David Sloan in transfer portal

[ksustars754]

In retrospect it’s not really surprising that X and Carti’s shooting% went down this year. I said that would happen early this year. Defensive scouting reports are going to make that happen. But they should have made enough adjustments to correct that and counter the scouting reports. That involves several things including other players stepping up and taking the pressure off and that just never happened. That pretty much goes on the whole team and recruiting misses. And to be fair I don’t believe the horses were there to do that (make the adjustments) with what was available. And frankly as we saw, X and Carti weren’t good enough to overcome that on their own talents. And one of them got super frustrated about that.

There’s obviously plenty of blame to go around but to me I’ll always come back to your 4th sentence. This also highly relates to X testing the NBA waters and Lowery’s quote back summer ‘19. I said and posted right at that moment, this could be a big piece in the downfall of the Cats and Xs season.

Clearly X was told he’d likely be a 3 and D SF by the scouts if he was to make the NBA. Then once X decides to return, Lowery makes the statement very sternly “X is a 3. He will be playing 3” or something to that effect. In reality, someone needed to tell him to do what your team needs and then we’ll see you in 2020.

To better help KState, X could’ve actually been a stretch 4. He’s good enough to defend above his size and could cause mismatch problems. He’d also be getting more rebounds which we desperately needed as our bigs absolutely sucked. Instead we saw the 3 year streaky shooter turn into a volume shooter with that hot streak only really showing up for 1 half of 1 game.

[Puffdad]

Yeah 754 if there were promises made........ not a good idea. It severely limits the ability to make those adjustments that need to be made.

[pulitzerdave]

Welcome to the world of "get me to the NBA". The advice given by these so-called experts rarely coincides with what that player's team needs of him. Maybe we needed X to move down to the 4 spot, or maybe not. But the thing is, we didn't even try. How do you know if you don't try?

X was matched up against the other team's best wing defender - every game. Moving him to the 4 spot would have forced opponents to make defensive adjustments, either by changing their lineup to matchup with our personnel (which I doubt they'd do), or decide to guard X with a taller, less mobile player. Small forwards don't really like running through screens and chasing a 3-point shooter all over the court.

[ksustars754]

Exactly. And he didn’t have to exclusively play 4, it could’ve been 10 of the 30 minutes per game or on a game by game basis depending on personnel, matchups, etc.

However, that Lowery statement essentially threw that possibility out the window.

The season is over and I’m somewhat dwelling on it but I believe Bruce learned from this year with X. Now I do understand that keeping players happy is important for their play as well (and it’s important for recruiting I think? but honestly probably not as much in the current transfer portal world) but Bruce knows better than these scouts so I don’t think he will let this happen again.

[epicsnyder]

Exactly. And he didn’t have to exclusively play 4, it could’ve been 10 of the 30 minutes per game or on a game by game basis depending on personnel, matchups, etc.

However, that Lowery statement essentially threw that possibility out the window.

The season is over and I’m somewhat dwelling on it but I believe Bruce learned from this year with X. Now I do understand that keeping players happy is important for their play as well (and it’s important for recruiting I think? but honestly probably not as much in the current transfer portal world) but Bruce knows better than these scouts so I don’t think he will let this happen again.

And I sure as hell hope he learned from how Diarrhea pouted, talked back, and was a malcontent all season, to sit anyone acting like that on the END of the bench. I don't care if you have to play the worst kid on the team. Set the tone right away and squash it.

[gdgjr78]

I called out the players total disrespect for their head coach and I'm fairly certain I was told by you and other posters that I overreacted. Sneed turned into a volume shooter because there were literally zero other options. Don't blame the players for a literal face plant on the recruiting trail by the staff. BTW how many games would KSU have won without those 2 guys? It would have been single digits.

Nope, wasn't me. And I have no problem with volume shooters, as long as they make better than 30% from deep. Towards the end of the season, Sneed, who was ill-suited as our go-to guy, got more and more trigger happy to the detriment of the team. And Diarra got more petulant as the season wore on. And these two guys were indispensable? Give me a break.

You take X and Cartier off last year's team and KSU would have been scoring in the 40's most every game. The lack of offensive talent on last years squad was the only thing offensive about it

[learnin]

Welcome to the world of "get me to the NBA". The advice given by these so-called experts rarely coincides with what that player's team needs of him. Maybe we needed X to move down to the 4 spot, or maybe not. But the thing is, we didn't even try. How do you know if you don't try?

