2022 Offseason

I am told UP's bracket in the Phil Knight Invitational (PK-85) at Thanksgiving includes:

Villanova
North Carolina
Iowa State
Alabama
Michigan State
Oregon
UCONN

The other bracket has:

Duke
Gonzaga
Florida
Portland State
Purdue
West Virginia
Xavier
Oregon State

UP is expected to play Gonzaga and PSU twice each next season...

I'm in favor of playing a local team from the mid tier big sky twice vs playing a sub 300 ranking of your choice team from a bottom tier conference.

dholcombe wrote:I'm in favor of playing a local team from the mid tier big sky vs playing a sub 300 ranking of your choice team from a bottom tier conference.

Talking with a University of New Orleans assistant after UP played them in the Chiles Center in mid-March, I was told UNO was planning to return to Oregon next fall to play UO and UP.  

UNO is not a sub-300 team, but you might remember UP knocked New Orleans, from the Southland Conference, from NET 264 to 267 while hitting 16 3-pointers against the 10th most up-tempo team in the nation.

It could be another fun one...

Dean Murdoch wrote:Big news on Twitter today is that Pilots guard Quincy Ferebee has entered the portal.

What year is it again?

Mikey Henn is on the move again as he looks for his fifth school as a grad-transfer.

Mikey graduated from high school in 2016, so he’ll apparently have 7-years of eligibility used by the time he finishes his college career.

With stops at UC-Davis, Cal Baptist, Portland, and Denver, one has to wonder of the Bellevue, Washington native will come back to the west of the Rockies for his next stop.

DoubleDipper wrote:Mikey Henn is on the move again as he looks for his fifth school as a grad-transfer..

While talking to Pacific and Pepperdine among many others schools, Mikey is also considering his options for going pro.

IMO, it would be cool if Mikey ended up in the WCC.  We only got to see him on streaming video during his 1 year on The Bluff, and it appeared he was always going full speed ahead...it would be nice to see him in person.

Some local reporting from the Tribune.

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/12-sports/541912-433864-up-mens-basketball-might-be-on-the-rise

up7587 wrote:Some local reporting from the Tribune.

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/12-sports/541912-433864-up-mens-basketball-might-be-on-the-rise

Archived non-paywall version: https://archive.ph/fvHK1

DoubleDipper wrote:Usually after the moves we've seen at GU you'd be inclined to call next year a "rebuild" year, but just like at St. Mary's, that just never seems to be the case at GU.

Looking at "Andy Katz's way-too-early Power 36 men's basketball rankings,"  Gonzaga is #12 and St. Mary's comes in at #27.

But if you will look at the fine print at the bottom of the list, you will notice a tiny Catholic school in Oregon has slipped into the list of "under consideration."  

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2022-04-08/college-basketball-rankings-arizona-arkansas-top-preseason-power-36-2022-23

DoubleDipper wrote:But if you will look at the fine print at the bottom of the list, you will notice a tiny Catholic school in Oregon has slipped into the list of "under consideration."  

Me: "Please don't be Marylhurst, please don't be Marylhurst"

Svetozarevic is in the portal.

https://twitter.com/VerbalCommits/status/1519778118239670275

Sound Voltex wrote:Svetozarevic is in the portal.

https://twitter.com/VerbalCommits/status/1519778118239670275

This is the most surprising of the transfers and definitely a blow to the squad. To my eye, Matija had the most talent and highest upside of the Freshmen last year. I can see it from his perspective though that there are 3-4 players with similar skill sets ahead of him on the depth chart. I wish him the best and hope he finds a good landing spot at a D1 school. I feel like the team needs to bring in a Freshman to try and balance out the roster. If they bring another guy with two years eligibility, my roster construction OCD is going to make my head explode!

bdaddy wrote:This is the most surprising of the transfers and definitely a blow to the squad. To my eye, Matija had the most talent and highest upside of the Freshmen last year. I can see it from his perspective though that there are 3-4 players with similar skill sets ahead of him on the depth chart. I wish him the best and hope he finds a good landing spot at a D1 school. I feel like the team needs to bring in a Freshman to try and balance out the roster. If they bring another guy with two years eligibility, my roster construction OCD is going to make my head explode!

He is/was the most talented of the freshmen, and big things were expected of him in the future.  

However, the death of Matija's mother was a blow to him and it is still weighing on him.  Although he is in the portal, he has the option of returning to UP, or as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, he could decide to play professionally in Serbia.

As far as needing a freshman to balance the roster, you could get your wish, bdaddy.

A young man who once played for Coach Pope at Compass Prep was on campus this week.  He will academically be a sophomore next season, but he played only two games for a total of 7 minutes at his current school this past season before he went down with an injury...so he will likely have 4 years of eligibility wherever he goes.

The word is this 6-7 small forward is even more skilled than Matija, and could even crack the starting lineup if he were to choose UP as his next school.

