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This would be the topper to what could turn out to be an excellent offseason. Would erase the only negative of the offseason and when you combine that with the added players from the portal we look like a really good team on paper.

I would welcome him back with open arms.

Here’s hoping!

If/when Lawrence returns I would say we improved through the portal. We lost some fan favorites in QMB and Jordan Wright but we should get a lot more production in our new bigs. Evan Taylor should certainly shoot the ball better than Stute or Trey this season. Our biggest loss was Liam who ran out of eligibility. The newest addition should provide some of Liam’s outside shooting and some screens that Q provided.

I see Ezra as the unquestioned leader of the team and Tyrin as an all sec caliber player. The portal has taught us patience. In the end I think we will have a better roster next season.

Obvious wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 8:17 pm If/when Lawrence returns I would say we improved through the portal. We lost some fan favorites in QMB and Jordan Wright but we should get a lot more production in our new bigs. Evan Taylor should certainly shoot the ball better than Stute or Trey this season. Our biggest loss was Liam who ran out of eligibility. The newest addition should provide some of Liam’s outside shooting and some screens that Q provided.

I see Ezra as the unquestioned leader of the team and Tyrin as an all sec caliber player. The portal has taught us patience. In the end I think we will have a better roster next season.

This is what I wrote about our situation on April 5th, after Lawrence had declared for the draft and before anyone had been added:

https://14powers.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 65#p196665

What has happened is pretty close to what I would have hoped would happen, if Lawrence returns. The roster even without Lawrence is probably better than it was when the season ended last year. With Lawrence and it is probably better than at any point last season and the most talent and depth that CJS has ever had. The portal has allowed CJS to erase any recruiting misses and come away with a full roster that has very experienced players to go with talented youngsters. Yes we lost Robbins, but he played fewer minutes than Stute, QMB or Thomas, so on the whole our team should be better, and could be better by a pretty good margin.

Now hopefully CJS can get this team with so many players to gel....tough to give PT to keep everyone happy.

Nashmann wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 10:41 pm Now hopefully CJS can get this team with so many players to gel....tough to give PT to keep everyone happy.

Well, that's why we'll have more transfers again next year. I just hope they're the "right transfers". This year I felt like we lost a few guys I sort of wanted to keep.

Jason94 wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 7:46 pm https://247sports.com/PlayerInstitution ... edictions/

This would be the topper to what could turn out to be an excellent offseason. Would erase the only negative of the offseason and when you combine that with the added players from the portal we look like a really good team on paper.

maybe tyrin hasn't read some of the disparaging remarks about him on this board.....?

Jason94 wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 7:46 pm https://247sports.com/PlayerInstitution ... edictions/

This would be the topper to what could turn out to be an excellent offseason. Would erase the only negative of the offseason and when you combine that with the added players from the portal we look like a really good team on paper.

Note that Weinstein correctly predicted Lubin to Vanderbilt just last week.

I'm just thrilled that we where able to pony up the money to put forth a competitive NIL offer for Tyrin, that in itself is a huge deal and frankly I had my doubts that we would do that. Well done!

We also need to schedule a few more cupcakes to give freshmen playing time. Last year’s schedule had a lot of competitive opponents - and relatively few “breathers” & one of the breathers beat us & several others almost beat us…

I hope we will have a couple of cakewalks early to allow young guys to get sealers - and new combinations to gel.

Until I see an announcement from the school, I'm not getting my hopes up. College athletics in 2023 requires a whole new set of expectations.

I really, really hope he comes back too, but I have a question:

If he didn't remain a student in "good academic standing" -- or whatever it is called -- during the last 2 months, can he come back?

Or did he manage to remain a student in "good academic standing" during all the travel and tryouts of the last 2 months?

I have a feeling this is not a concern at 13 of the 14 SEC schools. But as we have learned over and over and over again over the years, Vanderbilt is not the rest of the SEC.

I understood that Turin and Stackhouse were close. I wonder if Stackhouse was advising him that if the NBA didn’t work out, how to to leverage the transfer portal to maximize his NIL money from Vandy.

Dsdore wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 11:38 am I understood that Turin and Stackhouse were close. I wonder if Stackhouse was advising him that if the NBA didn’t work out, how to to leverage the transfer portal to maximize his NIL money from Vandy.

Yep. I speculated that a while back, too. Really hope we hear an official announcement soon.

roanoke wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 10:36 am We also need to schedule a few more cupcakes to give freshmen playing time. Last year’s schedule had a lot of competitive opponents - and relatively few “breathers” & one of the breathers beat us & several others almost beat us…

I hope we will have a couple of cakewalks early to allow young guys to get sealers - and new combinations to gel.

The breather we lost was at exam time: hope we learned not to schedule a game night before finals.

charlestonalum wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 12:28 pm

roanoke wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 10:36 am We also need to schedule a few more cupcakes to give freshmen playing time. Last year’s schedule had a lot of competitive opponents - and relatively few “breathers” & one of the breathers beat us & several others almost beat us…

I hope we will have a couple of cakewalks early to allow young guys to get sealers - and new combinations to gel.

The breather we lost was at exam time: hope we learned not to schedule a game night before finals.

I don't think it is that - we played a game two nights previous to that when the guys were in the thick of exams and beat Pitt - it seems implausible that the end of exams would cause so much stress that two days prior were not there.

roanoke wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 10:36 am We also need to schedule a few more cupcakes to give freshmen playing time. Last year’s schedule had a lot of competitive opponents - and relatively few “breathers” & one of the breathers beat us & several others almost beat us…

I hope we will have a couple of cakewalks early to allow young guys to get sealers - and new combinations to gel.

I think our OOC schedule was somewhat challenging, but it wasn't murderers row. It was quite appropriate for the level of experience we had returning. Of the 13 games there were 5 gimmies - Morehead, Grambling, Wofford, Bama A&M and SELA. There were 6 challenging games - Memphis, at VCU, NCSU, St. Mary's, Pitt, and at Temple. The other two were mildly difficult but both games that we were multi possession favorites - Fresno St. and So Miss. The issue we had is that we went 4-1 in the gimmies, 2-4 in the challenging games, and 1-1 in the games we should have won but not by blowout margins. Given the talent on the roster there really isn't a reason why we shouldn't have gone 5-0 in the first group, 3-3 in the second group, and 2-0 in the third group, giving us a tidy 10-3 OOC record, which would have put us in the tournament. While 5 of the 6 teams in the middle group made the tournament, they were a 5 seed, 8 seed, 11 seed, 11 seed and a 12 seed. A tournament team should go 3-3 against that lineup.

We might consider going easier this season simply because so many of the players hadn't played together previously, which is something we didn't really have last season, as 6 of our top 8 guys were returners at the start of the season.

No reason not to schedule easier. The selection committee confirmed that this year. Beating cupcakes was more important than playing a reasonably challenging OOC schedule.

UltimateVUFan wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 4:03 pm No reason not to schedule easier. The selection committee confirmed that this year. Beating cupcakes was more important than playing a reasonably challenging OOC schedule.

That is not what they confirmed. What they confirmed is that how you play in November and December matters as much as how you are playing in March. If we play a weak schedule like we played this past season, we still miss the tournament, because our issue was we played poorly against both good and bad teams.

Are you seriously arguing that we played well in the OOC schedule but just scheduled too difficult? Did you actually watch any of those games? For all the complaining about the committee, I've yet to hear a convincing argument that we played well in Nov and Dec. And how you play during those months are not irrelevant as UConn showed.