2020-21 Gopher Transfers - Where Are They Now?

Donate To GopherHole
bc2211 said:
Sam Freeman scored 14 pts in 15 minutes in Pacifica’s opening loss to N Colorado. 7-8 shooting. Also grabbed 5 boards, 3 offensive.
Click to expand...
N Colorado played a 4 guard line up. Their center was only in the game for 4 minutes... The forwards they rotated in were 6-9 and 6-7. He should look like a beast.
 













cjbfbp said:
With this team, any big with a modicum of talent would be a welcome addition. Johnson really fell down on the recruiting after he acquired the guards.
Click to expand...
After seeing Daniels, are we sure Freeman is better than him or Curry? I understand the logic of added depth, but I don’t know if he’d play ahead of him unless he got better at defending. Pacific is a good fit for Freeman imo. He still only played 15 mins there though too. Don’t know if it was cause the game was out of hand or he had foul trouble.
Going to be interesting what bigs we add via the portal to add to Payne next spring.
 





Gopherfan84 said:
After seeing Daniels, are we sure Freeman is better than him or Curry? I understand the logic of added depth, but I don’t know if he’d play ahead of him unless he got better at defending. Pacific is a good fit for Freeman imo. He still only played 15 mins there though too. Don’t know if it was cause the game was out of hand or he had foul trouble.
Going to be interesting what bigs we add via the portal to add to Payne next spring.
Click to expand...

I'm fine with Daniels. I just think Johnson needed to get at least one more big of at least modest ability. There were some available for the taking. I just think he stopped caring about this year's roster and moved on to 22 recruiting.

For example, there was a back up big who played, but not much, for Illinois for two years who ended up going to Eastern Illinois last summer. You wouldn't have expected him to play much there given that the Illini had Kofi and the Georgian center. This is the kind of kid, with two years of eligibility left, Johnson should have tried to get. My guess is that he would have rather gone to another Big Ten school than to Eastern Illinois. This guy had 10 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 blocks in their opener against Northwestern.

There were other players like that for the taking. Instead we got an undersized guy from D2 Mercyhurst who couldn't even get in the game on Tuesday night and only played something like 3 minutes in the DII scrimmage. I think his box score from the scrimmage was the 3 trillion:

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.
 

cjbfbp said:
I'm fine with Daniels. I just think Johnson needed to get at least one more big of at least modest ability. There were some available for the taking. I just think he stopped caring about this year's roster and moved on to 22 recruiting.

For example, there was a back up big who played, but not much, for Illinois for two years who ended up going to Eastern Illinois last summer. You wouldn't have expected him to play much there given that the Illini had Kofi and the Georgian center. This is the kind of kid, with two years of eligibility left, Johnson should have tried to get. My guess is that he would have rather gone to another Big Ten school than to Eastern Illinois. This guy had 10 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 blocks in their opener against Northwestern.

There were other players like that for the taking. Instead we got an undersized guy from D2 Mercyhurst who couldn't even get in the game on Tuesday night and only played something like 3 minutes in the DII scrimmage. I think his box score from the scrimmage was the 3 trillion:

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.
Click to expand...
Johnson "stopped caring about this year's roster?" A little birdy told me that he promised Coyle that he would pull in all of these high-profile local transfers. I heard Garcia and Roddy were locks. This is an absolute embarrassment. He really SHOULD be fired.
 

To answer my own post. The Miller kid who ended up at TCU had a double double in their first game tonight. Cashius McNeilly (I think he's Jamie's nephew) actually didn't stay at TCU and this appears to be his 3rd year not playing now (Medical RS, Covid opt out, now in the portal) so likely didn't miss anything there.

In addition to Freeman, Pohto had a good first game for Wichita State just going by the box score. Obviously a lot of bigs look effective in these early games so take that with a grain of salt. I didn't blame Ben at all for not having an interest in retaining either at the time, and certainly won't go back on that.

Funny that Pitino won his game due to...3 point shooting! His team made 12-23 from 3. Ominous sign: they gave up 92 points in a college basketball game to an opponent that shot 8-26 from 3.

Edit: I don't know if Ben guaranteed he was bringing certain players with him to Minnesota during the hiring process, but word was out very quickly among those supporting the hire that certain players were coming and those that were upset would be looking silly very quickly. Garcia was certainly someone that was expected to be on this roster. It wasn't just Minnesota kids either as there was supposed to be some movement from Xavier as well.
 
Last edited:

I never heard the promise made to Coyle but I did hear that the new staff didn’t reach out to the kids on the team and so …….. they left.
 

ecoperson said:
Johnson "stopped caring about this year's roster?" A little birdy told me that he promised Coyle that he would pull in all of these high-profile local transfers. I heard Garcia and Roddy were locks. This is an absolute embarrassment. He really SHOULD be fired.
Click to expand...
Lmao he's coached one game and he should be fired. You people are insane.

Not saying he shouldn't have done better in the transfer market, but come on now lol.
 

EG#9 said:
In addition to Freeman, Pohto had a good first game for Wichita State just going by the box score. Obviously a lot of bigs look effective in these early games so take that with a grain of salt. I didn't blame Ben at all for not having an interest in retaining either at the time, and certainly won't go back on that.
Click to expand...

If Johnson could have gotten Pohto (or even Freeman) to stay and he didn't try, he looks like a jackass now. Hopefully, if these rumors about relying on overly optimistic recruiting expectations are true, he has learned not to count his chickens before they've hatched.
 

Am I the only one OK with letting everyone walk?

