UGA MBB
Portal (Same as yesterday)
Erik Pastrana who is all business but not as active on social media suddenly follows:
Olivari, Paveletzke, and Cain…
Contacted:
Amaree Abram PG Mississippi 6-4 190 FR TX 8.0 2.0 2.0
Tyzhaun Claude PF Western Carolina 6-8 235 JR NC 15.4 8.6 0.5
Ta’lon Cooper PG Minnesota 6-4 190 SR+ SC 9.8 4.0 6.3
Damian Dunn SG Temple 6-5 195 SO NC
15.3 3.7 3.0
John Hugley PF Pittsburgh 6-8 265 JR OH 8.0 3.6 0.8
Denver Jones SG Florida International 6-4 190 SO AL 20.1 3.8 2.4
Chris Ledlum PF Harvard 6-6 225 SR NY 18.8 8.4 1.6
Ishmael Leggett SG Rhode Island 6-3 190 SO MD 16.4 5.8 2.4
Jordan Minor PF Merrimack 6-8 240 SR MA 17.4 9.4 2.3
Quincy Olivari SG Rice 6-3 200 JR GA 19.3 6.1 2.2
Johnny O’Neil PF American 6-9 200 JR FL 11.3 6.6 1.4
Jackson Paveletzke PG Wofford 6-3 185 FR WI 15.1 2.7 3.7
Kowacie Reeves SF Florida 6-6 192 SO 8.5 2.6 0.5
(Has had/is having in homes with BC, Loyola CHI, Ga State, Miss State, visiting GT Monday)
Primo Spears PG Georgetown 6-3 185 SO CT 16.0 3.0 5.3
Myles Stute SF Vanderbilt 6-7 215 JR DC 8.4 4.6 0.6
Evan Taylor SG Lehigh 6-6 205 SR IL 14.2 6.5 1.1
Jayden Taylor SG Butler 6-4 195 SO IN 12.9 3.8 1.3
Nicolas Timberlake SG Towson 6-4 205 SR MA 17.7 3.9 2.4
Tedrick Wilcox SG St. Francis, NY 6-6 188 SR RI 11.3 3.7 2.1
Probable Contacts:
Josh Cohen PF St. Francis
UGA Follows on Twitter:
Amaree Abram PG Mississippi
Ricky Bradley PG VMI
Jaemyn Brakefield SF Mississippi
**Blue Cain SG IMG (Georgia Tech) (Followed by multiple UGA coaches)
Nate Calmese SG Lamar
Chico Carter SG South Carolina
Tyzhaun Claude PF Western Carolina
Josh Cohen PF St. Francis. NY
Jared Garcia PF Salt Lake CC
Keshon Gilbert SG UNLV
Hakim Hart SG Maryland
EJ Jarvis PF Yale
Dalton Knecht SF Northern Colorado
Maxwell Land SG St. Francis, Pa
Chris Ledlum PF Harvard
Ishmael Leggett SG Rhode Island
Mike Meadows SG Portland
** Quincy Olivari SG Rice (Followed by multiple UGA coaches)
Johnny O’Neil PF American
**Jackson Paveletzke PG Wofford (Followed by multiple UGA coaches)
Isaiah Pope SG Utah Tech
Myles Stute SF Vanderbilt
Nicolas Timberlake SG Towson
Jaykwon Walton SF Wichita State
UGA Followers on Twitter:
Amaree Abram PG Mississippi
Ricky Bradley PG VMI
Blue Cain SG IMG Georgia Tech
Chico Carter SG South Carolina
Tyzhaun Claude PF Western Carolina
Josh Cohen PF St. Francis, NY
Jared Garcia PF Salt Lake CC
Robert Jennings PF Texas Tech
Dalton Knecht SF Northern Colorado
Maxwell Land SG St. Francis, Pa
Mike Meadows SG Portland
Quincy Olivari SG Rice
***Jackson Paveletzke PG Wofford (following 3 UGA coaches)
Isaiah Pope SG Utah Tech
Myles Stute SF Vanderbilt
Asher Woods SG VMI ( Following UGA Coaches and Charles Mann)
2023 HS Signees affected by coaching changes we would love to talk to:
Contacted: Blue Cain SG IMG - Georgia Tech (NIL release) 6-4 180 (UGA Contact) (UGA follows him and his parents on social media and they follow back)
Garwey Dual PG Southern California Academy Providence (NIL Release) 6-5 180 (UGA Contact)
Brandon Gardner PF Christ the King - St.John’s (Originally from Waynesboro
Committed Elsewhere:
Bradley Dean SG UVA Wise - Miami, OH
Tyler Houser C VMI - Delaware
Xander Rice PG Bucknell - Monmouth
BJ Mack PF Wofford - Not in his final 10
Lawson Lovering C Colorado - Utah
NCAA Basketball
Rothstein: The Breakfast Buffet: Things come full circle for Gonzaga and UConn, Kansas State, Rodney Terry
https://collegehoopstoday.com/index...ll-circle-for-gonzaga-and-uconn-kansas-state/
Alabama
Alabama.com: San Diego State halts Alabama’s NCAA Tournament run with own blue-collar mindset
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...rnament-run-with-own-blue-collar-mindset.html
Alabama.com: Alabama leaned on Brandon Miller, but weight of March moment was too heavy
“There were warning signs over the final quarter of the season that Alabama was no longer the juggernaut that smashed its way through the opening weeks of SEC play in January.
One unmistakable turning point was Feb. 21, when a court hearing for Darius Miles’ murder charge revealed the presence of Miller and Bradley at the scene of the Jan. 15 murder of Jamea Harris. Days earlier, Alabama made 47 percent of its three pointers (16-of-34) in a runaway win over Georgia, a reporters were once again scrolling through record books trying to keep up with a team that routinely challenged them.
To that point in the season -- through its Feb. 18 win over Georgia -- Alabama was shooting 36 percent on three pointers. Over its final 10 games, it shot 27.6 percent. And besides a 15-of-33 showing against an overmatched Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the first round of NCAA tournament, Alabama shot 19.6 percent from beyond the arc in those other nine games.
Was it fatigue? Those was an issue Oats raised before the SEC tournament, but Alabama had extra rest before its conference tournament and before its Sweet 16 game against San Diego State. In each case, Alabama’s three-point shooting never took off quite the way it did earlier in the season.
Another possibility is the mental strain from the scrutiny on Miller and the program as a whole, which began with Miles’ arrest in mid-January but intensified after Miller’s name surfaced a month later. That was something Oats referenced during his pregame Crimson Tide Sports Network radio interview before Friday night’s loss.
