Well, ***** This season sucked. I won't spend too much time on analysis of this past season's Baylor basketball iteration, because so much digital ink has already been spilled on these boards trying to dissect what went wrong. My 3 point synopsis:
1) We had a Rob Wright-sized hole on this roster. Even with all this team's flaws, we are still probably a tournament team if we had a true PG. Wright screwed us, and I will never think of him positively as a result, unless he does something crazy like cure cancer. Granted, even with Wright, we're probably a 7-10 seed, so this year's team was a notable step down from our standard.
2) No two ways about it. Two of our biggest transfer portal gets, by NIL $$ expended, were massive busts. I don't know what happened to Michael Rataj between the World University Games this past summer, where he was reportedly one of the best players in the tournament, and the regular season, but he was at times unplayable. JJ White wasn't good, and was already mostly out of the rotation by the time his season-ending injury occurred. This has been a concerning trend the last couple of years.
If you're going to spend big money on experienced players in the transfer portal, they have to be hits. To borrow baseball parlance, we have had one home run (Norchad Omier), two doubles (Dan Skillings and Obi Agbim), and three strikeouts (Rataj, White, and Jeremy Roach). You simply cannot have that and expect to be a contender, in the Big 12 or the national level. Some of our lower-level portal adds have been great (Isaac Williams, Cameron Carr, and Caden Powell, to name a few), but if you're tying up most of your NIL dollars on complete whiffs, no amount of great scouting on lesser-name players can overcome that.
I have come to agree with what IowaBear has said in multiple threads. It's probably time to move on from our basketball GM, Jason Smith. I liked the interview Smith gave prior to the season on the direction the program wanted to go, but the guys he prioritized to fit the vision were just bad choices. Plus, some terrible luck/shadiness with Wright keeping us from being in on Elliott Cadeau (thanks Rob and his dad!).
3) I'm hopeful that losing every minute played from last year's squad caused a hard reset on the roster building philosophy employed by the program. There was an interesting reddit post this morning showing where all 16 teams left in the tournament's starting 5's began their college careers (https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeBasketball/s/AmB1TQKsOn).
The takeaway is that there are a few approaches to building a roster. You can either recruit out of high school at an extremely high level (Duke, Arkansas, Houston and UConn, to a lesser extent), you can crush your portal adds (Michigan, Texas, St. John's), or you can build through roster continuity (Michigan State, Purdue, Iowa State, Illinois, and then Alabama, Houston, and Arizona, although they supplemented their rosters with high level recruits). Iowa is an outlier because they brought in a new coach who brought most of his previous roster with him.
We probably have to slot into the roster continuity bucket, given that we don't recruit at Arkansas or Duke level, we can't compete with Michigan's or Texas's NIL budget, and even when we try to, we spend it on the wrong guys half the time. I think this roster was a step in that direction, but it'll take another 2 years to find out if the reset took.
Who We're Losing:
Here are the guys we lose. I'll add another post to this thread to discuss who is coming back and likely roster needs.
For Sure Gone:
Obi Agbim - 10.7 ppg, 2.6 reb, 3.2 ast
Dan Skillings - 9.6 ppg, 5.9 reb, 2.1 ast
Michael Rataj - 7.6 ppg, 4.8 reb, 1.8 ast
Caden Powell - 6.9 ppg, 6.3 reb, 1.4 ast
These guys are out of eligibility. They can't come back, even if there was mutual desire between Baylor and the player.
Almost Definitely Gone:
Cameron Carr - 19.2 ppg, 5.5 reb, 2.7 ast
JJ White - 1.5 ppg, 0.8 reb, 0.0 ast
Carr is going to be a first rounder, and his game fits what the NBA is looking for. He joins a growing list of guys we've developed more quickly than anticipated (Jeremy Sochan, Yves Missi, and now Carr). I will be completely stunned if White is back next year, even if he wins his appeal for a medical hardship year. I would expect him to return to the mid-major level next year, if at all.
On The Fence:
Tounde Yessoufou - 17.8 ppg, 5.8 reb, 1.6 ast
Mayo Soyoye - Redshirt
On the one hand, Tounde was assumed to be a one-and-done before the season. On the other, this year's draft class is loaded, and Tounde could be a lottery pick with another year of development. I'd expect him to declare and remain in the draft if he gets a 1st round guarantee from a team. The interesting aspect will be if he simultaneously declares and enters the portal. Soyoye has good size (6'10", 234), but I wonder if his path is blocked by James Nnaji, who is more highly regarded and more physically mature. I would not be surprised by Soyoye returning or leaving.
Based on the classifications above, we're guaranteed to lose 42.1% of our scoring, likely to lose 67.2%, and could possibly lose 88.7%. For rebounding, that shakes out to 53.3% gone, 70.4% likely gone, and 86.1% possibly gone. For assists, 53.8%, 70.9%, and 81.0%.
