Freshman Development Issues

[SMUer]

Super Legend! An accomplishment I can’t brag to my wife about

[mustangxc]

I think if you expect to lose all these seniors and you know you have scholarship restrictions then you’re pretty silly for signing kids that aren’t ready to play college ball right away. Nothing that has happened to us has been surprising, and yet we look like we have a bench full of project players we are hoping to blossom. The turnovers, the terrible free throw percentages and the lack of discipline in shot selection all are antithetical to how SMU has played ball and been successful.

I am pretty sure if we could have landed McDonald's All Americans we would have. If anything the mistake the last few years has been to take transfers, but then again, many of our incoming transfers have been our best players. We have been playing russian roulette the last three seasons thanks to the sanctions and it finally caught up to us this season.

[SoCal_Pony]

I think if you expect to lose all these seniors and you know you have scholarship restrictions then you’re pretty silly for signing kids that aren’t ready to play college ball right away. Nothing that has happened to us has been surprising, and yet we look like we have a bench full of project players we are hoping to blossom. The turnovers, the terrible free throw percentages and the lack of discipline in shot selection all are antithetical to how SMU has played ball and been successful.

I agree with this and would only add that we completely struck-out on our 3 ‘project’ players from our previous class.

[Pony_Law]

At the end of the day we have a team that would have made the tournament baring injuries and even with injuries we are likely a high seed NIT team, this coming off a year where we won a conference championship and lost 3 players to the NBA while on sanctions. I’ll give the staff some credit for that because I have some perspective.

Next year will be a big test. If We make the tournament and/or compete in the top 4 of the American, it’s a good sign we have moved into an period of long term success.

[RI Stang]

At the end of the day we have a team that would have made the tournament baring injuries and even with injuries we are likely a high seed NIT team, this coming off a year where we won a conference championship and lost 3 players to the NBA while on sanctions. I’ll give the staff some credit for that because I have some perspective.

Next year will be a big test. If We make the tournament and/or compete in the top 4 of the American, it’s a good sign we have moved into an period of long term success.

Exactly. And I agree next year will be a big test, although I would be willing to sacrifice a bit next year if we could land some of those 2019 big fish and load up there.