First post here....FYI, I will never bash or talk badly about any potential, current, or former UC player for the record....While it's certainly disheartening to "potentially" be losing our highest rated recruit in some time, I really think people get caught up in the grading sytem and hype. Obviously, I would love to have Jermaine stay but can we say we are really "losing" anything if we are replacing him with Ocatvious Ellis? Throw the whole five-star, high ceiling, NYC stuff out the window. We lose a 6-10, 205 pound forward, with some skill and athelticism who put up paltry numbers as a freshamn and has been injury prone the last two seasons of basketball, with three years of eligibility remaining. We gain a 6-10 220 pound forward, with athleticism, a first-team juco all american along with kadeem allen, sam cassell jr and put up impressive #'s last year, with 2 years eligibility remaining. At worst you can call it a wash....
I'm actually pretty excited about the future of UC basketball. The talent on next year's team is the best Mick has ever had on one team, talking overall. It's funny because a guy like Gary Clarke to me is a five-star recruit but since he is a quiet, yeoman-type kid who didn't get exposure early in his career, he is only a four-star. Kid is sick nasty. He's the most impressive recruit Mick has ever landed in my opinion. People should be excited. Real five-star talent IMO.
I like what Mick has done here. We are going to be a physically big team next year. Which we sorely need and have lacked. I think that has been a major problem for us along with putting the ball in the bucket. Mick has proven he can win with undersized teams. All Mick's teams have been very rugged, smaller teams with many guys playing out of position . With the way Mick expects guys to play with intensity on defense, depth and size are critical. Guys like Titus and Justin busting their tails so hard going up against bigger teams is difficult. That wears you down. Especially when you have no one else banging hard on the other side of the basket with you and theirs no one coming off the bench to relieve you. It was actually hard to watch sometimes because they played to the point of exhaustion but would not quit. (All always have massive respect for the way those guys played) I believe that the smaller, thin front line depth, along with the high intensity we tried to play with was detrimental to our offensive production late in the season. You could see it as the year wound down. We didn't have much left in the tank. We are going to be the complete opposite of what Mick has had these past several years. We don't have much experience but we have real size.... 6'9 270, 6'10 270, 6'10 220, 6'8 250, 6'7 215, 6'7 205. That is some size not a lot of schools have. And were not talking about Ron Allen, Dave Nyrasuk, Cheik Mboj, no offense to those young men who did all they were able to give due to exigent circumstances....At the very least you hope we can rebound at a very high level and play defense. Hopefully a couple of these guys can start to score around the rim and we could maybe do something late in the season. I'm not expecting much but let these guys go out it in practice and beat on each other, and then they go out and beat on other teams. If Mick's smaller teams were a bitch to play against I'm hopeful a team of bruisers is going to be hellacious on our opponents. Somebody tell me if I'm way off base here....