“It’s a lot of big-picture things hanging around the team that are important, very important,” Oats said Friday afternoon. “Our reputation, image, all that is very important to us. But when it comes down to practice, video, games, scout, preparation -- we need to be focused on the details, the task at hand. Be where your feet are. I think the guys have gotten back to that. Let’s focus on what we’re doing right now and be great at that. I think they’ve done a good job of that.”
Miller took over the first game after the Miles bond hearing by scoring a career-high 41 points in a narrow Feb. 22 win at South Carolina. But he shot 4-of-24 on three pointers over Alabama’s next three games, including 2-of-12 in a regular-season finale loss at Texas A&M, before returning to form to win SEC tournament MVP.
The freshman dealt with a groin injury that kept him less than 100 percent during the NCAA tournament, and center Charles Bediako had apparent leg issues that saw him head briefly to the locker room in the first round of the tournament and again Friday night. Injuries, though, seem like only a small piece of Alabama’s sudden exit in March.
This was a team that had different players step up at different points in the season, and too many faded down the stretch.
In perhaps the most impressive regular-season win for any college basketball team this season, Alabama beat Houston the road on Dec. 10. In that game, Noah Clowney scored 16 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including 2-of-6 from three-point range, while grabbing 11 rebounds. Another freshman, Jaden Bradley, scored 12 points in that environment and did not turn the ball over once.
Against Maryland and San Diego State, Clowney shot 2-of-11 and missed all six of his three-pointers. Bradley, who played double-digit minutes until late February, totaled 13 over the final two games, missing the only two shots he took.
Sears led Alabama with 16 points against San Diego State, mostly because of his late-game burst. He began the game 1-of-8, after shooting 10-of-43 (23 percent) since the regular-season finale.
Griffen, the lanky freshman guard, began earning national attention in late January when he shot 12-of-24 on three-pointers during a five-game span into February. But over the final 10 games of the season, Griffen shot 4-of-32 (13 percent) on triples. Over the same span, Burnett shot 5-of-22 on three pointers in limited minutes off the bench.
The only player whose arrow pointed up in March was Quinerly, but in what might have been his final game in an Alabama uniform, the fifth-year senior shot 4-of-13 for 10 points. He shot 1-of-3 on three pointers, 1-of-3 on free throws and had three turnovers along with three assists Friday night.
Analytically, Alabama will have one of the best teams in the country no matter what happens over the remainder of the tournament. It is ranked No. 4 in KenPom, with the third-ranked defense and 20th-ranked offense. But the meaning of some of the Tide’s biggest wins this season has become less clear.
North Carolina was the No. 1 team in the country when Alabama won a four-overtime thriller in November, but the Tar Heels missed the NCAA tournament. Michigan State was a top-12 team when Alabama beat them, but the Spartans finished well outside of the top-25. Houston was throttled Friday night by Miami in the Sweet 16. Alabama beat up SEC foes in Kentucky, Vanderbilt, LSU, Florida and Georgia, but that did not translate into long-range success.
Among teams in the final 15 of the NCAA’s NET rankings by the start of the tournament, Alabama went 1-4. Three of those teams -- Gonzaga, UConn and San Diego State -- are in the Elite Eight. The other, Tennessee, limped to a Sweet 16 loss to FAU without key starter Zakai Zeigler.
Alabama might have been dominant this season, but the Tide was not elite.”
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...but-weight-of-march-moment-was-too-heavy.html
Alabama.com: How San Diego State used Muhammad Ali, maturity to knock off Alabama
“Featuring a starting lineup that ran out four seniors and one junior, the Aztecs felt like their maturity would be the difference against a young Alabama team. They noticed early on that Tide players seemed to be arguing a lot of foul calls with the referees and doubled down on the physicality, believing it would unnerve Alabama down the stretch. At one point in the second half, Alabama coach Nate Oats seemed to instruct Quinerly to stop talking to the referees after he argued a foul call.
“From the tip, they were complaining about the physicality,” SDSU guard Matt Bradley said. “They allowed us to play; it was a really physical game. Once people start asking for fouls, you know they are worried about things other than basketball.”
What happened Friday night at the Yum! Center was always the playbook to beat this high-powered Alabama team, but few teams possessed the defense and depth capable of hanging with Alabama for forty minutes. Alabama came at you in waves this season, bringing in a seemingly endless supply of lengthy, athletic players.
Maryland hung with Alabama for 20 minutes in the second round last weekend in Birmingham before Alabama’s scoring potency took over and led to a final score that looked worse than it was. Still, afterward, Maryland head coach Kevin Willard said how his Terrapins played was the way to beat Alabama. San Diego State closely studied how Tennessee, Arkansas and Houston matched up against Alabama this season, seeing itself in the way those teams played against the Tide.
“Our DNA matches Tennessee,” Bradley said. “They’ve got a bunch of gritty dudes.”
SDSU’s grit was displayed in the second half when it withstood a ferocious Alabama run and landed a strong counterpunch. The Aztecs had a 28-23 lead at halftime, but everyone in the building seemed to know Alabama would make a run. The Crimson Tide started the second half pushing the ball and playing the faster tempo it prefers, storming out to an 11-2 run to take back the lead. For Alabama guard Nimari Burnett, it was a familiar experience watching a slow start turn into an offensive explosion to get “on the right track that we are used to being on.”
But the Mountain West champions didn’t fold. Down 48-39, with the Alabama fans starting to roar in approval inside the Yum! Center, the Aztecs steadied themselves and delivered big basket after basket. Darrion Trammell quickly scored five points to cut the lead to four, and SDSU’s confidence soared.
“If we get one-stop, two-stop, they’re going to cave in because they are young guys,” Mensah said. “Darrion makes a big shot, and right after that, they caved in.”
Mensah did his part, blocking multiple Quinerly shot attempts around the rim, as SDSU could sense Alabama began pressing as its lead faded. Miller couldn’t buy a basket down the stretch, and outside of a late Mark Sears-led run, no other Tide contributor was up for the task of delivering a win. The joy -- and cruelty -- of March Madness is all it takes is one bad effort, and your season is over. The pressure is intense, creating stars while leaving others to wonder what could have been. The path to a national championship game was wide open for Alabama should it have emerged victorious Friday night. All that was standing in Alabama’s way from suiting up Monday night for a chance to win it all were Creighton and the winner of Florida Atlantic/Kansas State. The path might never get better for Alabama than that in a tournament that will be best remembered for its chaos and parity.
But this Alabama team wasn’t ready for the spotlight and couldn’t handle the pressure of the big March stage the way San Diego State was. “They’ve been in a million of these situations over their careers,” Dutcher said about his team. “And, so, they didn’t shy away from the moment. They weren’t nervous.”
