2022 Transfer Portal Discussion

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50PoundHead said:
I thought Willis did a really good job this season. He got a little dribble-happy as the season wound down, but I think other teams figured us out and we just didn't have the personnel to counterpunch. I think that really gummed up the gears of the motion offense.

A "true" (whatever that means) point guard is nice to have and I hope we can land one, but a team can still be successful without one. Really need a couple of bangers in the #4 and #5. Getting Fox and Ihnen back, seeing some development from Thompson, and having Payne arrive should help, but still need more muscle.
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A full recoup from injuries is always a concern. Fox showed lots of hops at Northern so even if he regains 75-80% of that it will be a huge upgrade from what we saw this season for Curry, Daniels, TT. That alone will improve our rebounding and rim protecting ability. The same can be said for Ihnen but he lacked what a healthy Fox showed.

Our iron 6 basically had no BIG type bodies. This was seldom discussed here but it was a factor. IMO, Battle can add 20 lb of muscle and pass the look test. Same with TT and Ihnen. Iowa with Rebracca was evidence that a big body was not necessary to succeed in the BIG.

Willis was a pleasant surprise and at times carried the team on O. What hurt is he and our perimeter defenders lacked the agility, quickness and strength do defend most of the BIG perimeter players. We gave up a lot of points off the drive. I would like to see a strong defender at the point and give up some offense.

It will be very interesting to see what our team looks like come mid-Summer.
 


tweet today from @GopherScoop

Minnesota is expected to ramp up their pursuit of transfers very soon. Ben Johnson has already contacted Princeton transfer Jaelin Llewellyn, and will be in hot pursuit of a transfer Point Guard this off-season.
 




short ornery norwegian said:
tweet today from @GopherScoop

Minnesota is expected to ramp up their pursuit of transfers very soon. Ben Johnson has already contacted Princeton transfer Jaelin Llewellyn, and will be in hot pursuit of a transfer Point Guard this off-season.
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SOON?! Why not yesterday? The season ended 6 days ago.

Yes, Ben wants Jaelin Llewellyn. So does everyone else. Is that "deep diving" into the transfer portal?

Why was there no mention of us pursuing Kendal Coleman in the previous twitter repost? Maybe we don't have a great chance of getting him but we should at least put an offer out there and try a little convincing.

We don't need much in the front court but we should get at least one solid player. If we end up with another Daniels I will be very, very annoyed.
 

cjbfbp said:
SOON?! Why not yesterday? The season ended 6 days ago.

Yes, Ben wants Jaelin Llewellyn. So does everyone else. Is that "deep diving" into the transfer portal?

Why was there no mention of us pursuing Kendal Coleman in the previous twitter repost? Maybe we don't have a great chance of getting him but we should at least put an offer out there and try a little convincing.

We don't need much in the front court but we should get at least one solid player. If we end up with another Daniels I will be very, very annoyed.
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We need a lot of help everywhere. Little Richie already made contact and Ben is too busy filling out a bracket?!
 

cjbfbp said:
SOON?! Why not yesterday? The season ended 6 days ago.

Yes, Ben wants Jaelin Llewellyn. So does everyone else. Is that "deep diving" into the transfer portal?

Why was there no mention of us pursuing Kendal Coleman in the previous twitter repost? Maybe we don't have a great chance of getting him but we should at least put an offer out there and try a little convincing.

We don't need much in the front court but we should get at least one solid player. If we end up with another Daniels I will be very, very annoyed.
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Doesn't really make sense to pursue a 6'8 center with 3 years of eligibility left with Payne, Thompson, and Fox basically at the 5 for 2 or more years.
 



Spottedmuskie said:
We need a lot of help everywhere. Little Richie already made contact and Ben is too busy filling out a bracket?!
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Well, I wish him luck with that. He should have had a sports geek grad assistant pouring over the transfer portal almost every day for the last month or two, compiling spreadsheets, watching video, and giving brief written reports - like Brad Pitt had Jonah Hill in Moneyball.
 

