^Word. Good stuff on Mav. Hopefully he gets his speed up.

This Markell Johnson commitment impresses me more than any of the others. Gott essentially had to convince a top-10 rated PG to come play behind another freshman PG. Sure, Smith will probably be a one-and-one, but there's no guarantee things work out that way. Just ask Malik Newman.


[Edited on June 21, 2016 at 2:04 PM. Reason : ]

6/21/2016 2:03:41 PM

You can easily play 2pgs at the same time. Especially if one is a pro. Its hard to think of a successful team that didnt do that.

6/21/2016 2:21:59 PM

Well Johnson can play the 2 as well, so he could get some time at both this year depending on what we need and how ready to play he is.

Says he models his game after Westbrook and averaged 30+ ppg in AAU, so if we threw DSJ and Markell out there we'd have 2 ball-handlers that can score/create.

6/21/2016 2:46:19 PM

Quote :

"Gott essentially had to convince a top-10 rated PG"

So first, I think of the major services, only espn has him to play 10.

2nd, I think some of his rankings were based on projections for his senior year, so he may not be ready for much PT this year. I think anything he gives us is gravy, but the biggest plus is he will be here for the 2017 season.

6/21/2016 3:39:36 PM

lol you guys complaining about a 4 star. smh.

6/21/2016 4:28:53 PM

^what he said. Look forward to seeing what this kid can do. Athletic as hell.

6/21/2016 4:41:55 PM

Quote :

"lol you guys complaining about a 4 star. smh."

That's not really happening imo

6/21/2016 4:46:35 PM

Quote :

"any guesses where we'll fall in the pre-season rankings?"

borderline top 25 would be my guess.

and in regards to the "mav grew a couple inches" stuff...i don't know, i haven't seen the guy...but how many guys are still getting significantly taller at 19 (hell, he'll be 20 by the season's start)? i kinda don't know if i buy that too much. of course i'd love for it to be true.

6/21/2016 5:16:21 PM

Mav has tremendous potential - gotta remember he left high school early to play for us and was thrust in as a starter in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Also, I don't know why people on this board act like we don't want to be ranked (even pre-season). Whether it's hype or not, it gets us noticed by recruits at a minimum. I like being bench marked against other programs nationally.

6/21/2016 5:26:58 PM

Gotta remember that he turns 20 next month. He left high school a year late.

6/21/2016 5:33:52 PM

JIC the above poster was referencing me, I was by no means complaining, just attempting to tamp expectations.

I think Markell is a great get, especially in June m

6/21/2016 5:42:50 PM

Quote :

"Also, I don't know why people on this board act like we don't want to be ranked (even pre-season). "

it's a mentality that some fans have of "we play better as the underdog". that's a shitty mentality. if we, as a program, want to take the next step to becoming a not-bubble team and a regular top 25 team we, as fans, are gonna have to quit being scared of people predicting us to be good. saying "i'd rather fly under the radar" is a losers mentality. i understand the sentiment. but fuck that.

6/21/2016 6:31:22 PM

I think some believe that when we are pre-season ranked we just coast through our games and not put forth our best effort. OK ST is a good example of that when we were #6.

6/21/2016 7:07:42 PM

^yeah we've fallen on our faces in the past. i get people enjoying the role of underdog. but i'd also argue that OK ST was actually just better than us that year. we were pretty badly overrated, i honestly don't even know if many State fans thought we were actually a top 10 team back then.

6/21/2016 7:23:22 PM

i could see us receiving votes, but unlikely a top 25 ranking.

6/21/2016 8:05:15 PM

Depends 100% on when/if the big European qualifies

6/21/2016 8:47:31 PM

Quote :

"Yeah Kapita should have been in the 2015 class but didn't make the test scores needed so he did a year in a prep school. So he should be a year older than Hicks and a little more physically prepared to play college ball. "

ah, gotcha. knew Kapita did a prep year but didn't realize he was rated a 4* by everyone BUT scout since that's the only profile I had bothered to look at so far. trying to not get my hopes up on him or Newman no matter how much people are saying we have a good shot with them, but man, it'd be nice to (presumably) be able to start the 17-18 year with Newman, Johnson, Dorn, Rowan, Kapita, Freeman, Hicks, Kirk + whoever else doesn't declare or transfer

6/21/2016 11:55:34 PM

Quote :

"saying "i'd rather fly under the radar" is a losers mentality. i understand the sentiment. but fuck that."

What was the last season we ended >= our preseason Top 25 rank?

[Edited on June 22, 2016 at 12:04 AM. Reason : Feel free to provide the x/y ratio from the last 30 years while you're at it]

6/22/2016 12:00:21 AM

Id love a graphic

6/22/2016 12:05:38 AM

Not x/y tho. Superimposed bar graphs would be most appropriate. So you can see the little bars representimg our final rank each season

6/22/2016 3:43:27 AM

03-04 we were 24 in the preseason AP poll and finished 20 in the USA today coaches poll..