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...hammad-ali-maturity-to-knock-off-alabama.html
Alabama.com: For Alabama basketball, was the price worth the cost?
“Alabama’s greatest sin in all of this? It was hubris. This all could have been handled so much differently. Without Miller, would Alabama have made the Sweet 16? With Miller on the bench for a couple games after the pretrial hearing, does Alabama invite the firestorm of scrutiny that it invited?
Alabama put basketball above people. That is how this season will be remembered. Whether that’s reality or not, that’s the perception. It was sports at all costs, and it came at a price.”
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...-the-price-worth-the-cost.html?outputType=amp
Cincinnati
Colorado State
Reporter Herald: Colorado State’s Isaiah Stevens declares for NBA draft
https://www.reporterherald.com/2023/03/24/colorado-states-stevens-declares-for-nba-draft
Florida Atlantic
Wash Post: Dusty May, student of Bob Knight, has FAU on cusp of the Final Four
“FAU making the Elite Eight is one of the best jobs done in the history of college basketball. Period,” said Georgia Coach Mike White, for whom May worked as an assistant for seven years. “It’s absolutely incredible.”
May has distilled the overarching principle of being a student-manager: “Serving without wanting anything in return,” he said.
At Indiana, Knight selected roughly 15 managers, an army of overworked students dressed in gray shorts and red shirts. They broke down film, rebounded for players, fetched food for coaches, arrived early, stayed late and risked Knight’s infamous ire at any moment from dawn to dusk. They had to be fit enough to jump into practice drills and humble enough to deliver room service to assistant coaches. They received a comprehensive education in both basketball and drudgery.
“It’s a job a lot of Indiana people who wanted to be part of Indiana basketball wanted,” said A.J. Guyton, a star Hoosiers guard who overlapped with May. “Once they got it, they had to think about whether you really wanted it.”
From 1996 through 2000, May became the leader of the sprawling managerial squad. “The players could see it, too,” Guyton said. “He was always the one we would go to. If you wanted to get shots up, Dusty was always that go-to guy. It almost felt like Dusty was a player because he had that confidence. He could hoop a little bit, too. Dusty was the alpha manager.”
On road trips, Knight expected doughnuts outside his hotel door by 6 a.m. It was May’s job to put them there. “It was usually a local doughnut shop,” May said. In one town, the bakery didn’t open in time. He woke up at 4 a.m., drove an hour to the nearest open doughnut shop and returned in time to get Knight his breakfast.
Observing Knight served as a formative experience. May coaches with an even keel instead of a temper, Knight’s most famous attribute and the root of his eventual downfall. Still, May said he took “everything” he knows from Knight.
“He’s a master teacher and communicator and makes complex things seem simple,” May said. “And how he cared about his players. Obviously, he was demanding. His approach wasn’t mine. But I’ve never worked for anyone who cared more for their players than he did. They had him for life. If you went through that experience, then he would do anything for the rest of your life to help you.”
When May’s boss at Louisiana Tech got fired after the 2011 season, the school hired White, who called May to let him know he would be bringing an entirely new staff with him. May offered to meet him for lunch a few days later at the Final Four. At worst, May could fill in White about returning players and the idiosyncrasies of the program.
Lunch became an hour-long conversation, which stretched into a two-hour conversation, which became a day spent together listening to speakers at the coaches’ convention. May struck White as energetic, charismatic, likable, passionate — everything he would want in an assistant.
“Strictly from a professional standpoint, I’ve worked with a lot of really good coaches,” White said. “Dusty’s work capacity and passion for work is unparalleled. I haven’t seen anything like it.”
Louisiana Tech’s budget forced White and May to make recruiting trips by road, even if it meant driving May’s dealer car 12 hours to Florida or the Midwest. Once there, they would share a hotel room. On one trip, White woke up at 4 a.m. to use the bathroom. He couldn’t fall back asleep because the glow from May’s laptop shined in his eyes.
“He’d call out two European teams from some random tournament from like three years ago,” White said. “I’m like, ‘What are you studying?’ He’s like, ‘They got really good pick-and-roll continuity.’ And he’s clipping it!”
May still keeps databases of offensive actions and defensive coverages gleaned through film study of every level. During team flights at Louisiana Tech, while others slept or watched Netflix, May used the time to give players impromptu film lessons or scour another game for a new strategy.
“He lives it,” White said. “He eats, sleeps, breathes it. He’s consumed with it. There are no lulls. If you’re a normal human being, and I certainly am — he’s an alien — you have a lull. You have an off day. I’ve never seen one of those with him, ever. We could get beat by 20 or win by 20. He’s going to be the same dude in the office the following morning, probably up before anyone else.”
May shrugs at the idea that his work ethic makes him unique. It comes naturally and not only because of his blue-collar background. He’s still the kid who played so hard his mother made him play in sweatpants, still the student manager who only ever wanted to be an Indiana high school coach.
“I love basketball,” May said. “So none of it feels like work. Watching film, studying leadership, getting in the gym, it feels like a hobby that I get paid to do. I think all that stuff is very overblown because I enjoy doing it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/03/25/dusty-may-fau-elite-eight/
George Mason
Georgia State
G Julian Mackey of NE Oklahoma A&M (JUCO) and Grayson HS, Georgia has committed to Georgia State
Kansas State
NYP: Kansas State’s Keyontae Johnson living out dream after life-threatening scare
https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/kansas-states-keyontae-johnson-living-dream-after-scare/
New Mexico State
Las Cruces Sun News: New Mexico State basketball hires Sam Houston State's Jason Hooten
https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/sp...-sam-houston-states-jason-hooten/70047171007/
North Carolina
Princeton
The Trentonian: A toast to Princeton men’s basketball’s Tosan Evbuomwan, an all-time great Tiger
https://www.trentonian.com/2023/03/...balls-tosan-evbuomwan-an-all-time-great-tiger
St. John’s: Rick Pitino is off to the races to improve St. John’s roster
https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/rick-pitino-is-off-to-the-races-to-improve-st-johns-roster/
San Diego State
Marks The Athletic: How San Diego State built a top-flight defense and rode it to the Sweet 16 (Subscription)
Excerpts from the long form article
(Recommended read)
“The goal, Velasquez explains, is for those daily drills to create muscle memory and instinctive behavior. Take another small San Diego State staple, high hands, as an example. During those closeout drills, and just generally when players contest shots, Velasquez and the Aztecs staff stress for players to keep their hands high, to make shooters uncomfortable both from deep and at the rim. In fact, “high hands” is one of the four defensive tenets of the program that Velasquez writes in black on the pregame whiteboard. (The others? Elite communication, five guys in a stance, and fix it.) While scouting notes change game-to-game, and are written in red or blue, those four core values never change.