Johnnyboy18 said:
Doesn't really make sense to pursue a 6'8 center with 3 years of eligibility left with Payne, Thompson, and Fox basically at the 5 for 2 or more years.
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Are you kidding me? If the last 10+ years haven't taught you anything else, you should have at least learned that a program like ours often needs 13 scholarship players to get 7 or 8 good ones.

Payne hasn't played a minute of college basketball, Thompson was really weak as a freshman, Fox doesn't appear large enough to play big minutes as a center in the Big Ten. Parker Fox is listed at 6'8" and he appears thin. Now, EJ Lidell was 6'8" but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Parker Fox is no EJ Lidell.
 

cjbfbp said:
Are you kidding me? If the last 10+ years haven't taught you anything else, you should have at least learned that a program like ours often needs 13 scholarship players to get 7 or 8 good ones.

Payne hasn't played a minute of college basketball, Thompson was really weak as a freshman, Fox doesn't appear large enough to play big minutes as a center in the Big Ten. Parker Fox is listed at 6'8" and he appears thin. Now, EJ Lidell was 6'8" but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Parker Fox is no EJ Lidell.
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Have you seen Coleman? He has the same build as Fox and looks smaller than Payne.

If we pursue a center I'd prefer he has 1 or 2 years of eligibility and is at least 6'10 and 250. Not take another 6'8 220 player.
 

cjbfbp said:
Are you kidding me? If the last 10+ years haven't taught you anything else, you should have at least learned that a program like ours often needs 13 scholarship players to get 7 or 8 good ones.

Payne hasn't played a minute of college basketball, Thompson was really weak as a freshman, Fox doesn't appear large enough to play big minutes as a center in the Big Ten. Parker Fox is listed at 6'8" and he appears thin. Now, EJ Lidell was 6'8" but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Parker Fox is no EJ Lidell.
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Calm down. I bet we don't know everything that Ben is doing in the portal. I, for one, am not trusting random tweets as the final word on spring recruiting. Maybe if we email Ben, he will get back to us with a list we can evaluate and give him feedback.;)
 



Johnnyboy18 said:
Have you seen Coleman? He has the same build as Fox and looks smaller than Payne.
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No, I haven't seen him but I've seen his numbers. He's proven that he can be a very productive player at the D1 level and he's only played two years so far. Probably he can't hit the same numbers here that he did at NW State but he looks like he likely would be better than anyone else we had upfront this season.
 

Holy Man said:
Calm down. I bet we don't know everything that Ben is doing in the portal. I, for one, am not trusting random tweets as the final word on spring recruiting. Maybe if we email Ben, he will get back to us with a list we can evaluate and give him feedback.;)
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Fair enough, but, unless he was misquoted, why the hell would the word "soon" be there? He should have had someone scouring transfer prospects for the last two months and he should have made a number of contacts already.
 

cjbfbp said:
Fair enough, but, unless he was misquoted, why the hell would the word "soon" be there? He should have had someone scouring transfer prospects for the last two months and he should have made a number of contacts already.
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I just don't think @Gopherscoop is the primary authority on portal recruiting. It wasn't a quote as far as I could tell. We can say all we want about Ben, but there has been no indication that he is lazy. I'm choosing to believe he has been on the trail all season, and has been contacting recruits since it has been legal to do so.

I'll drop the hammer when and if he fails to fill obvious holes.
 

Well, Jaelin Llewellyn didn't do much except shoot and miss in the first half of Princeton's game against VCU. His Princeton teammates have kept them in the game but they don't look like the eventual winner of this game so far.
 

I'd bet Fred Hoiberg has already reached out to Sam Griesel. If he decides to go the P6 route instead of professional, he'll have offers for sure.
 

