Sam Freeman Enters Transfer Portal

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bc2211 said:
He simply chose to play 10. Doesn’t mean he should have.

Edit: he made sure the fatal flaws were in both line ups usually.
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I was the best player on my team in 6th grade. By far. It was equal playing time for the first three quarters and then you could play to win in the 4th. So my coach put players 2-6 on one squad and me on the other. My job was to keep it even so our other shift could get us a less. Led to me being Marcus Carr at times. My squad was so inept I led our team in every stats. Turnovers included.
Anyway. tubby should have tried that.
 




I don’t know that I see above average in Freeman’s Top 25 team ability. But, I do think coached differently he could be a very effective contributor on a Top 25 team.
To me he is not a throw away prospect.
 
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Freeman never got enough minutes for any of us to evaluate him. Same with Mitchell. I thought they both played well enough in short spurts to deserve more minutes in a few of our blowout losses, but Pitino wouldn’t play them. I get why Pitino loved Curry after overcoming his multiple injuries, but his play didn’t warrant the minutes he got. This ultimately contributed to our lack of depth as guys dropped out due to injury. Freeman lacked offensive skills, but was very mobile for a guy his size, and actually played some solid defense when he spelled Liam.
 

Bordergopher said:
Freeman never got enough minutes for any of us to evaluate him. Same with Mitchell. I thought they both played well enough in short spurts to deserve more minutes in a few of our blowout losses, but Pitino wouldn’t play them. I get why Pitino loved Curry after overcoming his multiple injuries, but his play didn’t warrant the minutes he got. This ultimately contributed to our lack of depth as guys dropped out due to injury. Freeman lacked offensive skills, but was very mobile for a guy his size, and actually played some solid defense when he spelled Liam.
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This is what message boards are all about. I did not like either players skills . Neither of us is right. Just different observations and opinions.
 

Team is in free fall...could you imagine if Musselman was named coach? He would have been asking some of these players to enter the transfer portal to bring in his own ....BJ has none of his own to replace these guys with.
 

Bordergopher said:
Freeman never got enough minutes for any of us to evaluate him. Same with Mitchell. I thought they both played well enough in short spurts to deserve more minutes in a few of our blowout losses, but Pitino wouldn’t play them. I get why Pitino loved Curry after overcoming his multiple injuries, but his play didn’t warrant the minutes he got. This ultimately contributed to our lack of depth as guys dropped out due to injury. Freeman lacked offensive skills, but was very mobile for a guy his size, and actually played some solid defense when he spelled Liam.
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Agree. Unfortunately some college coaches tend to set their rotation based on the devil they know. Until February it was arguably the right decision to stay with the rotation that had won against Iowa, Mich, and OSU. After some poor performances and the injury bug, it was painfully obvious we needed more depth and he hadn’t yet given Freeman the opportunities he needed to develop. And who knows what type of practices he was running, but Freeman wasn’t getting everything he needed out of those.

I don’t think Mitchell was ever going to give us a lift this year. Good looking shooter though and may have benefitted from a few meaningful minutes so he had something to work on in practice. Would have been an investment in next season.

Reflecting on this, Pitino has been in a win-now mode and coaching for his job the last 3 years. He hasn’t had the job security or roster consistency to trust younger guys in spot duty. Almost every game for 3 years has been a must win for the sake of his job.
 



howeda7 said:
TBD:
Johnson
Liam
Gach
Ihnen
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I'm almost certain that if any of these three transfer again, they'd have to sit out a year, because they just transferred here from another 4-year school.

All the hubbub about letting people transfer without penalty, is just about their first time transferring between four-year schools. Not an unlimited number of times.

Could be superceded if they were grad transfers, if they weren't before, but pretty sure that would not be the case for either Gach or Liam. And I think Johnson came here as a grad transfer. So I think that is used up and doesn't apply again, although I wonder if anyone has every tried to grad transfer twice? Probably has never happened, yet.
 

bc2211 said:
Reflecting on this, Pitino has been in a win-now mode and coaching for his job the last 3 years. He hasn’t had the job security or roster consistency to trust younger guys in spot duty. Almost every game for 3 years has been a must win for the sake of his job.
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Agreed, but more often than not he got the same dismal results from pursuing that strategy. One or more players become injured, he has not developed any depth, that forces the top players to be even more productive, opposing teams key on them, and they get more worn down and less efficient as the season progresses. Lather, rinse, repeat.
 