Between the daily drills, the verbal reinforcement, seeing that defensive key written out before every game, eventually, the message sticks.
Or as Velasquez puts it: “At some point, it’s harder to not put your hands up on a closeout than to just naturally throw your hands. … Over time, that’s what it becomes.”
Which is why, as the season progresses, San Diego State’s defense only gets better and better. It took time, years’ worth, for defense to become the program’s larger DNA. Same deal with every specific team. Only, the reason these particular Aztecs are still here — as one of seven remaining teams lower than a No. 4 seed — is because of their year-in growth. The ’19-’20 team may have been SDSU’s most well-rounded, but in terms of improvement over the course of six months?
That growth does not happen without San Diego State’s little secret: its defensive chart.
In essence, the chart — which Velasquez tracks himself in-game, before recording it in a notebook he keeps — is the Aztecs’ personal defensive box score. Though scores of advanced metrics sites exist to quantify offense, the same can’t be said for defense.
“There’s not necessarily a box score for defense, right? Everybody can look up how you shot the ball on offense, if you took care of the ball,” Velasquez explains. “It allows our team to basically have our own, truly made-up defensive box score for every game, that we can always go back to. And I know our players respect it.”
The chart works something like this: Different defensive actions come with either a positive or negative value. Taking a charge, for example, is plus-2. Getting blown by, or not boxing out? That’s minus-1. Some are more intricate; the staff assigns a plus-1 when players provide “appropriate help,” but they’re docked a point if they don’t help at all. Not having high hands, naturally, is a minus-1, too. “They’re counting it if you don’t do it,” jokes senior Aguek Arop. “That’s how often we do it. If you don’t do it, they’ll point it out. Oh, if you didn’t do it four times? We’ll put that up (on film).” A few more: Getting your hands on a ball, via stunt or otherwise — something Lamont Butler, this season’s Mountain West defensive player of the year, excels at — is a plus-1. Missing a rotation or allowing a wide-open cut — “even if your guy cuts and doesn’t get the ball,” Velasquez adds — is a minus-1. That last one specifically is how the staff teaches players to keep their heads on a swivel.
Giving a known shooter too much space? That’s a minus-1. The Aztecs were especially attuned to that one in their first two NCAA Tournament games, against Charleston and Furman. Not giving Reyne Smith, one of Charleston’s high-energy shooters, any space to shoot was a key focus of the team’s scout going in; Smith shot 1 of 6 from 3, scoring just seven points. Same deal with Furman’s J.P. Pegues, who hit the last-second 3-pointer that clinched the Paladins’ first-round upset over No. 4 seed Virginia.
Then there’s the team’s ball-screen coverages — and anytime there’s a mix-up, both guys involved get a minus-1. “Because even if one guy talked,” Velasquez says, “that means the other one didn’t and wasn’t communicating at a high level.”
That, too, goes back to the team’s scouts, though. Because of San Diego State’s experience — the Aztecs start all upperclassmen, and do not have any sophomores or freshmen in their rotation — the coaching staff can get incredibly detailed with its scouts. That’s one of Dutcher’s strong suits, players say: identifying seeming minutiae that may actually be the key to winning games. Sometimes, that’s shifting a ball-screen coverage — dropping, hard-hedging, trapping, whatever it may be — depending on which opposing player sets the screen. Against Furman, it showed up in slowing the team’s top draft prospect, forward Jalen Slawson, whose personal 9-0 run against Virginia swung momentum from the Cavaliers for good. After watching between eight to 10 Furman games — in a 24-hour turnaround period, at that — the staff realized Slawson’s tendencies and developed a plan to counteract them. “If he goes right and gets an angle, he’s all the way to the rim and you cannot stop him,” Velasquez says. “If you do cut him off, he’s gonna spin back — so we had to make sure the guy nearest toward him, in the gap, is ready to make a play.” Slawson ended up fouling out in just 20 minutes, shooting 2 of 5 with four turnovers.
“He gives us the answers to the test every time. It’s like, this player does this, this player does that,” Bradley says of Velasquez. “It’s not like we’re necessarily great individually defensively; it’s the game plan he sets for us that makes us so much better.”
Hear that? Us. That, players and coaches agree, is what sets this specific San Diego State team apart: its connectedness. In fact, that also leads naturally to one of the final grading notes in its defensive chart, one of the four notes written in black on every pregame whiteboard.
“Fix it.”
Unofficially, those plays have another name, too: “Save the day.”
“Fix it is what we do at the most elite level. If somebody makes a mistake, we cover for each other,” Velasquez says. “It’s the hardest thing to teach, because there’s such a feel to it. You have to understand when and how to fix it. And it’s on the fly. If one of your teammates gets blown by, and you come over and help, then he’s gotta peel off and take yours. I mean, it’s snap, snap. It’s quick. It’s happening at very high speeds — but that’s the absolute core to our defense.”
It’s a term probably best explained with an example. In the second half against Furman, with the Aztecs up comfortably, Furman forward Garrett Hien skyed for a baseline slam dunk, the kind of momentum play that can reverse a team’s fortunes — as SDSU had seen happen to Virginia days earlier. “That was a mix-up on communication on a ball screen,” Velasquez says of the play. But right as Hien took off to the rim, seemingly out of nowhere came Arop with a thunderous block that stopped Hien in his tracks. Instead of a Furman score, Arop’s block was the exclamation mark on SDSU’s dominant second-half run. “Who knows what could’ve happened in the Furman game?” Velasquez says. “Seriously.”
Asked about the same play, Arop smiles somewhat sheepishly. “That extra rotation, that’s saving the day,” he agrees. “The last hope.”
Those are the plays, the shifts on-court, that no staff can fully teach. To some extent, it takes nine brains thinking as one, nine bodies moving in concert on the court. That term is a way to quantify the result, but what propels those plays? Well, it’s just a connection inside every member of SDSU’s team.
