Good evening, desert creatures. You slithery reptiles, you. It’s mailbag time and you are most severely welcome for the content.
Zachnado asks: Is HoF a good prerequisite for retiring a jersey number or should it be something else? Okafor won NPOY but wont make the HoF, but Drummond could make it. No way is 12 more worthy of being up there than another 50.
Zachnado, you make an interesting point. I don’t know if Andre Drummond makes the HoF or not, but it would be super weird to retire his number after playing one (1) season at UConn.
It worked perfectly for Ray Allen and Rebecca Lobo. Ray put up wild good numbers at UConn, won Big East POY (and was robbed, robbed I say! of his rightful NPOY), and Lobo is the OG women’s player, with a ship and a Player of the Year on her UConn resume. Retiring those numbers is fitting for a variety of reasons, and I don’t think anyone will look back and question why we decided the numbers worn by those two greats belong to them only. (Fun fact, no women’s player has worn 50 since Lobo, so it was effectively retired the day she took that jersey off. Fitting.)
There are a number of women’s players who will likely get inducted into the HoF at some point: Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart are all locks. For the men, I’m less sure of which, is any are heading there. If Kemba gets into the HoF then lock down 15, I say, but other than that? Ehhhh… Anyway, personally, I think setting HoF as the bar is fine, as long as it’s only part of what we talk about.
But this really was just an excuse for me to once again remind everyone that RYAN BOATRIGHT NEEDS TO BE ON THE WALL FOR FUCK’S SAKE. I will die on this hill. UConn does not win in 2014 without Boat, and he should be on the Huskies of Honor Wall and it’s horseshit that we aren’t making that happen. I will be Mad Online until we remedy this injustice.
Ryan asks: When inbounding from under an opponent’s basket, it seemed like our primary option was to lob a jump ball to an undersized PG at half court and reset the O. Is Coach Hurley a poor inbound play designer or was that just too far down his list of priorities to worry about in year 1?
On the list of things that I’m worried about, this is approximately not on it. My guess is this is a combination of confirmation bias (a super annoying thing when it happens but probably not frequent enough to be a real issue) and just having bad players (bad players make bad plays). As some of the young players mature and make better decisions, and Hurley adds some more athletes to the roster, I’d expect this problem — such as it is — to be remedied.
Poopy McPoop Poop asks: Would a team of the NFL’s best basketball players beat the men’s team in a 40 minute regulation game? This has been a huge debate among friends lately with the votes being split.
The obvious school of thought is to pick the team of college basketball players who practice the sport every single day, over a bunch of older, superior athletes who’ve nevertheless not improved their basketball skills since high school or college.
But the more I think about it, the more I think the NFL guys might just have the advantage. There are at least 9 or 10 former actual college basketball players on NFL rosters — most notably Antonio Gates, who was a star on a Kent State team that went to the Elite Eight in 2002, and Mo-Alie Cox, who was a very good center on Shaka Smart’s last few VCU teams. I suspect you could pretty easily find a frontcourt that could physically overwhelm this group of UConn bigs, no disrespect intended to Our Son Josh Carlton.
The bigger issue would be finding good guard play among professional footballers. Gilbert (and Jalen, theoretically, if we waited a few months to play this game) is far more skilled than any NFL player he’d be matched up with, and pretty much everyone in UConn’s regular guard rotation should cause havoc defensively against guys with subpar ball-handling and shooting skills.
To sum up, I suspect UConn probably wins, but I could definitely be talked out of it.
Postradamus asks: How many transfers do you think this team will have after this season?
This should probably be prefaced with the disclaimer that this is just idle speculation and not based on inside info of any variety but let’s break it down.
Definitely Gone: Jalen Adams, Kassoum Yakwe, Tarin Smith, Eric Cobb, Kwintin Williams
Almost Certainly Gone: Isaiah Whaley
Probably Also Gone: Christian Vital
Maybe Gone: Mamadou Diarra
Whaley and Diarra have essentially been exiled from Hurley Island. There’s really no reason for Whaley to stay. He can go to a smaller school more suited for his talent level and get a lot of minutes and probably have a lot of fun. The same is true of Diarra but he has spent so much time riding the bench at UConn (due to injury and whatever’s happening now) that he might be unwilling to transfer somewhere else just to sit for another season.
Vital is probably the controversial pick right? We’ve discussed this on the podcast in the past but here’s the quick and dirty breakdown. He flirted with leaving this past offseason (which seemed a little more serious than it should’ve been). He’s clashed with Hurley at times this season and has recently been Rodney Purvis’d to the bench (it can’t feel great to get benched on an awful team). He’s been posting quasi-cryptic things to social media like “last time around” all season, similar to Terry Larrier last year. And, honestly, what’s the point of staying? UConn is likely not a tournament team next year and Vital is almost certainly heading overseas at some point. It’s hard to fault a kid for getting a head start on earning a paycheck.
— Tyler
Michael asks: Projected starting lineup for 2019-2020?
PG: Gilbert
SG: Bouknight
SF: Achiuwa
PF: Akok
C: Carlton
— Tyler
Deryl asks: I’m getting very excited about Josh “Sideshow Bob” Carlton. That offensive rebound, spin move dunk last night is an aggressive elite move he didn’t make earlier in the year. We all know he’s made huge strides this year. What do you think his upside will be the rest of his career?
Carlton has, by a wide margin, been the most pleasant surprise of the season. As we’ve talked about in the past, his lack of explosive athleticism limits his ceiling a bit but his skillset is impressive and constantly improving. Carlton has great hands, good footwork, solid timing and a strong array of post moves.
Carlton should benefit by having some more talent around him next year. Once UConn can start spreading the floor, more space will open for him inside. And the arrival of Akok Akok (and possibly another forthcoming frontcourt addition) will help provide some rebounding and defensive help.
If you’re looking for a UConn comp for Carlton, I think he lands somewhere around Josh Boone territory: call it 12 and 8 with 60% shooting.
— Tyler
Trust the Process asks: Do you think Will Wade got Tremont Waters by offering a little something extra
It’$ hard to $ay. L$U i$ in a lot of trouble and it$ coach $kirted the rule$ to lure recruit$. Whether Water$ wa$ involved, let’$ wait and $ee.
— Tyler
