Big Ten Basketball: Early grades for each teams 2023 offseason moves (14. Minnesota Golden Gophers – Grade: F)

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BleedGopher

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per Tristan:

14. Minnesota Golden Gophers – Grade: F​

The Gophers went 2-17 in conference play this past and there’s a legit case that they got worse. They lost two of their three best players this offseason in Jamison Battle and Ta’Lon Cooper and replaced them with a trio of underwhelming transfers. One is Jack Smith, who played just 40 minutes combined as a freshman at Washington State.

The other two do have potential in Elijah Hawkins and Mike Mitchell, who both averaged at least 11 ppg, 3.5 rpg, and 4.0 apg at Howard and Pepperdine respectively. But they’re not good defenders and will need to replicate their previous production just to be as good as last season. At best, you can say they’re as good as last season, which means nothing since they were in last place.

bustingbrackets.com

Big Ten Basketball: Early grades for each teams 2023 offseason moves

It's been an important offseason for many Big Ten Basketball teams, which some doing much better than others. Here's a grade sheet for each team so far.
bustingbrackets.com bustingbrackets.com

Go Gophers!!
 



Considering Mitchell is rated as a 92 transfer and Cooper is rated 89 (you can agree or disagree with the ratings but without head to head play it's what we have) I think it's a bit harsh to say Johnson got an F. We needed point guards and we got 2. Some aren't disappointed about losing Battle, but I am. But even with Battle's loss IMHO, this year's team will be better than last year's just because we have more depth and experience....and two point guards.
 

CoMn said:
Considering Mitchell is rated as a 92 transfer and Cooper is rated 89 (you can agree or disagree with the ratings but without head to head play it's what we have) I think it's a bit harsh to say Johnson got an F. We needed point guards and we got 2. Some aren't disappointed about losing Battle, but I am. But even with Battle's loss IMHO, this year's team will be better than last year's just because we have more depth and experience....and two point guards.
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It's very difficult to know without seeing these guys play. Are these two guys better than Cooper and Samuels? Christie replaces Henley. Ya, that's probably better?
But we lost Battle...
We have the same coaching staff.
We didn't just sneak into last place. To get out we need to be much better. Most all the other teams had better off seasons than we did. Gonna be tough. Iowa does not look good on paper....maybe there could be hope to climb a rung?
 


CoMn said:
Considering Mitchell is rated as a 92 transfer and Cooper is rated 89 (you can agree or disagree with the ratings but without head to head play it's what we have) I think it's a bit harsh to say Johnson got an F. We needed point guards and we got 2. Some aren't disappointed about losing Battle, but I am. But even with Battle's loss IMHO, this year's team will be better than last year's just because we have more depth and experience....and two point guards.
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Agreed, I would grade it around a C- personally if we’re talking strictly transfers.
 


BleedGopher said:
per Tristan:

14. Minnesota Golden Gophers – Grade: F​

The Gophers went 2-17 in conference play this past and there’s a legit case that they got worse. They lost two of their three best players this offseason in Jamison Battle and Ta’Lon Cooper and replaced them with a trio of underwhelming transfers. One is Jack Smith, who played just 40 minutes combined as a freshman at Washington State.

The other two do have potential in Elijah Hawkins and Mike Mitchell, who both averaged at least 11 ppg, 3.5 rpg, and 4.0 apg at Howard and Pepperdine respectively. But they’re not good defenders and will need to replicate their previous production just to be as good as last season. At best, you can say they’re as good as last season, which means nothing since they were in last place.

bustingbrackets.com

Big Ten Basketball: Early grades for each teams 2023 offseason moves

It's been an important offseason for many Big Ten Basketball teams, which some doing much better than others. Here's a grade sheet for each team so far.
bustingbrackets.com bustingbrackets.com

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...
This has to have been ghost written by Gopher Weather Guy
 




goldenboy said:
Very well could be true, but it’s always hard to take a writer seriously when they can’t even get players’ names right.
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It does taint the analysis, doesn’t it? How does he get Smith from Wilson? His is a tired take. I wished all season long that Battle and Cooper were among the Gophers’ best three players.
 

Inexcusable name screw up aside, it's basically right. At best, we got as much talent in the portal as we lost, which makes us even with our 2-17 team from last year. The net improvement, if there is any, will come from Christie, Payne, Garicia, Ihnen etc.

We also went head to head for recruits and lost against UCF, Utah State Austin Peay, and St. Bonaventure among others.
 

Captain Willard said:
It does taint the analysis, doesn’t it? How does he get Smith from Wilson? His is a tired take. I wished all season long that Battle and Cooper were among the Gophers’ best three players.
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I’d agree they were probably both top 5 but not both top 3. Regardless it’s hard to see a lot of upside
 

BleedGopher said:
per Tristan:

14. Minnesota Golden Gophers – Grade: F​

The Gophers went 2-17 in conference play this past and there’s a legit case that they got worse. They lost two of their three best players this offseason in Jamison Battle and Ta’Lon Cooper and replaced them with a trio of underwhelming transfers. One is Jack Smith, who played just 40 minutes combined as a freshman at Washington State.