X was matched up against the other team's best wing defender - every game. Moving him to the 4 spot would have forced opponents to make defensive adjustments, either by changing their lineup to matchup with our personnel (which I doubt they'd do), or decide to guard X with a taller, less mobile player. Small forwards don't really like running through screens and chasing a 3-point shooter all over the court.

You know, Dave, I'm so sick of this NBA thing I could scream. We have a lot of good, young talent coming in next year. If I was coach, I would do this during the very first team meeting. I would put up Wesley Iwundu's 4 year stats. I would then ask: Do you think you would make the NBA if these were your stats? After I let them reflect a few seconds, I would begin and it would go something like this:

I want you to put the NBA out of your mind right now. Your task begins this very minute. What is that task? Your task is to improve your game each and every day thereby helping your team to achieve a good amount of success. If you have what it takes to play in the NBA, NBA scouts will see this even if you don't put up eye popping stats. Can you defend? Can you take care of the ball and distribute? Can you get a bucket, a good percentage of the time, when your team needs a score? Can you rebound? Know this right now. Some of you may want to test the NBA waters, at some point, and that's ok. But, be certain of one thing. If you return, you will play the position we need you to play in order for your team to be successful. This is not a testing ground for the NBA. This is a Kansas State basketball team. If you're NBA material, you will be discovered just like Wesley Iwundu.

[pulitzerdave]

Nope, wasn't me. And I have no problem with volume shooters, as long as they make better than 30% from deep. Towards the end of the season, Sneed, who was ill-suited as our go-to guy, got more and more trigger happy to the detriment of the team. And Diarra got more petulant as the season wore on. And these two guys were indispensable? Give me a break.

You take X and Cartier off last year's team and KSU would have been scoring in the 40's most every game. The lack of offensive talent on last years squad was the only thing offensive about it

So if other players are taking those 24 or so shots a game that X and Cartier are taking they wouldn't make them? I think they could have matched 30% from 3 and 40% from 2 like these two. But they never had the chance. So you don't know how many points per game THAT team would have scored.

Snead shot a measly 36.5% from the field, and Diarra a not too much better 41.2%. McGuirl, D.Gordon, Mawien, and Stockard all had higher percentages, and Sloan and Murphy's percentages were virtually the same as Diarra's.

Sneed and Diarra took nearly half of the total shots taken by this team with a combine field goal percentage of 38.5%. So I don't like your argument very much.

[learnin]

Nope, wasn't me. And I have no problem with volume shooters, as long as they make better than 30% from deep. Towards the end of the season, Sneed, who was ill-suited as our go-to guy, got more and more trigger happy to the detriment of the team. And Diarra got more petulant as the season wore on. And these two guys were indispensable? Give me a break.

You take X and Cartier off last year's team and KSU would have been scoring in the 40's most every game. The lack of offensive talent on last years squad was the only thing offensive about it

You could be right, of course. I'll even concede it's more probable that our offense would have been worse without Xavier and Cartier. But, I will not concede it as fact. Off the top of my head, I would say that Cartier and Xavier attempted about 25-30 shots per game. In their absence, those 25-30 shots would be distributed between David Sloan, D. Gordon, M. McGuirl, A Gordon, M. Murphy and Mak. The question then becomes:

Would those players shoot a higher percentage, with those 25 shots, than did Xavier and Cartier?

[learnin]

You take X and Cartier off last year's team and KSU would have been scoring in the 40's most every game. The lack of offensive talent on last years squad was the only thing offensive about it

So if other players are taking those 24 or so shots a game that X and Cartier are taking they wouldn't make them? I think they could have matched 30% from 3 and 40% from 2 like these two. But they never had the chance. So you don't know how many points per game THAT team would have scored.

Snead shot a measly 36.5% from the field, and Diarra a not too much better 41.2%. McGuirl, D.Gordon, Mawien, and Stockard all had higher percentages, and Sloan and Murphy's percentages were virtually the same as Diarra's.

Sneed and Diarra took nearly half of the total shots taken by this team with a combine field goal percentage of 38.5%. So I don't like your argument very much.

Well, you beat me to it. My sentiments exactly.