Regardless, we have a lot of production to replace this upcoming season. What remains to be seen is how much, and how much of it comes from outside the current program.
1) We had a Rob Wright-sized hole on this roster. Even with all this team's flaws, we are still probably a tournament team if we had a true PG. Wright screwed us, and I will never think of him positively as a result, unless he does something crazy like cure cancer. Granted, even with Wright, we're probably a 7-10 seed, so this year's team was a notable step down from our standard.
2) No two ways about it. Two of our biggest transfer portal gets, by NIL $$ expended, were massive busts. I don't know what happened to Michael Rataj between the World University Games this past summer, where he was reportedly one of the best players in the tournament, and the regular season, but he was at times unplayable. JJ White wasn't good, and was already mostly out of the rotation by the time his season-ending injury occurred. This has been a concerning trend the last couple of years.
If you're going to spend big money on experienced players in the transfer portal, they have to be hits. To borrow baseball parlance, we have had one home run (Norchad Omier), two doubles (Dan Skillings and Obi Agbim), and three strikeouts (Rataj, White, and Jeremy Roach). You simply cannot have that and expect to be a contender, in the Big 12 or the national level. Some of our lower-level portal adds have been great (Isaac Williams, Cameron Carr, and Caden Powell, to name a few), but if you're tying up most of your NIL dollars on complete whiffs, no amount of great scouting on lesser-name players can overcome that.
I have come to agree with what IowaBear has said in multiple threads. It's probably time to move on from our basketball GM, Jason Smith. I liked the interview Smith gave prior to the season on the direction the program wanted to go, but the guys he prioritized to fit the vision were just bad choices. Plus, some terrible luck/shadiness with Wright keeping us from being in on Elliott Cadeau (thanks Rob and his dad!).
3) I'm hopeful that losing every minute played from last year's squad caused a hard reset on the roster building philosophy employed by the program. There was an interesting reddit post this morning showing where all 16 teams left in the tournament's starting 5's began their college careers (https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeBasketball/s/AmB1TQKsOn).
The takeaway is that there are a few approaches to building a roster. You can either recruit out of high school at an extremely high level (Duke, Arkansas, Houston and UConn, to a lesser extent), you can crush your portal adds (Michigan, Texas, St. John's), or you can build through roster continuity (Michigan State, Purdue, Iowa State, Illinois, and then Alabama, Houston, and Arizona, although they supplemented their rosters with high level recruits). Iowa is an outlier because they brought in a new coach who brought most of his previous roster with him.
We probably have to slot into the roster continuity bucket, given that we don't recruit at Arkansas or Duke level, we can't compete with Michigan's or Texas's NIL budget, and even when we try to, we spend it on the wrong guys half the time. I think this roster was a step in that direction, but it'll take another 2 years to find out if the reset took.
Who We're Losing:
Here are the guys we lose. I'll add another post to this thread to discuss who is coming back and likely roster needs.
For Sure Gone:
Obi Agbim - 10.7 ppg, 2.6 reb, 3.2 ast
Dan Skillings - 9.6 ppg, 5.9 reb, 2.1 ast
Michael Rataj - 7.6 ppg, 4.8 reb, 1.8 ast
Caden Powell - 6.9 ppg, 6.3 reb, 1.4 ast
These guys are out of eligibility. They can't come back, even if there was mutual desire between Baylor and the player.
Almost Definitely Gone:
Cameron Carr - 19.2 ppg, 5.5 reb, 2.7 ast
JJ White - 1.5 ppg, 0.8 reb, 0.0 ast
Carr is going to be a first rounder, and his game fits what the NBA is looking for. He joins a growing list of guys we've developed more quickly than anticipated (Jeremy Sochan, Yves Missi, and now Carr). I will be completely stunned if White is back next year, even if he wins his appeal for a medical hardship year. I would expect him to return to the mid-major level next year, if at all.
On The Fence:
Tounde Yessoufou - 17.8 ppg, 5.8 reb, 1.6 ast
Mayo Soyoye - Redshirt
On the one hand, Tounde was assumed to be a one-and-done before the season. On the other, this year's draft class is loaded, and Tounde could be a lottery pick with another year of development. I'd expect him to declare and remain in the draft if he gets a 1st round guarantee from a team. The interesting aspect will be if he simultaneously declares and enters the portal. Soyoye has good size (6'10", 234), but I wonder if his path is blocked by James Nnaji, who is more highly regarded and more physically mature. I would not be surprised by Soyoye returning or leaving.
Based on the classifications above, we're guaranteed to lose 42.1% of our scoring, likely to lose 67.2%, and could possibly lose 88.7%. For rebounding, that shakes out to 53.3% gone, 70.4% likely gone, and 86.1% possibly gone. For assists, 53.8%, 70.9%, and 81.0%.
Regardless, we have a lot of production to replace this upcoming season. What remains to be seen is how much, and how much of it comes from outside the current program.