IMO, UP has got to host Jackson St. and their new point guard, former Pilot Chase Adams, sometime in the next two seasons.

Tomorrow, Sunday, May 1, is the final day players can enter the transfer portal and take advantage of the one-time transfer exception and be immediately eligible for next season.

Those who enter after May 1 will have to attempt to get a "case-by-case basis" waiver from the NCAA to play next season.

At last count there were over 1600 players in the transfer portal, and although I do not know exactly how many have found a school for next season, there is still a huge number without a school and a shrinking number of roster spots still available.

I suspect we may begin to see some players ask to come back to their original teams, but I do not see that at Portland, except perhaps for Matija, but I would not hold my breath in anticipation.

DoubleDipper wrote:I suspect we may begin to see some players ask to come back to their original teams, but I do not see that at Portland, except perhaps for Matija, but I would not hold my breath in anticipation.

I was just reminded that Matija was reportedly offered by Florida the day before he signed with UP...but of course that was before Coach Todd Golden took over.  

We shall see...

DoubleDipper wrote:

DoubleDipper wrote:I suspect we may begin to see some players ask to come back to their original teams, but I do not see that at Portland, except perhaps for Matija, but I would not hold my breath in anticipation.

I was just reminded that Matija was reportedly offered by Florida the day before he signed with UP...but of course that was before Coach Todd Golden took over.  

We shall see...

The Florida coach that offered him went to Georgia. We shall see indeed...

up7587 wrote:The Florida coach that offered him went to Georgia.  We shall see indeed...

In the last 5 days Mike White and Georgia have signed 4 players including two 4-star small forwards and a 4-star center.  

Perusing VerbalCommits, I do not see any signings by the UP players who entered the transfer portal. According to the NCAA, 43% of all athletes who entered the portal in 2021 are still Active entrants, which means they may still be exploring transfer options, may have transferred to a non-NCAA school, or may have left their sport. I tried to get the stats on just MBB athletes, but wasn't able to.

Sounds similar to the situation where 144 underclassmen in NCAA football declared for the NFL draft, and 49 went undrafted. They got some bad advice, giving up a scholarship and potential NIL money.

I love this!!

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/the-bold-new-college-basketball-flex-scheduling-model-that-would-bring-big-nonconference-games-into-february/

In 2017, when Coach Bob Cantu was recruiting players for Coach Porter's Pilots, he asked the statisticians to find him the best rebounding high school player in America.

I do not recall who was #1 during the 2017-18 season except that he went to a Power 5 school, but #2 was Theo Akwuba from Montgomery, Alabama.

Yesterday, Theo also joined a Power 5 school when he committed to Ole Miss, after turning down Iowa to stay closer to home, becoming the first former Pilot in my memory to end up playing for a major program.  (Maybe some of you old-timers can correct me on this).

Admittedly, Theo was not developed into a major player during his time at UP, that came later at Louisiana, but he did develop into the player Coach Cantu expected.

He averaged 9.1 points, 7.9 rebounds and 2.0 blocks per game this past season, and in 2020-21 was named the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year. His 68 blocks ranked 8th nationally and his 3.77 OREB was 10th.

Congratulations to Theo!!

He entered UP two years after I did but we had a class together and became friends enough to hang out in Pilot House for dinner, even though he was just a freshman.

Theo struggled academically in engineering at UP, but not because he wasn't smart enough, but because his family was having personal/legal struggles back home, and that weighed heavily on Theo.

From the few times Theo and I communicated after he left UP, I learned that moving close to home at Louisiana and now Mississippi, was the right thing to do and he did well in school.

DoubleDipper wrote:Yesterday, Theo also joined a Power 5 school when he committed to Ole Miss, after turning down Iowa to stay closer to home, becoming the first former Pilot in my memory to end up playing for a major program.  (Maybe some of you old-timers can correct me on this).

We had a center, Tim Frost, who was recruited from UP to Utah.  That's why I never liked fat Rick Majerus.

Oops, Utah was in the MWC back in those days (2002-2004). They entered the PAC-12 in 2011.

DoubleDipper wrote:
Yesterday, Theo also joined a Power 5 school when he committed to Ole Miss, after turning down Iowa to stay closer to home, becoming the first former Pilot in my memory to end up playing for a major program.  (Maybe some of you old-timers can correct me on this).

I think by any measure Tark the Shark’s UNLV team and Rick Majeuis’ Utah team were major programs when Greg Anthony and Tim Frost transferred. Anthony was on an ncaa championship and a couple final four teams. Maneras likewise took his team to the final four.

There was no power 5 when those guys played.

Ray Scott’s next stop after his one year at Portland was the Detroit Pistons, which can be considered  a major program.

Ten winners & losers through the first month of the transfer portal...from Mid-Major Madness.

Yes, UP is a winner!

https://www.midmajormadness.com/2022/5/5/23056763/ten-winners-losers-through-the-first-month-of-the-transfer-portal