“It’s kind of like an unspoken language,” Bradley says. “We don’t really talk about it; we just do it instinctually.”
https://theathletic.com/4337310/2023/03/22/san-diego-state-defense-sweet-16/
Texas
Austin American Statesman: On to the Elite Eight: Texas men's basketball cruises past Xavier in decisive Sweet 16 win
https://www.statesman.com/story/spo...ier-despite-injury-to-dylan-disu/70047820007/
Vanderbilt
Stackhouse gets props for this season, but he’s lost part of his heralded recruiting class from last year
Portal (Same as yesterday)
Erik Pastrana who is all business but not as active on social media suddenly follows:
Olivari, Paveletzke, and Cain…
Contacted:
Amaree Abram PG Mississippi 6-4 190 FR TX 8.0 2.0 2.0
Tyzhaun Claude PF Western Carolina 6-8 235 JR NC 15.4 8.6 0.5
Ta’lon Cooper PG Minnesota 6-4 190 SR+ SC 9.8 4.0 6.3
Damian Dunn SG Temple 6-5 195 SO NC
15.3 3.7 3.0
John Hugley PF Pittsburgh 6-8 265 JR OH 8.0 3.6 0.8
Denver Jones SG Florida International 6-4 190 SO AL 20.1 3.8 2.4
Chris Ledlum PF Harvard 6-6 225 SR NY 18.8 8.4 1.6
Ishmael Leggett SG Rhode Island 6-3 190 SO MD 16.4 5.8 2.4
Jordan Minor PF Merrimack 6-8 240 SR MA 17.4 9.4 2.3
Quincy Olivari SG Rice 6-3 200 JR GA 19.3 6.1 2.2
Johnny O’Neil PF American 6-9 200 JR FL 11.3 6.6 1.4
Jackson Paveletzke PG Wofford 6-3 185 FR WI 15.1 2.7 3.7
Kowacie Reeves SF Florida 6-6 192 SO 8.5 2.6 0.5
(Has had/is having in homes with BC, Loyola CHI, Ga State, Miss State, visiting GT Monday)
Primo Spears PG Georgetown 6-3 185 SO CT 16.0 3.0 5.3
Myles Stute SF Vanderbilt 6-7 215 JR DC 8.4 4.6 0.6
Evan Taylor SG Lehigh 6-6 205 SR IL 14.2 6.5 1.1
Jayden Taylor SG Butler 6-4 195 SO IN 12.9 3.8 1.3
Nicolas Timberlake SG Towson 6-4 205 SR MA 17.7 3.9 2.4
Tedrick Wilcox SG St. Francis, NY 6-6 188 SR RI 11.3 3.7 2.1
Probable Contacts:
Josh Cohen PF St. Francis
UGA Follows on Twitter:
Amaree Abram PG Mississippi
Ricky Bradley PG VMI
Jaemyn Brakefield SF Mississippi
**Blue Cain SG IMG (Georgia Tech) (Followed by multiple UGA coaches)
Nate Calmese SG Lamar
Chico Carter SG South Carolina
Tyzhaun Claude PF Western Carolina
Josh Cohen PF St. Francis. NY
Jared Garcia PF Salt Lake CC
Keshon Gilbert SG UNLV
Hakim Hart SG Maryland
EJ Jarvis PF Yale
Dalton Knecht SF Northern Colorado
Maxwell Land SG St. Francis, Pa
Chris Ledlum PF Harvard
Ishmael Leggett SG Rhode Island
Mike Meadows SG Portland
** Quincy Olivari SG Rice (Followed by multiple UGA coaches)
Johnny O’Neil PF American
**Jackson Paveletzke PG Wofford (Followed by multiple UGA coaches)
Isaiah Pope SG Utah Tech
Myles Stute SF Vanderbilt
Nicolas Timberlake SG Towson
Jaykwon Walton SF Wichita State
UGA Followers on Twitter:
Amaree Abram PG Mississippi
Ricky Bradley PG VMI
Blue Cain SG IMG Georgia Tech
Chico Carter SG South Carolina
Tyzhaun Claude PF Western Carolina
Josh Cohen PF St. Francis, NY
Jared Garcia PF Salt Lake CC
Robert Jennings PF Texas Tech
Dalton Knecht SF Northern Colorado
Maxwell Land SG St. Francis, Pa
Mike Meadows SG Portland
Quincy Olivari SG Rice
***Jackson Paveletzke PG Wofford (following 3 UGA coaches)
Isaiah Pope SG Utah Tech
Myles Stute SF Vanderbilt
Asher Woods SG VMI ( Following UGA Coaches and Charles Mann)
2023 HS Signees affected by coaching changes we would love to talk to:
Contacted: Blue Cain SG IMG - Georgia Tech (NIL release) 6-4 180 (UGA Contact) (UGA follows him and his parents on social media and they follow back)
Garwey Dual PG Southern California Academy Providence (NIL Release) 6-5 180 (UGA Contact)
Brandon Gardner PF Christ the King - St.John’s (Originally from Waynesboro
Committed Elsewhere:
Bradley Dean SG UVA Wise - Miami, OH
Tyler Houser C VMI - Delaware
Xander Rice PG Bucknell - Monmouth
BJ Mack PF Wofford - Not in his final 10
Lawson Lovering C Colorado - Utah
NCAA Basketball
Rothstein: The Breakfast Buffet: Things come full circle for Gonzaga and UConn, Kansas State, Rodney Terry
https://collegehoopstoday.com/index...ll-circle-for-gonzaga-and-uconn-kansas-state/
Alabama
Alabama.com: San Diego State halts Alabama’s NCAA Tournament run with own blue-collar mindset
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...rnament-run-with-own-blue-collar-mindset.html
Alabama.com: Alabama leaned on Brandon Miller, but weight of March moment was too heavy
“There were warning signs over the final quarter of the season that Alabama was no longer the juggernaut that smashed its way through the opening weeks of SEC play in January.
One unmistakable turning point was Feb. 21, when a court hearing for Darius Miles’ murder charge revealed the presence of Miller and Bradley at the scene of the Jan. 15 murder of Jamea Harris. Days earlier, Alabama made 47 percent of its three pointers (16-of-34) in a runaway win over Georgia, a reporters were once again scrolling through record books trying to keep up with a team that routinely challenged them.
To that point in the season -- through its Feb. 18 win over Georgia -- Alabama was shooting 36 percent on three pointers. Over its final 10 games, it shot 27.6 percent. And besides a 15-of-33 showing against an overmatched Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the first round of NCAA tournament, Alabama shot 19.6 percent from beyond the arc in those other nine games.
Was it fatigue? Those was an issue Oats raised before the SEC tournament, but Alabama had extra rest before its conference tournament and before its Sweet 16 game against San Diego State. In each case, Alabama’s three-point shooting never took off quite the way it did earlier in the season.
Another possibility is the mental strain from the scrutiny on Miller and the program as a whole, which began with Miles’ arrest in mid-January but intensified after Miller’s name surfaced a month later. That was something Oats referenced during his pregame Crimson Tide Sports Network radio interview before Friday night’s loss.