Frankie Fidler from Omaha is the one Hoiberg and McDermott should be after… AAU teammate of Chucky Hepburn. Dude can play! 34 against So Dak St in the Summit tournament
 

cjbfbp said:
Well, I wish him luck with that. He should have had a sports geek grad assistant pouring over the transfer portal almost every day for the last month or two, compiling spreadsheets, watching video, and giving brief written reports - like Brad Pitt had Jonah Hill in Moneyball.
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Seems pretty clear Ben does not even know how to look at the portal and not smart enough to watch it without a grad assistant evaluating talent and telling him what to do. Poor guy must have had a bunch of those really dumb college instructors.
 

Dakota2 said:
Seems pretty clear Ben does not even know how to look at the portal and not smart enough to watch it without a grad assistant evaluating talent and telling him what to do. Poor guy must have had a bunch of those really dumb college instructors.
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That's not what I meant. He was busy doing other things but you can delegate that task to a grad student for the cost of a tuition waiver and stipend.

And if that last line was a jab at me, go take a long walk off a short peer.
 

Dakota2 said:
Seems pretty clear Ben does not even know how to look at the portal and not smart enough to watch it without a grad assistant evaluating talent and telling him what to do. Poor guy must have had a bunch of those really dumb college instructors.
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I think Ben's a smart guy which is precisely why I thik cjb is correct, Ben will delegate a large portion of the initial tasks of compiling information on every player in the portal to a grad assistant type. That's precisely what smart people do, they understand which tasks are the most efficient use of their time.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I think Ben's a smart guy which is precisely why I thik cjb is correct, Ben will delegate a large portion of the initial tasks of compiling information on every player in the portal to a grad assistant type. That's precisely what smart people do, they understand which tasks are the most efficient use of their time.
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Thank you!
 

Johnnyboy18 said:
Doesn't really make sense to pursue a 6'8 center with 3 years of eligibility left with Payne, Thompson, and Fox basically at the 5 for 2 or more years.
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Don‘t muddle things up with facts, the masses are in panic mode. We aren’t camped on this guys doorstep.
 

cjbfbp said:
That's not what I meant. He was busy doing other things but you can delegate that task to a grad student for the cost of a tuition waiver and stipend.

And if that last line was a jab at me, go take a long walk off a short peer.
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I think the spelling is pier, calm down! Holy crap ! You have so much time on your hands volunteer to help Ben out.
 


As long as we’re using random Gopher fan twitter accounts as our definitive account of the timeline of events for Spring 2022 recruiting, as well as for the basis for our judgements of whether or not Ben Johnson is working hard enough, here’s another account stating that we’ve contacted Jaelin Llewellyn about 18 hours before the GopherScoop tweet.

 

cjbfbp said:
That's not what I meant. He was busy doing other things but you can delegate that task to a grad student for the cost of a tuition waiver and stipend.

And if that last line was a jab at me, go take a long walk off a short peer.
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Delegate what? Pulling up the list on a computer? Everybody in the portal is listed. Even fans can see it. You think the coaching staff needs someone else to compile it?

What you suggest with your panicky criticism of the coach is that he somehow doesn't know what to do, is sleeping on the job, hasn't contacted anybody yet (and you absolutely know this because you read a tweet written by a third party).

Only a moron coach would be offering his available spots right now when there are still many guys still to enter the portal, some from tournament teams. This chicken little, sky is falling, little girl panick criticism is a joke.
 

Outsider said:
I think the spelling is pier, calm down! Holy crap ! You have so much time on your hands volunteer to help Ben out.
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How dare you. The audacity of pointing out that a "college instructor" can't spell a four letter word.
 

Outsider said:
Don‘t muddle things up with facts, the masses are in panic mode. We aren’t camped on this guys doorstep.
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I trust Ben to know what he will be getting from Fox and Ihnen next season, but IMO, we aren't in a position to avoid any good basketball player. In terms of adding depth, I'd think we could all agree we are kind of in panic mode. We played 5 players our last game.
 

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