The other two do have potential in Elijah Hawkins and Mike Mitchell, who both averaged at least 11 ppg, 3.5 rpg, and 4.0 apg at Howard and Pepperdine respectively. But they’re not good defenders and will need to replicate their previous production just to be as good as last season. At best, you can say they’re as good as last season, which means nothing since they were in last place.

bustingbrackets.com

Big Ten Basketball: Early grades for each teams 2023 offseason moves

It's been an important offseason for many Big Ten Basketball teams, which some doing much better than others. Here's a grade sheet for each team so far.
bustingbrackets.com bustingbrackets.com

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...
The men’s basketball team is a god damn dumpster fire. This writer can’t get names right but what he says isn’t wrong by a long shot. Gophers need Payne and Garcia to combine for 35 and 15 a night and for one if their transfer guards to be very good fit them to have a chance at a 10-12th place finish
 



If the freshman that got minutes last year improve, we’ll win a few more games and should be more competitive.

Im sure Coyle has a #wins in his mind that must be met.

The no staff changes does worry me.
 

He gave Minnesota an F, Michigan a D, and no one else worse than a C-. Probably not a coincidence that Jamison Battle and Hunter Dickinson are arguably the two best players in the Big Ten who transferred out of their current school. Jamison Battle, who might have been going pro after four years of college, but was lured to stay in the college ranks for another year, likely for a nice NIL payday. Penn State doesn't take a hit in the transfer portal rankings for losing like 5 players to graduation, and then gets to fill those empty roster spots with transfers, which boosts their ranking even higher. With us only losing one senior, and losing one of the better transfers in the conference, it probably would have been tough to do well in this ranking unless we got multiple top notch transfers. We needed a couple decent guards and we got them. Also Maryland lost a potential starter today in Ian Martinez, and I doubt that was factored in.
 


I still can't get over all the crying about losing battle. The guy was invisible defensively and had a couple of good shooting nights.

I will never get it.
 

kg21 said:
I still can't get over all the crying about losing battle. The guy was invisible defensively and had a couple of good shooting nights.

I will never get it.
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Maybe you will when you see him play for a different B1G Conference coach? Just saying.
 

kg21 said:
I still can't get over all the crying about losing battle. The guy was invisible defensively and had a couple of good shooting nights.

I will never get it.
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Because he played well the first year. Our “reality” people are not living in the now.
 



I guess this all depends upon how you grade things. Considering our situation, we patched a couple of holes and had a couple of head scratchers. There is good and bad (IMO), so I'd give us a C/C-.

Good:
We got two guards. They are real guards and they can both handle the basketball. Of course they are far from perfect, but when you're in the desert even Dasani is good. They both can shoot enough to play off the ball and can run point when the other player is on the bench. They also both play at a high pace. Neither of them were my first choices of guys in the portal, but that doesn't mean they won't be productive and fill a massive hole in our roster. It's hard to not give them a B/B+.

Bad:
The Jack Wilson signing made absolutely no sense at all. Statistically, he is way worse than Thompson and Thompson was awful. We were not desperate for just any post player. If we wanted a legitimate C who could play some minutes behind Payne and Wilson is the best they could have gotten, that's a major issue. I'd rather have taken a flyer on a borderline HS player. I would give this signing an F. Even if he's just occupying the last/second-to-last scholarship, it shows a poor approach to recruiting and has happened over and over again and had a negative impact on our program. Having a Jack Wilson signing isn't that big of deal, having one every single year, is a big deal.

If we end up eating another scholarship. We should throw it at a borderline prospect (HS kid, AJ PLthafndkfgnfn, a guard somewhere). We are a Big 10 basketball program, if we cannot find another player who plays guard who has interest in playing here (and he would likely play), then that's a massive failure in recruiting.
 

Rockraven said:
^^^ This. I wish CBJ had never insisted he play poor defense and take bad shots. It is all on the coach.
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Maybe he shouldn't have played him at SF like many of us on the board were saying and then Ben admitted to in the second half of the year.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I guess this all depends upon how you grade things. Considering our situation, we patched a couple of holes and had a couple of head scratchers. There is good and bad (IMO), so I'd give us a C/C-.

Good:
We got two guards. They are real guards and they can both handle the basketball. Of course they are far from perfect, but when you're in the desert even Dasani is good. They both can shoot enough to play off the ball and can run point when the other player is on the bench. They also both play at a high pace. Neither of them were my first choices of guys in the portal, but that doesn't mean they won't be productive and fill a massive hole in our roster. It's hard to not give them a B/B+.

