What confuses me is the fact that over the summer we heard rumors of and quotes stating:
1. Trent Pierce being a possible one and done candidate (He shows flashes of being a 10 ppg scorer, Gates just benches him every other night which makes zero sense to me).
2. Caleb Grill could easily lead the team in scoring and go off for 30 any given night with how well he shoots the ball (he was decent pre injury but the shooting hadn't quite caught up to the change in body composition).
3. We were given zero info on how Tonje looked this summer (in season gates goes on to tell us after the Florida game he was by far the best player on the team this summer pre injury).
4. Vanover is going to "solve" or at least help the rebounding issue we had last year (he is averaging 2.4 a game vs the 7.2 he averaged last year).
5. Kaleb Brown was "by far the most improved player on the whole team from last year."
6. This team could be as good IF NOT BETTER than last years team with the depth on the team
The six things above were all things I read on this board or heard from a gates interview. And there are plenty of other thinsg that I read or were rumored that I haven't included.
Rumors are rumors, and people will post things on here they were told by "sources close to the program" all the time.
In the future I will chose to not read into preseason hype.
The injuries to Tonje and Grill are tough. Who knows, maybe they could have been similar to a Gholston and Gomillion, but they were never going to be a Brown and Hodge.
Kaleb was the same old Kaleb we saw all last year in the limited time he played this year.
Trent could be a great piece moving forward, but I have no idea where anybody got the one and done hype from and why that was blasted on this board.
Vanover is cheeks, there is no other way to describe the man. I know he was the 137th option we had in the portal for center, but my god he is hard to watch.
Whoever it was that had the idea to even suggest this team could be at the level of last years team (cough cough it was the coaches that said this), time to go back to the drawing board on how you evaluate talent.
I love gates as a coach and a recruiter, but I love him mostly for how he treats his players. The players are family to him, and I hope every 2023/2024 recruit sees that and sticks with the man for next year.
To end my essay, I hope we can scrape together a few conference wins to end the season so this board doesn't explode. In the meantime I will continue to be confused as to what happened this summer to cause such false confidence in this coaching staff for this team.
1. Trent Pierce being a possible one and done candidate (He shows flashes of being a 10 ppg scorer, Gates just benches him every other night which makes zero sense to me).
2. Caleb Grill could easily lead the team in scoring and go off for 30 any given night with how well he shoots the ball (he was decent pre injury but the shooting hadn't quite caught up to the change in body composition).
3. We were given zero info on how Tonje looked this summer (in season gates goes on to tell us after the Florida game he was by far the best player on the team this summer pre injury).
4. Vanover is going to "solve" or at least help the rebounding issue we had last year (he is averaging 2.4 a game vs the 7.2 he averaged last year).
5. Kaleb Brown was "by far the most improved player on the whole team from last year."
6. This team could be as good IF NOT BETTER than last years team with the depth on the team
The six things above were all things I read on this board or heard from a gates interview. And there are plenty of other thinsg that I read or were rumored that I haven't included.
Rumors are rumors, and people will post things on here they were told by "sources close to the program" all the time.
In the future I will chose to not read into preseason hype.
The injuries to Tonje and Grill are tough. Who knows, maybe they could have been similar to a Gholston and Gomillion, but they were never going to be a Brown and Hodge.
Kaleb was the same old Kaleb we saw all last year in the limited time he played this year.
Trent could be a great piece moving forward, but I have no idea where anybody got the one and done hype from and why that was blasted on this board.
Vanover is cheeks, there is no other way to describe the man. I know he was the 137th option we had in the portal for center, but my god he is hard to watch.
Whoever it was that had the idea to even suggest this team could be at the level of last years team (cough cough it was the coaches that said this), time to go back to the drawing board on how you evaluate talent.
I love gates as a coach and a recruiter, but I love him mostly for how he treats his players. The players are family to him, and I hope every 2023/2024 recruit sees that and sticks with the man for next year.
To end my essay, I hope we can scrape together a few conference wins to end the season so this board doesn't explode. In the meantime I will continue to be confused as to what happened this summer to cause such false confidence in this coaching staff for this team.