“It’s a lot of big-picture things hanging around the team that are important, very important,” Oats said Friday afternoon. “Our reputation, image, all that is very important to us. But when it comes down to practice, video, games, scout, preparation -- we need to be focused on the details, the task at hand. Be where your feet are. I think the guys have gotten back to that. Let’s focus on what we’re doing right now and be great at that. I think they’ve done a good job of that.”
Miller took over the first game after the Miles bond hearing by scoring a career-high 41 points in a narrow Feb. 22 win at South Carolina. But he shot 4-of-24 on three pointers over Alabama’s next three games, including 2-of-12 in a regular-season finale loss at Texas A&M, before returning to form to win SEC tournament MVP.
The freshman dealt with a groin injury that kept him less than 100 percent during the NCAA tournament, and center Charles Bediako had apparent leg issues that saw him head briefly to the locker room in the first round of the tournament and again Friday night. Injuries, though, seem like only a small piece of Alabama’s sudden exit in March.
This was a team that had different players step up at different points in the season, and too many faded down the stretch.
In perhaps the most impressive regular-season win for any college basketball team this season, Alabama beat Houston the road on Dec. 10. In that game, Noah Clowney scored 16 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including 2-of-6 from three-point range, while grabbing 11 rebounds. Another freshman, Jaden Bradley, scored 12 points in that environment and did not turn the ball over once.
Against Maryland and San Diego State, Clowney shot 2-of-11 and missed all six of his three-pointers. Bradley, who played double-digit minutes until late February, totaled 13 over the final two games, missing the only two shots he took.
Sears led Alabama with 16 points against San Diego State, mostly because of his late-game burst. He began the game 1-of-8, after shooting 10-of-43 (23 percent) since the regular-season finale.
Griffen, the lanky freshman guard, began earning national attention in late January when he shot 12-of-24 on three-pointers during a five-game span into February. But over the final 10 games of the season, Griffen shot 4-of-32 (13 percent) on triples. Over the same span, Burnett shot 5-of-22 on three pointers in limited minutes off the bench.
The only player whose arrow pointed up in March was Quinerly, but in what might have been his final game in an Alabama uniform, the fifth-year senior shot 4-of-13 for 10 points. He shot 1-of-3 on three pointers, 1-of-3 on free throws and had three turnovers along with three assists Friday night.
Analytically, Alabama will have one of the best teams in the country no matter what happens over the remainder of the tournament. It is ranked No. 4 in KenPom, with the third-ranked defense and 20th-ranked offense. But the meaning of some of the Tide’s biggest wins this season has become less clear.
North Carolina was the No. 1 team in the country when Alabama won a four-overtime thriller in November, but the Tar Heels missed the NCAA tournament. Michigan State was a top-12 team when Alabama beat them, but the Spartans finished well outside of the top-25. Houston was throttled Friday night by Miami in the Sweet 16. Alabama beat up SEC foes in Kentucky, Vanderbilt, LSU, Florida and Georgia, but that did not translate into long-range success.
Among teams in the final 15 of the NCAA’s NET rankings by the start of the tournament, Alabama went 1-4. Three of those teams -- Gonzaga, UConn and San Diego State -- are in the Elite Eight. The other, Tennessee, limped to a Sweet 16 loss to FAU without key starter Zakai Zeigler.
Alabama might have been dominant this season, but the Tide was not elite.”
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...but-weight-of-march-moment-was-too-heavy.html
Alabama.com: How San Diego State used Muhammad Ali, maturity to knock off Alabama
“Featuring a starting lineup that ran out four seniors and one junior, the Aztecs felt like their maturity would be the difference against a young Alabama team. They noticed early on that Tide players seemed to be arguing a lot of foul calls with the referees and doubled down on the physicality, believing it would unnerve Alabama down the stretch. At one point in the second half, Alabama coach Nate Oats seemed to instruct Quinerly to stop talking to the referees after he argued a foul call.
“From the tip, they were complaining about the physicality,” SDSU guard Matt Bradley said. “They allowed us to play; it was a really physical game. Once people start asking for fouls, you know they are worried about things other than basketball.”
What happened Friday night at the Yum! Center was always the playbook to beat this high-powered Alabama team, but few teams possessed the defense and depth capable of hanging with Alabama for forty minutes. Alabama came at you in waves this season, bringing in a seemingly endless supply of lengthy, athletic players.
Maryland hung with Alabama for 20 minutes in the second round last weekend in Birmingham before Alabama’s scoring potency took over and led to a final score that looked worse than it was. Still, afterward, Maryland head coach Kevin Willard said how his Terrapins played was the way to beat Alabama. San Diego State closely studied how Tennessee, Arkansas and Houston matched up against Alabama this season, seeing itself in the way those teams played against the Tide.
“Our DNA matches Tennessee,” Bradley said. “They’ve got a bunch of gritty dudes.”
SDSU’s grit was displayed in the second half when it withstood a ferocious Alabama run and landed a strong counterpunch. The Aztecs had a 28-23 lead at halftime, but everyone in the building seemed to know Alabama would make a run. The Crimson Tide started the second half pushing the ball and playing the faster tempo it prefers, storming out to an 11-2 run to take back the lead. For Alabama guard Nimari Burnett, it was a familiar experience watching a slow start turn into an offensive explosion to get “on the right track that we are used to being on.”
But the Mountain West champions didn’t fold. Down 48-39, with the Alabama fans starting to roar in approval inside the Yum! Center, the Aztecs steadied themselves and delivered big basket after basket. Darrion Trammell quickly scored five points to cut the lead to four, and SDSU’s confidence soared.
“If we get one-stop, two-stop, they’re going to cave in because they are young guys,” Mensah said. “Darrion makes a big shot, and right after that, they caved in.”
Mensah did his part, blocking multiple Quinerly shot attempts around the rim, as SDSU could sense Alabama began pressing as its lead faded. Miller couldn’t buy a basket down the stretch, and outside of a late Mark Sears-led run, no other Tide contributor was up for the task of delivering a win. The joy -- and cruelty -- of March Madness is all it takes is one bad effort, and your season is over. The pressure is intense, creating stars while leaving others to wonder what could have been. The path to a national championship game was wide open for Alabama should it have emerged victorious Friday night. All that was standing in Alabama’s way from suiting up Monday night for a chance to win it all were Creighton and the winner of Florida Atlantic/Kansas State. The path might never get better for Alabama than that in a tournament that will be best remembered for its chaos and parity.
But this Alabama team wasn’t ready for the spotlight and couldn’t handle the pressure of the big March stage the way San Diego State was. “They’ve been in a million of these situations over their careers,” Dutcher said about his team. “And, so, they didn’t shy away from the moment. They weren’t nervous.”