MplsGopher said:
I'm almost certain that if any of these three transfer again, they'd have to sit out a year, because they just transferred here from another 4-year school.

All the hubbub about letting people transfer without penalty, is just about their first time transferring between four-year schools. Not an unlimited number of times.

Could be superceded if they were grad transfers, if they weren't before, but pretty sure that would not be the case for either Gach or Liam. And I think Johnson came here as a grad transfer. So I think that is used up and doesn't apply again, although I wonder if anyone has every tried to grad transfer twice? Probably has never happened, yet.
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Yes, I don't know about grad transfers transferring more than once. You're probably right that the issue hasn't come up because players weren't allowed a fifth (or 6th) year of eligibility before unless they were injured or played few or no games in one or more of their prior years for some other reason. Under the optional year rule, though, there are a fair number of players in the transfer portal who have completed four full years of eligibility.
 

cjbfbp said:
Yes, I don't know about grad transfers transferring more than once. You're probably right that the issue hasn't come up because players weren't allowed a fifth (or 6th) year of eligibility before unless they were injured or played few or no games in one or more of their prior years for some other reason. Under the optional year rule, though, there are a fair number of players in the transfer portal who have completed four full years of eligibility.
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Well, again, if you've never transferred between four-year schools ... now they're saying you get to do that for free, once, with no sit out penalty. They'll just waive you through, no questions.
 

Nobody knows what the transfer rules will be. It is supposed to be decided very soon.
One facet of the new rules discussed was that if your coach got fired...you get a free transfer pass.
That could be a factor with our current/recent Gophers.
Ben will have playing time to offer. If nobody from the Xavier transfer portal chooses Minnesota that could be an indicator of Ben’s charisma with players.
If they do...we got good things to look forward to.
 

Bordergopher said:
Freeman never got enough minutes for any of us to evaluate him. Same with Mitchell.
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Agreed on Mitchell. He's still a mystery. I think we saw enough of Freeman to know he's a below average Big Ten player though.
 


Keyser Söze said:
I think we saw enough of Freeman to know he's a below average Big Ten player though.
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I think I would agree. As someone said recently, he's more or less just a big body although he does play hard at least. I'm not sure why people can be sorry that Freeman left the team while also hoping that Pohto doesn't join the team. He's a big body too and is a more highly regarded recruit than Freeman was.
 

60's Guy said:
Nobody knows what the transfer rules will be. It is supposed to be decided very soon.
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It's not like they're spinning a lottery wheel around, and whichever ball comes out is going to be the new rule.

The proposals are known. It's just if it passes or not.
 

MplsGopher said:
Well, again, if you've never transferred between four-year schools ... now they're saying you get to do that for free, once, with no sit out penalty. They'll just waive you through, no questions.
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I know about the "once" rule but but we don't know for sure how that would be interpreted for grad transfers. In the past, a prior transfer did not prevent a player transferring as a grad transfer. I know of at least a few players who were grad transfers who had also transferred as undergrads. I'm sure there are far more than the ones I know. We also have the optional year for those playing this season and I'm not sure what interpretative complications that might add. Can a grad transfer transfer again as a grad transfer? Perhaps the question has not come up before because the player likely would have run out of eligibility in the past but now there's an additional year possible.
 
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cjbfbp said:
I know about the "once" rule but but we don't know for sure how that would be interpreted for grad transfers. In the past, a prior transfer did not prevent a player transferring as a grad transfer. I know of at least a few players who were grad transfers who had also transferred as undergrads. I'm sure there are far more than the ones I know. We also have the optional year for those playing this season and I'm not sure what interpretative complications that might add.
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Correct that a prior non-grad transfer wouldn't matter for a grad transfer ... but for whom are you proposing a grad transfer out?

I guessing Robbins and Gach are not ready to graduate -- though I don't know.

And Brandon Johnson already did grad transfer.


Sorry for being verbose if you thought it was clear we were talking about Brandon. In that case - I guess two possibilities could be viable: 1) since he only grad transferred here, and never before, he did not "use up" his free one time transfer, or 2) he would be allowed to grad transfer again, if he indeed will graduate by the end of this semester. The latter would seem pretty incredible, unless he already started working on his grad degree at CMU and those credits transferred over. Maybe that could be the case.
 

MplsGopher said:
Correct that a prior non-grad transfer wouldn't matter for a grad transfer ... but for whom are you proposing a grad transfer out?

I guessing Robbins and Gach are not ready to graduate -- though I don't know.

And Brandon Johnson already did grad transfer.


Sorry for being verbose if you thought it was clear we were talking about Brandon. In that case - I guess two possibilities could be viable: 1) since he only grad transferred here, and never before, he did not "use up" his free one time transfer, or 2) he would be allowed to grad transfer again, if he indeed will graduate by the end of this semester. The latter would seem pretty incredible, unless he already started working on his grad degree at CMU and those credits transferred over. Maybe that could be the case.
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I'm not talking about players on our roster per se. I believe that Brandon Johnson will play here if decides to play another year and he's indicated already that he may do that. The question was just one of curiosity.
 

cjbfbp said:
I'm not talking about players on our roster per se. I believe that Brandon Johnson will play here if decides to play another year and he's indicated already that he may do that. The question was just one of curiosity.
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Man I hope he comes back - I would think he'd be a great fit for Ben. He always gave a 110%!!!
 

cjbfbp said:
I believe that Brandon Johnson will play here if decides to play another year
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Oh. So that's the choice, and that's why he participated in senior day. That makes sense.

Hope he does!
 

BarnBurner said:
Hmmm. How many minutes of play told you that?
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This. Freeman, when in, did well on the boards and was decent on the ball on defense. He was not always great about knowing where to be, but I think that was a minutes thing. On offense, we just didn't feed the post. We didn't do it that much when Robbins was in there and Robbins often had to get his looks with three point shots. Freeman is a low post guy who is a space eater, makes free throws and is a decent athlete. I think with time he will be a better than average center somewhere.

A guy who did virtually nothing here and then had a great year elsewhere was Iverson several years back. It can happen.
 

bga1 said:
This. Freeman, when in, did well on the boards and was decent on the ball on defense. He was not always great about knowing where to be, but I think that was a minutes thing. On offense, we just didn't feed the post. We didn't do it that much when Robbins was in there and Robbins often had to get his looks with three point shots. Freeman is a low post guy who is a space eater, makes free throws and is a decent athlete. I think with time he will be a better than average center somewhere.

A guy who did virtually nothing here and then had a great year elsewhere was Iverson several years back. It can happen.
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Iverson looked like a much better player to me when he was here than Freeman has so far. Always irked me that he didn't get more playing time. I wasn't surprised at all that he had such a good year for CSU.

Who knows how Freeman will develop. I'm not saying with any sort of certainty that he will never be an above average Big Ten center, I'm just saying up to this point, he hasn't been one. He's had some decent plays, but hasn't done anything that has made me excited about his future.
 

Keyser Söze said:
Iverson looked like a much better player to me when he was here than Freeman has so far. Always irked me that he didn't get more playing time. I wasn't surprised at all that he had such a good year for CSU.

Who knows how Freeman will develop. I'm not saying with any sort of certainty that he will never be an above average Big Ten center, I'm just saying up to this point, he hasn't been one. He's had some decent plays, but hasn't done anything that has made me excited about his future.
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Colton became a marked man by the refs for his aggressive play, and Tubby didn't like him personally for some reason. He for sure could have been a much better B1G player than he was and he was much better than Sam the day he walked on campus than Sam is now. I still like his potential to be a serviceable big, but is not worth fretting over if he chooses to go play in the WAC or Mountain West.
 

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