6/22/2016 6:30:19 AM

Quote :

"What was the last season we ended >= our preseason Top 25 rank?"

we have a history of some teams not living up to expectations...i get that. i just mean that acting like there's some curse that is going to prevent us from being good if we have higher expectations is silly. how many times have we had a pre-season top 25 ranking recently? Gott's second year and Lowe's second year, maybe? that's twice in about 10 years. It's not too hard to understand that we've not been a consistent top 25 basketball team in a long time because we've lacked depth, or talent, or had injuries, some combination of those....so we've only garnered a couple of pre-season rankings and we fell on our face. it's not because our team (spanning different players, even different coaches) is incapable of living up to expectations and shits their pants when we get a ranked. it's more likely because those teams were over-rated and simply not as good as they were hyped to be. i'm not trying to call you or anybody else out...i just think the idea that "don't rank us, it'll jinx us" is sorta a lame mentality to have. embrace people thinking we might be good - that said, i actually haven't seen any pre-season polls or anything so who knows what people might be projecting for us.

hindsight may make this question harder to answer - but did we actually think we were #6 in the nation going into Gott's second year? like, as fans were we really buying that? could totally be revisionist history on my part, but i don't recall much of the fanbase thinking we were quite that good. don't get me wrong, expectations were high. but were they honestly that high from the fanbase?

[Edited on June 22, 2016 at 7:35 AM. Reason : f]

6/22/2016 7:32:57 AM

Quote :

"Gotta remember that he turns 20 next month. He left high school a year late. "

What matters is how long he's been playing against college level competition and been in college level (basically professional level these days) weightlifting and nutrition programs.

He didn't even have a summer to get acclimated to college life, practice with the team, or even get in shape. He still had baby fat when he stepped on the court for us. He was gassed by mid-season and had way too much thrown on his plate for a guy who was taking summer high school classes two months before the season started. He averaged more minutes a game then guys like Brice Johnson and Marcus Paige.

Rowan is a fucking baller. With a year of strength and conditioning and going against guys like Henderson and Dorn in practice everyday (and I guess the Martin twins before that)...he's going to be a beast next year.

6/22/2016 7:47:42 AM

^agreed

Quote :

"it's a mentality that some fans have of "we play better as the underdog". that's a shitty mentality. if we, as a program, want to take the next step to becoming a not-bubble team and a regular top 25 team we, as fans, are gonna have to quit being scared of people predicting us to be good. saying "i'd rather fly under the radar" is a losers mentality. i understand the sentiment. but fuck that."

also agree. not wanting to be ranked pre-season is silly. I understand not wanting to be overhyped, but hopefully our coaches and players know to ignore that distraction.

6/22/2016 9:02:20 AM

Quote :

"I understand not wanting to be overhyped, but hopefully our coaches and players know to ignore that distraction."

I think the fear comes from the fact that our coaches and players have clearly demonstrated that they have no idea how to ignore the distraction given that we shit the bed everytime we start getting any national attention.

6/22/2016 10:00:04 AM

I kinda doubt that has much if anything to do with the national attention

[Edited on June 22, 2016 at 10:08 AM. Reason : it's the curse!!!1]

6/22/2016 10:08:38 AM

Obviously Gott reads every single press clipping to the team before practice. Maybe he should spend more time teaching defense and properly blocking shots so they only go to our team.

6/22/2016 11:55:49 AM

Our fans are the only ones who can't handle preseason expectations, apparently.

6/22/2016 12:03:11 PM

Agreed our teams seem to excel when saddled with said expectations.

[Edited on June 22, 2016 at 12:05 PM. Reason : Fans need to get in line!]

6/22/2016 12:05:24 PM

that time that we were grossly overrated in the preseason and media and fans underestimated the loss of senior leadership and put too much emphasis on a strong finish the prior season despite the team barely making the NCAAT to begin with = our program, coaches, players, and fans and simply inherently unable to handle expectations.

6/22/2016 12:25:10 PM

I mean, do you really think the team would have had a better season if they weren't ranked 6th preseason?

Or maybe it just gave unrealistic expectations to the fans who were then disappointed when they didn't achieve those expectations?

6/22/2016 12:35:25 PM

right. pre-season polls are generally a crap shoot. we have had a couple instances where we were ranked highly and didn't perform to that level. but that doesn't mean the program is incapable of ever living up to higher expectations. it just means the pre-season polls were wrong.

seriously...i'm thinking of 2 examples in the last ~10 years. lowe's second year and gott's second year. lowe's entire tenure was a shit show, he left as one of the worst coaches in acc history. so yeah...pre-season pollsters (and fans) put too much stock into a solid ACCT run and a couple NIT wins + a top recruit coming in. but that team had Javi Gonzalez, Farnold Degand, and Marques Johnson trying to run the point...you tell me why that team failed. was it because of lofty pre-season expectations? or was it because the team had a shitty coach and turnover machines at point guard and likely had chemistry issues (not stemming from pre-season polls)?

or let's look at gott's second year. that team lost a veteran leader in cj williams, and while alex johnson was only on the team a year, i think his veteran role went unfilled the following year as well. that team also lacked depth at center. howell was a beast but was the world's worst for getting into foul trouble. cj leslie was consistently inconsistent his entire career...this year being no different. freshmen rodney purvis was ok, but probably not as great as we had hoped he would be...same goes for tyler lewis and both of those guys were called on to run the point when Zo was hurt for a period of time. that team and returning players didn't take the step forward that folks were projecting they would following the late season run that squeaked us into the NCAAT. that team finished 34 in kenpom, comapred to 44 the year prior. and was solidly in the NCAAT with an 8 seed...not as high as we had hoped/wanted, but not a bubble team like the year before. blame gott for not further developing CJL, or blame Purvis for not being as good as we assumed, or whatever other issues you wanna bring up with that team. but it wasn't some curse or big-headedness of being ranked pre-season that prevented that team from being better.