Bad:
The Jack Wilson signing made absolutely no sense at all. Statistically, he is way worse than Thompson and Thompson was awful. We were not desperate for just any post player. If we wanted a legitimate C who could play some minutes behind Payne and Wilson is the best they could have gotten, that's a major issue. I'd rather have taken a flyer on a borderline HS player. I would give this signing an F. Even if he's just occupying the last/second-to-last scholarship, it shows a poor approach to recruiting and has happened over and over again and had a negative impact on our program. Having a Jack Wilson signing isn't that big of deal, having one every single year, is a big deal.

If we end up eating another scholarship. We should throw it at a borderline prospect (HS kid, AJ PLthafndkfgnfn, a guard somewhere). We are a Big 10 basketball program, if we cannot find another player who plays guard who has interest in playing here (and he would likely play), then that's a massive failure in recruiting.
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I would be OK with AJ PLthafndkgnfn ( I warned earlier that most Gopher fans would not be able to spell it). He is prequalified. Would come with a bad knee.
 

He could be right but I doubt it. Jack Smith is a 3rd or 4th back up at his position, which is a position of strength for the Gophers. If we look at moves that could make a difference we need to look at Inhen and Fox who have not played for 2 years and IF they are healthy will make a significant difference (the move was to keep them on scholarship). Betts coming off his redshirt year should offer some valuable minutes. Christie has the potential to make a positive impact as a freshman. With the negative impact of Evans not living up to his agreement and afraid to compete with Payne for minutes) , the core of the team stayed intact with only the loss of Evan's buddy from California. Cooper was not athletic enough to compete at a high level in the Big Ten but our 2 transfers appear to be.

Battle needed to move on. He was the key focus on bad Gopher teams for 2 years and needed to go somewhere where he was not getting double teamed all of the time.
 

Rockraven said:
I would be OK with AJ PLthafndkgnfn ( I warned earlier that most Gopher fans would not be able to spell it). He is prequalified. Would come with a bad knee.
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Not really. Good spin again.
This is what you actually wrote to disparage Gopher fans on the board.

95% of the posters would never be able to spell his name. Even though A.J. should not be that hard.
 

Rockraven said:
I would be OK with AJ PLthafndkgnfn ( I warned earlier that most Gopher fans would not be able to spell it). He is prequalified. Would come with a bad knee.
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Yeah, I can't spell his last name but I promise to learn it if he signs here.

As far as his knee, it's not ideal obviously, but it's better than eating a scholarship.
 

kg21 said:
I still can't get over all the crying about losing battle. The guy was invisible defensively and had a couple of good shooting nights.

I will never get it.
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Ya, all these analysts who list him as one of the top transfers from a Big Ten team...what are they thinking? Why don't they agree with you?

The Gophers had trouble scoring as a team. Battle was the guy expected to score for them. He averaged 12.4 ppg. The other team's coach game planned to stop Battle first. They put their best perimeter defender on him. Our coach ran no actions to help Battle...to put him in a position through screens or movement to get him the open looks in spots on the floor where Battle was most effective. So Battle was taking random shots he couldn't make in an attempt to fulfill his responsibility of scoring for the team. That's what you saw.

Now, they will game plan for Christie or Mitchell or Carrington or somebody else...who ever our best perimeter scoring threat is gonna be? And that group will try to avg 12.4 plus Cooper's 9.8 with the other team's best defender game planned to take away whatever it is we do well.

If Steph Curry is on the floor does the defense play different? Are the Timberwolves more of a threat to the defense with Ant on the floor? Does the opponent have less to worry about when guys like that are not out there? That's who Battle was for the last place Gophers.

We get rid of Battle and Cooper hogging all the shots and we're gonna score now, boy! We'll move the ball side to side, make 7 passes without any dribbles, set up lob dunks, run back doors, isolate Payne in the post on the block with all our 3 point shooters....it's gonna be great!
We'll run pick and roll on top and put our shooters in the corners. Can't wait. Oh wait, we'll switch to showtime now and with our new guards we are going 7 seconds or less...we will fast break our opponents into submission and then we'll press. Maybe we are better...maybe we are not. But, losing Battle does not make us better.

Battle had a bad year. He is not a bad player.
 

Atl Gopher said:
Battle needed to move on. He was the key focus on bad Gopher teams for 2 years and needed to go somewhere where he was not getting double teamed all of the time.
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So now we'll be better off when they double someone else like Garcia and we don't have Battle's scoring ability to help out when that happens?
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Yeah, I can't spell his last name but I promise to learn it if he signs here.

As far as his knee, it's not ideal obviously, but it's better than eating a scholarship.
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Hearing he might be done playing…. Might be taking his time to make final decision. Good player
 

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