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...hammad-ali-maturity-to-knock-off-alabama.html
Alabama.com: For Alabama basketball, was the price worth the cost?
“Alabama’s greatest sin in all of this? It was hubris. This all could have been handled so much differently. Without Miller, would Alabama have made the Sweet 16? With Miller on the bench for a couple games after the pretrial hearing, does Alabama invite the firestorm of scrutiny that it invited?
Alabama put basketball above people. That is how this season will be remembered. Whether that’s reality or not, that’s the perception. It was sports at all costs, and it came at a price.”
https://www.al.com/alabamabasketbal...-the-price-worth-the-cost.html?outputType=amp
Cincinnati
Colorado State
Reporter Herald: Colorado State’s Isaiah Stevens declares for NBA draft
https://www.reporterherald.com/2023/03/24/colorado-states-stevens-declares-for-nba-draft
Florida Atlantic
Wash Post: Dusty May, student of Bob Knight, has FAU on cusp of the Final Four
“FAU making the Elite Eight is one of the best jobs done in the history of college basketball. Period,” said Georgia Coach Mike White, for whom May worked as an assistant for seven years. “It’s absolutely incredible.”
May has distilled the overarching principle of being a student-manager: “Serving without wanting anything in return,” he said.
At Indiana, Knight selected roughly 15 managers, an army of overworked students dressed in gray shorts and red shirts. They broke down film, rebounded for players, fetched food for coaches, arrived early, stayed late and risked Knight’s infamous ire at any moment from dawn to dusk. They had to be fit enough to jump into practice drills and humble enough to deliver room service to assistant coaches. They received a comprehensive education in both basketball and drudgery.
“It’s a job a lot of Indiana people who wanted to be part of Indiana basketball wanted,” said A.J. Guyton, a star Hoosiers guard who overlapped with May. “Once they got it, they had to think about whether you really wanted it.”
From 1996 through 2000, May became the leader of the sprawling managerial squad. “The players could see it, too,” Guyton said. “He was always the one we would go to. If you wanted to get shots up, Dusty was always that go-to guy. It almost felt like Dusty was a player because he had that confidence. He could hoop a little bit, too. Dusty was the alpha manager.”
On road trips, Knight expected doughnuts outside his hotel door by 6 a.m. It was May’s job to put them there. “It was usually a local doughnut shop,” May said. In one town, the bakery didn’t open in time. He woke up at 4 a.m., drove an hour to the nearest open doughnut shop and returned in time to get Knight his breakfast.
Observing Knight served as a formative experience. May coaches with an even keel instead of a temper, Knight’s most famous attribute and the root of his eventual downfall. Still, May said he took “everything” he knows from Knight.
“He’s a master teacher and communicator and makes complex things seem simple,” May said. “And how he cared about his players. Obviously, he was demanding. His approach wasn’t mine. But I’ve never worked for anyone who cared more for their players than he did. They had him for life. If you went through that experience, then he would do anything for the rest of your life to help you.”
When May’s boss at Louisiana Tech got fired after the 2011 season, the school hired White, who called May to let him know he would be bringing an entirely new staff with him. May offered to meet him for lunch a few days later at the Final Four. At worst, May could fill in White about returning players and the idiosyncrasies of the program.
Lunch became an hour-long conversation, which stretched into a two-hour conversation, which became a day spent together listening to speakers at the coaches’ convention. May struck White as energetic, charismatic, likable, passionate — everything he would want in an assistant.
“Strictly from a professional standpoint, I’ve worked with a lot of really good coaches,” White said. “Dusty’s work capacity and passion for work is unparalleled. I haven’t seen anything like it.”
Louisiana Tech’s budget forced White and May to make recruiting trips by road, even if it meant driving May’s dealer car 12 hours to Florida or the Midwest. Once there, they would share a hotel room. On one trip, White woke up at 4 a.m. to use the bathroom. He couldn’t fall back asleep because the glow from May’s laptop shined in his eyes.
“He’d call out two European teams from some random tournament from like three years ago,” White said. “I’m like, ‘What are you studying?’ He’s like, ‘They got really good pick-and-roll continuity.’ And he’s clipping it!”
May still keeps databases of offensive actions and defensive coverages gleaned through film study of every level. During team flights at Louisiana Tech, while others slept or watched Netflix, May used the time to give players impromptu film lessons or scour another game for a new strategy.
“He lives it,” White said. “He eats, sleeps, breathes it. He’s consumed with it. There are no lulls. If you’re a normal human being, and I certainly am — he’s an alien — you have a lull. You have an off day. I’ve never seen one of those with him, ever. We could get beat by 20 or win by 20. He’s going to be the same dude in the office the following morning, probably up before anyone else.”
May shrugs at the idea that his work ethic makes him unique. It comes naturally and not only because of his blue-collar background. He’s still the kid who played so hard his mother made him play in sweatpants, still the student manager who only ever wanted to be an Indiana high school coach.
“I love basketball,” May said. “So none of it feels like work. Watching film, studying leadership, getting in the gym, it feels like a hobby that I get paid to do. I think all that stuff is very overblown because I enjoy doing it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/03/25/dusty-may-fau-elite-eight/
George Mason
Georgia State
G Julian Mackey of NE Oklahoma A&M (JUCO) and Grayson HS, Georgia has committed to Georgia State
Kansas State
NYP: Kansas State’s Keyontae Johnson living out dream after life-threatening scare
https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/kansas-states-keyontae-johnson-living-dream-after-scare/
New Mexico State
Las Cruces Sun News: New Mexico State basketball hires Sam Houston State's Jason Hooten
https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/sp...-sam-houston-states-jason-hooten/70047171007/
North Carolina
Princeton
The Trentonian: A toast to Princeton men’s basketball’s Tosan Evbuomwan, an all-time great Tiger
https://www.trentonian.com/2023/03/...balls-tosan-evbuomwan-an-all-time-great-tiger
St. John’s: Rick Pitino is off to the races to improve St. John’s roster
https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/rick-pitino-is-off-to-the-races-to-improve-st-johns-roster/
San Diego State
Marks The Athletic: How San Diego State built a top-flight defense and rode it to the Sweet 16 (Subscription)
Excerpts from the long form article
(Recommended read)
“The goal, Velasquez explains, is for those daily drills to create muscle memory and instinctive behavior. Take another small San Diego State staple, high hands, as an example. During those closeout drills, and just generally when players contest shots, Velasquez and the Aztecs staff stress for players to keep their hands high, to make shooters uncomfortable both from deep and at the rim. In fact, “high hands” is one of the four defensive tenets of the program that Velasquez writes in black on the pregame whiteboard. (The others? Elite communication, five guys in a stance, and fix it.) While scouting notes change game-to-game, and are written in red or blue, those four core values never change.