Last year's team was cursed and needed to blow everything up. I would rather go with our existing team, which probably only has 7 players who are P5 talent, and let them figure out how to win under this coaching regime then having 10 P5-talented players, assuming we were able to bring back Gabe, Mashburn and Liam, and have them bring the baggage of last season with them.

Neither of those 3 guys proved to be winning players for us -- minus Gabe's freshman season.

If Gabe stays then maybe we wouldn't have gotten Stephens and honestly the jury is still out on whether Stephens can be a more productive player for us than Gabe was the past couple of seasons.
 

ecoperson said:
Johnson "stopped caring about this year's roster?" A little birdy told me that he promised Coyle that he would pull in all of these high-profile local transfers. I heard Garcia and Roddy were locks. This is an absolute embarrassment. He really SHOULD be fired.
Click to expand...
I never heard Roddy. Heard Battle and Garcia were the locks. He still may have been had it not been for NIL. Roddy liked Thorson but he committed to Nedved. Also Dave wouldn’t pull that on Niko.
 


Lakers612 said:
Am I the only one OK with letting everyone walk?

Last year's team was cursed and needed to blow everything up. I would rather go with our existing team, which probably only has 7 players who are P5 talent, and let them figure out how to win under this coaching regime then having 10 P5-talented players, assuming we were able to bring back Gabe, Mashburn and Liam, and have them bring the baggage of last season with them.

Neither of those 3 guys proved to be winning players for us -- minus Gabe's freshman season.

If Gabe stays then maybe we wouldn't have gotten Stephens and honestly the jury is still out on whether Stephens can be a more productive player for us than Gabe was the past couple of seasons.
Click to expand...
I wanted Gabe back because of his defense and thought he’d do better in our new offensive system. Would’ve been fine with Johnson as a one year guy. Otherwise I’m with you and believe the team didn’t like each other and it needed to be scraped.
 

Lakers612 said:
As far as Ben's failure to bring in bigs, it looks like they found a diamond in the rough with Daniels, so I don't think it's fair to say that Ben struck out in the frontcourt
Click to expand...

Is Daniels going to play 36 minutes a game? Will he not get into foul trouble (his history shows that he is foul prone)? Is he impervious to injury?
 

Lakers612 said:
Am I the only one OK with letting everyone walk?
Click to expand...

I was mostly fine with it but he recruited at least two players too few unless Fox shows up in January in reasonably good health. For most of the game, Johnson played only 7 players.
 


adchester said:
Lmao he's coached one game and he should be fired. You people are insane.

Not saying he shouldn't have done better in the transfer market, but come on now lol.
Click to expand...
Sorry. I was being sarcastic with all of the shade thrown at Johnson. I was doing the same with recent reports that Coyle hired Johnson soley on the promise of bringing in high quality MN-born and bred transfers.
 

Gopherfan84 said:
I never heard Roddy. Heard Battle and Garcia were the locks. He still may have been had it not been for NIL. Roddy liked Thorson but he committed to Nedved. Also Dave wouldn’t pull that on Niko.
Click to expand...
Sorry. I was being sarcastic with all of the shade thrown at Johnson. I was doing the same with recent reports that Coyle hired Johnson soley on the promise of bringing in MN transfers in year one... this is ludicrous.
 

EG#9 said:
To answer my own post. The Miller kid who ended up at TCU had a double double in their first game tonight. Cashius McNeilly (I think he's Jamie's nephew) actually didn't stay at TCU and this appears to be his 3rd year not playing now (Medical RS, Covid opt out, now in the portal) so likely didn't miss anything there.

In addition to Freeman, Pohto had a good first game for Wichita State just going by the box score. Obviously a lot of bigs look effective in these early games so take that with a grain of salt. I didn't blame Ben at all for not having an interest in retaining either at the time, and certainly won't go back on that.

Funny that Pitino won his game due to...3 point shooting! His team made 12-23 from 3. Ominous sign: they gave up 92 points in a college basketball game to an opponent that shot 8-26 from 3.

Edit: I don't know if Ben guaranteed he was bringing certain players with him to Minnesota during the hiring process, but word was out very quickly among those supporting the hire that certain players were coming and those that were upset would be looking silly very quickly. Garcia was certainly someone that was expected to be on this roster. It wasn't just Minnesota kids either as there was supposed to be some movement from Xavier as well.
Click to expand...

Who knows what may have been implied, or more likely hoped for, in terms of building up an immediately competitive roster, but there is no way Coyle would have based his hire on immediate splashes. Every one who has ever worked with that age bracket knows it is a group that can change minds quickly. If there were any whispers about local stars returning, it most likely came from wishful thinking of hangers on and not Ben himself. Given the disasterous situation and players desire to win right away, especially a guy like Garcia who probably sees himself in the NBA next year, there is no way anyone could have reasonably expected that high profile of a transfer.

Ben's failure to lure guys leaving Xavier to follow him is the most concerning aspect of his early performance to me, though. Current relationships didn't result in filling the roster, and that is concerning.

My guess is that if any of this has any truth to it, the scenario imploded when core players on the previous roster jumped ship. That left possible transfers with little hope of being on a competitive team.
 

Sam Freeman only saw 3 minutes of action, scoring just 2 points (1-1), against Hawaii-Hilo last night.
Was the leading scorer for Pacific on Tuesday.
He's shooting 8-9 so far 6 REB in 17 minutes of play time. Why can't he see more action though?
Pacific finishes out the Rainbow Classic vs Hawaii tomorrow night.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom