Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

Money.
The volleyball tournament is a national qualifier run over three weekends, stretching into April. This weekend alone there are expected to be 400 teams. Multiple that by each roster then add parents and family who probably traveled to see their daughters, add in hotel stays and meals in restaurants, etc.

 

Why should the volleyball tournament give a shit about the NCAA women's basketball regional? Especially when it's not a given it will be there?

 

This tells you all you need to know about the new world of the SEC/B10 in one place and everyone else in another. Doubling salary by leaving the ACC? Scary.

 

Can you imagine if it had been a Southern team and not one from one of the whitest states in the country? Three Black players and an assistant, plus Alissa Pili, who appears to be a Pacific Islander (though, surprisingly, from Alaska). We covered Gianna Kneepkens as a prep but she broke her foot in December and was out for the year.

 

Life is good today! Yaxel Lendeborg, the walking double-double who led the UAB Blazers to an AAC tournament win and the NCAA's announced an NIL deal yesterday with UAB's O'Neal Cancer Center. Today we got this:



Here's an upraised middle finger to all the Memphis assholes who were gloating on Twitter yesterday that he was already gone to chase a big bag elsewhere and that we were stupid to think he might stay.

On a more serious note, his game got much better under the coaching staff at UAB, and he has certainly showed up on the radar of many basketball people while playing here. I think he valued the coaching and his teammates and the knowledge that he'd play 30+ minutes here. When he weighed that against getting a big bag from a power school who might make a sixth man or role player in his senior year, he chose to stay.

Should help with recruiting too. We only lose three players and two of them were no great loss.

 

Get off Twitter, man.

 

I ought to, Elon is a dick. There really isn't an equivalent to turn to though.

 

Portal ain’t closed yet. Don’t fall in love with the strippers. And I say that as someone who saw him four times in person and thinks he could legitimately stick in the NBA with another year of development.

 

UMass had a player last year that announced a big NIL deal with them - it was rumored to be for $100k or so. He transferred a couple weeks later anyway to play for Pitino at St. John's, where he only started 10 games and averaged 21 MPG.

I still think the ultimate end game for NIL and more open transferring is that things end up like free agency in the pros. Meaning, guys want to play above anything else, and with 300+ D-I programs, they're going to transfer to programs that can give them minutes first, money second. Are collectives really going to be willing to shell out $$$ for like the 7th guy on a bench? What about a deep reserve that's only going to play if one or more players get injured in front of him? In years past, that kind of player might have stuck around on the bench of Duke or Kansas or Michigan for a couple years, but now, I think he transfers down to play immediately at a VCU or URI and he still gets paid.