights. Does that not count for anything?

Its demographics. Pure and simple. Bottom line. Not coaching, there are plenty of very good coaches in middle and east tennessee. The athletes in the west far out-number the athletes to pull from in middle and east tennessee.

This is not taking anything away from Seth Skogen. He is a very good basketball player.But, if UTK offers him a "basketball" scholarship then you send me your phone number and I'll call you and arrange a time to meet somewhere and I'll buy you a steak dinner. The most expensive on the menu. Heck, after that we will go car shopping and I'll buy you a new car. Mercedes? Lexus? You pick. His future in football looks much brighter than his basketball future.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But, this is not an opinion situation. In game situations its evident (and if you put them through drills it would be the same) Weddle does not have top-tier quickness. And, trust me he is nowhere near as quick as Kemp or Miller. He also does not "get to the lane and finish" very good. He turns the ball over quite a bit when he penetrates. I think he is a great player though. He maximies his ability and works hard. He would be great at the lower-D1 level.

First of all, to the guy who said that Thad wouldn't be a first round pick because of what he saw in the State Tourney is in la-la land. The NBA scouts dont care about that. His potential and skills are amazing. He would have been drafted in the first round, and prob decently high. Alright, since everyone else has an anti-Mitchell bias I am going to go with Thad. For this reason. Thad is a more complete player. He can play any position on the floor PG thru C. And, that doesn't mean he can just "play" every position. He can be "successful" at every position. I think the biggest difference in their performances in big games is coaching. When Thad gets better coaching he will be put in better position to be successful on the floor. Better offenses that utilize his strenghts. Take advantage of the mismatch presented by the defense. Pull posts out and take them off the dribble. Take guards to the block and score down low. These are things that made a difference and I don't think he got any of this from the Mitchell coach. You could tell watching BA play that Wright had been coached very well and knew exactly what was expected to be successful. He stayed in his element and his teammates looked for him every trip down the floor. The same cannot be said for Thad, he had other talented players on his team that wanted to take the spotlight away from Thad at times. Shameful. Both are great players. Barring injury both will play in the NBA. And, both have the opportunity to be very successful.

Weddle lacks the height, quickness, and athleticism to be a big time player in the MVC. That is a very good conference. I think the OVC or SoCon (in the right system and personnel) would be a good fit. Even in the OVC he is going to have to learn to play the point and handle the ball better and distribute it better. I don't think it would be a good fit for him to play the 2-guard in the OVC (unless he plays for a team that has a tall PG that can defend other teams 2-guards.) And, even in that situation he is going to be at a quickness disadvantage against the best OVC PG's.

I don't think you can say that any of the finalist DIDNT deserve it. Kemp deserved it. Chism or Young would have definately also deserved it. But, this argument creates a never-ending debate because there is no set criteria for picking a winner. Is it just purely on numbers? If it is then the Mitchell coach has a point because Young's numbers were significantly better than Kemp, Chism, or even Wright for that matter. How the player is viewed in the media obviously has an impact on the results.

Just for accuracy: First of all mid-majors ARE D-1 programs. Stewart has offers from mid-majors, and has interest from high-major programs. MTSU, Lipscomb, Austin Peay, East Carolina are the mid-majors that he likes. Miss. State is about to offer and might have already done so by now. Twilley has offers from UTC, Arkansas State, a couple other mid-major D-1 programs. UTK has actually asked Twilley to walk-on. Twilley (and only Twilley....Stewart has already qualified) is one point shy on his ACT score. They said there is a good chance he is going Prep or JC route.