Between the daily drills, the verbal reinforcement, seeing that defensive key written out before every game, eventually, the message sticks.
Or as Velasquez puts it: “At some point, it’s harder to not put your hands up on a closeout than to just naturally throw your hands. … Over time, that’s what it becomes.”
Which is why, as the season progresses, San Diego State’s defense only gets better and better. It took time, years’ worth, for defense to become the program’s larger DNA. Same deal with every specific team. Only, the reason these particular Aztecs are still here — as one of seven remaining teams lower than a No. 4 seed — is because of their year-in growth. The ’19-’20 team may have been SDSU’s most well-rounded, but in terms of improvement over the course of six months?
That growth does not happen without San Diego State’s little secret: its defensive chart.
In essence, the chart — which Velasquez tracks himself in-game, before recording it in a notebook he keeps — is the Aztecs’ personal defensive box score. Though scores of advanced metrics sites exist to quantify offense, the same can’t be said for defense.
“There’s not necessarily a box score for defense, right? Everybody can look up how you shot the ball on offense, if you took care of the ball,” Velasquez explains. “It allows our team to basically have our own, truly made-up defensive box score for every game, that we can always go back to. And I know our players respect it.”
The chart works something like this: Different defensive actions come with either a positive or negative value. Taking a charge, for example, is plus-2. Getting blown by, or not boxing out? That’s minus-1. Some are more intricate; the staff assigns a plus-1 when players provide “appropriate help,” but they’re docked a point if they don’t help at all. Not having high hands, naturally, is a minus-1, too. “They’re counting it if you don’t do it,” jokes senior Aguek Arop. “That’s how often we do it. If you don’t do it, they’ll point it out. Oh, if you didn’t do it four times? We’ll put that up (on film).” A few more: Getting your hands on a ball, via stunt or otherwise — something Lamont Butler, this season’s Mountain West defensive player of the year, excels at — is a plus-1. Missing a rotation or allowing a wide-open cut — “even if your guy cuts and doesn’t get the ball,” Velasquez adds — is a minus-1. That last one specifically is how the staff teaches players to keep their heads on a swivel.
Giving a known shooter too much space? That’s a minus-1. The Aztecs were especially attuned to that one in their first two NCAA Tournament games, against Charleston and Furman. Not giving Reyne Smith, one of Charleston’s high-energy shooters, any space to shoot was a key focus of the team’s scout going in; Smith shot 1 of 6 from 3, scoring just seven points. Same deal with Furman’s J.P. Pegues, who hit the last-second 3-pointer that clinched the Paladins’ first-round upset over No. 4 seed Virginia.
Then there’s the team’s ball-screen coverages — and anytime there’s a mix-up, both guys involved get a minus-1. “Because even if one guy talked,” Velasquez says, “that means the other one didn’t and wasn’t communicating at a high level.”
That, too, goes back to the team’s scouts, though. Because of San Diego State’s experience — the Aztecs start all upperclassmen, and do not have any sophomores or freshmen in their rotation — the coaching staff can get incredibly detailed with its scouts. That’s one of Dutcher’s strong suits, players say: identifying seeming minutiae that may actually be the key to winning games. Sometimes, that’s shifting a ball-screen coverage — dropping, hard-hedging, trapping, whatever it may be — depending on which opposing player sets the screen. Against Furman, it showed up in slowing the team’s top draft prospect, forward Jalen Slawson, whose personal 9-0 run against Virginia swung momentum from the Cavaliers for good. After watching between eight to 10 Furman games — in a 24-hour turnaround period, at that — the staff realized Slawson’s tendencies and developed a plan to counteract them. “If he goes right and gets an angle, he’s all the way to the rim and you cannot stop him,” Velasquez says. “If you do cut him off, he’s gonna spin back — so we had to make sure the guy nearest toward him, in the gap, is ready to make a play.” Slawson ended up fouling out in just 20 minutes, shooting 2 of 5 with four turnovers.
“He gives us the answers to the test every time. It’s like, this player does this, this player does that,” Bradley says of Velasquez. “It’s not like we’re necessarily great individually defensively; it’s the game plan he sets for us that makes us so much better.”
Hear that? Us. That, players and coaches agree, is what sets this specific San Diego State team apart: its connectedness. In fact, that also leads naturally to one of the final grading notes in its defensive chart, one of the four notes written in black on every pregame whiteboard.
“Fix it.”
Unofficially, those plays have another name, too: “Save the day.”
“Fix it is what we do at the most elite level. If somebody makes a mistake, we cover for each other,” Velasquez says. “It’s the hardest thing to teach, because there’s such a feel to it. You have to understand when and how to fix it. And it’s on the fly. If one of your teammates gets blown by, and you come over and help, then he’s gotta peel off and take yours. I mean, it’s snap, snap. It’s quick. It’s happening at very high speeds — but that’s the absolute core to our defense.”
It’s a term probably best explained with an example. In the second half against Furman, with the Aztecs up comfortably, Furman forward Garrett Hien skyed for a baseline slam dunk, the kind of momentum play that can reverse a team’s fortunes — as SDSU had seen happen to Virginia days earlier. “That was a mix-up on communication on a ball screen,” Velasquez says of the play. But right as Hien took off to the rim, seemingly out of nowhere came Arop with a thunderous block that stopped Hien in his tracks. Instead of a Furman score, Arop’s block was the exclamation mark on SDSU’s dominant second-half run. “Who knows what could’ve happened in the Furman game?” Velasquez says. “Seriously.”
Asked about the same play, Arop smiles somewhat sheepishly. “That extra rotation, that’s saving the day,” he agrees. “The last hope.”
Those are the plays, the shifts on-court, that no staff can fully teach. To some extent, it takes nine brains thinking as one, nine bodies moving in concert on the court. That term is a way to quantify the result, but what propels those plays? Well, it’s just a connection inside every member of SDSU’s team.
“It’s kind of like an unspoken language,” Bradley says. “We don’t really talk about it; we just do it instinctually.”
https://theathletic.com/4337310/2023/03/22/san-diego-state-defense-sweet-16/
Texas
Austin American Statesman: On to the Elite Eight: Texas men's basketball cruises past Xavier in decisive Sweet 16 win
https://www.statesman.com/story/spo...ier-despite-injury-to-dylan-disu/70047820007/
Vanderbilt
Stackhouse gets props for this season, but he’s lost part of his heralded recruiting class from last year
Last edited:
