In Game: at Loyola Chicago

[raptorcat]

More NIL money = better players. Welcome to 2024.

I have no inside information on recruiting nor idea how much NIL money Davidson has.

Totally guessing here. But logically, if I'm a recruit and I'm told hey we can give you $20K a year and another school says hey I can give you $85K a year, simple math says that's a quarter of a million dollars more to go to school B, and many if not all families are going to take it.

Then layer on the fact that it's still seemingly much tougher to get into Davidson than other places.

Then layer on the fact that there is no grad school, greatly limiting transfer portal opportunities.

Pretty tough environment to be successful in. It's not an excuse, just how I see it.

What Davidson needs is a $5-10 million donation to NIL.

When I win the Powerball lottery, I will make that donation. Short of that, the Davidson NIL folks need to be shaking down uber-rich alumni who are also basketball fans.

[i77cat]

Honestly, it was just a random guess in an effort to recall Oskar's name. I'd love to be shooting 34.1% this year. I'd love to finish 85 in Kenpom. I'd love to win twice at the A10 tournament, knocking off #1 seed Dayton to reach the quarterfinals. Interesting team, interesting season. This team is good enough to make good teams sweat. That team was good enough to beat the good teams. I'd like to think we're moving forward. I don't see it. Much of the problem is that the landscape has changed. Part is that our personnel isn't as good. What I don't worry about is our coaching. And we have a much better AD.

[quickcat]

Other notes about the 16-17 team players:

Jack Gibbs, as I understand it, was not as heavily recruited as one might expect because of a knee injury in high school. He missed a stretch in 14-15 with an injury and I'm recalling that he played all of 16-17 with basically one arm because of a shoulder injury.

Dusan Kovacevic - Knee injury in high school. Got injured after 17 games and missed the rest of the year. Missed almost the entire 17-18 season with a different injury.

Will Magarity - didn't miss a lot of games due to injury, but I'm recalling that j 17-18 his knees hurt so much he couldn't jump high enough to dunk until February.

Kishawn Pritchett - his freshman season, but I believe he had sat out the entire previous year, his first at Davidson, with a knee injury, after having a knee injury in high school. Only played 3 seasons - came back for a 4th, but had knee surgery before the season and gave up basketball.

Nathan Ekwu - missed 9 games with a knee injury, then came back to very limited minutes. Missed all of 17-18 with an injury, then missed basically the last 20 games of 18-19 with injuries.

Oskar Michelsen - not injured as far as I know, but for some reason only averaged about 4 minutes a game that year and didn't play at all in about 10 games. He played 15-20 minutes a game in his other 3 years at Davidson.

It is clear that we often get recruits because they are Underrated by others, sometimes because of injury issues that come back to bite us. The only 2 players on that team that I'd think you'd call pretty athletic who didn't get injured were Peyton and JAG. And JAG was probably overlooked because he played in Iceland.

In the last 15 years, here are the recruits I recall being highly rated and wanted by big programs when we got them: Jake Cohen (Socon POY at least once), Tom Droney (meh), Brendan McKillop (feel like we had a big advantage there), Peyton (A-10 POY), Kellan (A-10 ROY, averaged 17 pts/gm all 4 years). So that's about one every 3 years, or one every 5 years that turns into a POY or multi-year all conference player.

In other words, there may not be a lot in the cupboard right now, but Davidson's success has always been about finding under the radar guys who improve a lot, like De'mon, TK, JAG. I think you could even say that about a certain #30.

[graveline]

Who else is looking forward to the upcoming Apple TV production
“Properly underrated, the 2023-4 Davidson Wildcats”

[MLC67]

Sorry SlowCat, but calling DC a hostile environment for anyone seems to be a gratuitous cheap shot having provided no context or relevance to the thread to which you posted.

[JCDC]

Has there ever been an in-game thread that got locked?

[slowcat95]

Sorry SlowCat, but calling DC a hostile environment for anyone seems to be a gratuitous cheap shot having provided no context or relevance to the thread to which you posted.

Asking one of the only women who has ever bothered posting here, but has generally given up for being made to feel distinctly unwelcome for it, to defend her claim that it's a hostile environment absolutely demonstrates my point.

[i77cat]

She's right. There are plenty of examples. I'm sure it pre-dates Mike Maloy, but he had plenty of racist stuff yelled at him by Davidson supporters. At a very recent WBB game that was officiated by 3 women, the "gentleman" behind me told the lead ref that she should go back to being a housewife, because she sure wasn't a referee. When he later told her to "go back to the kitchen" I turned and confronted him loudly. He didn't seem to think he was wrong. He did at least shut up after being informed that they could throw his ass out. I was a bit surprised that our folks didn't toss him. I guess they didn't hear it. Those are just fan examples. I can think of numerous examples of Davidson staff, including some of our favorite coaches, treating folks poorly. Davidson is a great place. Camelot? Nope.

[TiredCat88]

Some of the most racist comments I have heard on this board in a long time.

Ridiculous. 70% of the NBA is African American and most likely 70% or more of the top 20 in the NCAA currenty. There is nothing racist about making a better effort to get top players. Most diversity managers in business would look at our roster and question our efforts if we were a major business. The program that has had greats like Maloy, Rucker, Gibbs, Wilson, Grady, Curry, etc should be able to do better.

So is it racist to say the Cats would have done better with Des Watson on our roster on Sunday?


PS Joshua Heyliger is also on our coaching staff.

What you said above and what you said in your post are entirely different -

Great post and and time to discuss "the elephant in the room" I am also perplexed how a team in the wake of Steph Curry's amazing success has not done better in this area. I would like to see a decreased effort in Europe and a double down effort to get some solid US African American players. So many big schools are now just swapping 5 star recruits in the portal. I would think there would be some strong available freshmen that would love to play at a smaller school with a great education and the possibility of still playing in the pros like Steph.

Add a tall African American big man coach as well. We need someone to improve the strength, talent, and footwork of our bigs. These skills are lacking.
We were abused several times yesterday and simply pushed out of the way or out maneuvered underneath the hoop. 6' 10 players should not be shooting lean in AAU type of shots.

I thought when we landed Kellan, the "Curry" effect of landing many top players was just in the beginning. We have seemed to have stalled and lost all momentum.

The "elephant in the room" statement, as well as stating that we need to "double down our effort to get some solid US African American players", is the most racist comment I have read on this board ever. You decided to add that we need a "tall African American big man coach as well." If that's not racist, I don't know what is.

If you think we need better big men, or a coach specifically to coach our big men or for that matter, If we need more athleticism or people that can defend with speed and foot quickness, then you may have a point. But to suggest there is an "elephant in the room" or state we need more African American players is out and out racist.

Your next comment should be your last on this board.

[WildCock]

Sorry SlowCat, but calling DC a hostile environment for anyone seems to be a gratuitous cheap shot having provided no context or relevance to the thread to which you posted.

Asking one of the only women who has ever bothered posting here, but has generally given up for being made to feel distinctly unwelcome for it, to defend her claim that it's a hostile environment absolutely demonstrates my point.

Some of us remember you, Slowcat. You and I didn't agree on everything (didn't we exchange a few PMs on the subject of trigger warnings?) But your presence, and your viewpoint, are needed and appreciated on this board.

[ScootCat]

This thread is carelessly veering off into a ditch. Most of us just want to win again. I don’t think we care how, or with whom ethnically, as long as we play by the rules. Let’s try to gather ourselves here. I think losing too many formerly winnable games is starting to weigh on some of us. It’s tough, I know. Try to hang in there, this too shall pass.