Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

Next year's TV numbers are going to be a disaster, in comparison. People are tuning in to watch Clark. How many of them will tune in next year?

 

Less than this year, more than in 2022 and way more than in 2014 would be my guess. Juju Watkins is starting to turn heads and Paige Bueckers has committed to coming back and may finally stay healthy. I don’t think it’s going to be a collapse.

 

Equivalent for . . . what?

 

I think all of the parties are going to have to figure things out. Players will figure out balancing playing time with any NIL money, whether it's better to begin at the best school that recruit them or starting low knowing you can move almost every year. Coaches will figure out the best way for them to compete, the people funding NILs will figure out burning $100 bills is more fulfilling than paying for 30 games of a guy doing nothing.

 

I think Yax was looking for a reason to stay. He legit seems happy, and lord knows that fans show him a lot of love. He's both a good player and a quality kid we're proud to have representing UAB. Andy Kennedy and staff did a really good job of coaching him up. The first quarter to third of the season he was tentative and didn't really understand his role. If he improves anywhere near as much next season he should have a solid shot at the NBA. I doubt that the NIL deal was all that large (although the O'Neal family has plenty of money if they decided to make an effort to keep him) as UAB's NIL funding is minimal and our AD pretty much hates it. We were all prepared to see him go and hoping against hope he'd stay.

The trickle down of bench players on good teams has fed a lot of teams through the portal. The emphasis on such portal players from P5's to teams on UAB's level means that there are quality mid level high school recruits available that formerly would not have been, although Andy generally wants older, more developed players. The portal also meant, at least last season, that the JUCO's were not recruited the way they have traditionally been. AK went out and got three of the top ten JUCO's on the board, including Yax. Getting a rep for recruiting and developing those guys will help with recruiting them in the future.

 

A Twitter equivalent that isn't tiny or a complete echo chamber. For all the nonsense that Musk has allowed/enabled, there are a number of people I follow who have toughed it out and remain on the platform. I never even glance at Twitter's "For You", only my follows. There's still plenty of garbage that seeps into those.

 

Agreed, this is a bubble and it's going to burst pretty soon. The genie will never go back in the bottle but there are going to be players going public w/their horror stories ("I got paid $100K by Power 5 U but played five minutes a game and now I'm playing pro ball in Egypt or "The money that was promised never arrived and I ended up transferring to LowMid State and now I'n playing pro ball in Egypt") that will resonate with current athletes.

 

But will it resonate with them? Seems every year there are about 60 players (exaggeration) who declare for the draft because they are convinced they will be lottery picks, based on the people in their ear.

Kids that age hear what they want to hear, and it always will be "the other guy" who doesn't have enough talent/hard work/whatever to make it big and not get screwed.

 

Schools have/had the answer at their disposal all along, but are/were way too short-sighted/greedy/power-obsessed to consider it.

Multi-year scholarships.

Yes, it's akin to a contract, but both parties get to put protections in. Risk is shared by school and athlete. Would be really attractive to parents of kids who want some semblance of security. With the portal now a thing, it has suddenly become attractive to the majority of the schools in Division I.

I brought this solution up over 10 years ago to someone at my mid-major beat I had at the time. They said they would never want to take away their year-to-year flexibility. In other words, their then-complete power to run off kids who became undesirable.

How'd that work out for ya?

 

Pac-12 has had guaranteed four-year scholarships for years. Didn't work out so well.

 

Do tell. What went wrong with it?

 

Didn't stop athletes from transferring. And no more Pac-12.