6/22/2016 1:11:43 PM

Quote :

"Obviously Gott reads every single press clipping to the team before practice. Maybe he should spend more time teaching defense and properly blocking shots so they only go to our team."

I heard he's really working on his clutchness coaching. Should really help us deal with preseason rankings

6/22/2016 2:13:02 PM

He better be working on those block deflection angles too!

6/22/2016 2:29:31 PM

Or at least start requiring his players to actually practice shooting free-throws, at least a little!

6/22/2016 2:30:49 PM

Inorite how hard would that be???

6/22/2016 2:31:40 PM

dmspack laying down some truth ITT.

regardless of how we perform, being ranked preseason helps sell season tickets and (presumably) get more butts in the seats. recruits don't want to play for us when they come to a game and there's nobody there. I know I bought season tickets that I could barely afford when we were preseason #6. NC State has been a great spoiler and we have the greatest underdog story of all time but we've gotta adopt a winner mentality.

also, I really hope these assistants will help with the glaring problems on defense. hopefully they also played key roles in getting this last string of commits.

6/22/2016 3:53:50 PM

this recent string of commits does have me very excited about basketball season. i don't know what to expect (and maybe this is a conversation better suited for the season thread) since so many of these guys are new to State. this team is really entirely different from last year's team, yet we are all hopeful for a strong season...which is kinda weird. usually expectations are raised when the team returns a lot of talent + brings in a lot of talent. we return a little but bring in a lot...and some of what we're bringing in isn't inexperienced, which is nice. Dorn has experience, but we haven't seen him at State. other than ~10 mins, same goes for Henderson. DSJ is obviously one of the best incoming freshmen in the nation, and he's been on campus for a while so that can only be a positive. Yurtseven will be exciting to watch. then we've got known guys like Abu, Mav, and Beejay.

this will be Gott's deepest team by far at State. he's pretty consistently had a 7-8 man rotation throughout his time here. whether that's by choice or necessity, i'm unsure. but we'll be able to legitimately go 10 deep if Gott chooses. in terms of scoring, i think we can expect something like Gott's first year or two where 5 guys averaged 10+ ppg, but nobody was dropping 25 ppg like TJW or Cat. scoring should be very balanced.

6/22/2016 5:16:16 PM

yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see us still have an 8 or 9 man rotation by the thick of ACC season though (with Kirk and/or Hicks getting largely left out, depending on how prepared they are this year). Hoping I am underestimating them both, though. To me, the most interesting part will be how Gott employs different combinations of guys on the court. Hopefully we'll have a lot of varying lineups based on who's hot/not, who we're playing, game situation, etc.

rumors are that Miami has backed off Newman or vice versa but he's supposed to be visiting Oregon this weekend (hadn't heard anything about them before), per Zagoria. it sounds like we are still looking pretty good since Kansas isn't really pursuing him right now... before the Oregon visit was mentioned, it seemed like he was down to us and Western Kentucky. hoping he's just taking his last couple free visits for fun at this point, but who knows.

[Edited on June 22, 2016 at 11:32 PM. Reason : ]

6/22/2016 11:29:18 PM

Kirk is the most fun player to watch at marks camp this week, so he leaps out of the gym like it said when we recruited him. So that leads me to wonder are we just that much worse than the other teams we play or has he grown a little?

6/23/2016 2:52:28 AM

^ What does that even mean?

6/23/2016 7:50:17 AM

i think he is saying: kirk looks extremely athletic (the most athletic guy on the team), why isn't he playing more and competing at a high level against other acc teams? Is our team just that much worse than other acc teams?

6/23/2016 8:45:44 AM

Because being able to jump high does not mean you are a good basketball player?

6/23/2016 8:52:48 AM

I think he's saying Kirk is going to throw down some Javoni-esque slams during Battle Cannon time.

6/23/2016 8:54:18 AM

I think he's drunk.

6/23/2016 8:59:03 AM

That's a given.

6/23/2016 8:59:44 AM

Kirk would avg 20+ ppg if gott would just make the decision to revolve the offense around throwing him alley oops.

6/23/2016 9:07:48 AM

Kirk was terrible and will continue to be terrible.

6/23/2016 11:05:49 AM

^
Analysis

6/23/2016 11:35:45 AM

kirk = the new jevoni?

6/23/2016 11:36:40 AM