Crazy thing about sports, your highlights always look good, but who are you going up against? A kid playing in the ACC who is a bench warmer, not doing much…..if he was playing in the BigWest against Idaho State or whoever might look like LeBron! My daughter who plays in the WCC, but these past two seasons played against Stanford,UCLA,LSU,Georgia and a ton of top programs….. she got hers and is thriving. But has a friend who couldn’t even get off her HS and Club bench onto the field when they were younger, is playing at a D3 and looks like fucking Messi. There are some that it doesn’t matter, like Dame and Curry in college, but I always take highlight packs with a grain of salt. This had nothing to do with the highlights you just shared, just popped into my mind.
Hey! I was just about to post that story. Kid didn't even start on his HS team, barely found a college, then he got in shape....Who knows if he will even be drafted but 30 NBA scouts have gone to see him. This link might work better if you are having trouble with Rasta's: https://web.archive.org/web/2025021...top-college-basketball-freshmen-blake-harper/
This sounds too good to be true, and in fact he had never dunked before he got to college! - but what the coaching staff did was make him burn off the puppy fat in the Summer. Shades of Marc Gasol/Jokic? Or, because he's only 6'8", maybe Jared Dudley? Remember that Ja Morant also went to a HBCU and he turned out okay...
It's a different time. Dude can be big man on campus and get paid to do so. I think he still goes to the NBA but I wouldn't be shocked if he stayed if the $$$ is right.
The highest paid NCAA athlete was Shedeur Sanders this last year and he was making 5.1M, the highest paid basketball player was making under 2M. So 13M next season for the first pick in the NBA plus what he would get from sponsors just isn't going to be touched by NIL money. Plus he's delaying his big payday of that first extension. I haven't seen NIL stop the one and done system for the top prospects and I don't expect it to... at least not in it's current iteration.
I liked Sommerville also. Bailey made one nice play and that was it. Harper looked better but not much. Bear in mind, I am the guy who watched Holmgren vs. Banchero in a game once and said neither impressed me.
It just goes to show, that even with two future NBA stars on the team (according to the "draft experts") how average a team can be, and how average the players can look in college. Just think how much harder it will be their rookie year against NBA talent. (or even summer league talent) Of course that has nothing to do with their projected NBA future.
I was expecting more from both players. bet player on the court hands down imo, was the West Linn kid. But he's short.
Hopefully, because of his height, Shelstad will stay 2 more years at Oregon. Hopefully, he can make the NBA as a backup. He is very quick and has skills.
The mock draft for the year that is issued before the start of the college year is very rarely anything like the actual draft. Ask Isaiah Collier, for one recent instance.
Not sure if I'm understanding correctly, but Ace and Dylan are still firmly consensus top 3-4 guys. Collier was not at this point in his draft cycle.
Still a big fan of Kon Knueppel. He's like the shooting guard version of Payton Pritchard but better at the same age. I think he'd be a very nice fit with us too. He's a mixed bag defensively but he competes, smart and his lateral quickness and strength combination gives him some nice value in a 1-4 switch scheme which we like to play. I see a guy that can efficient on 18-22% usage and be used in a variety of play types....motion shooting sets, hand offs, run some pnr and just overall be a really nice connecting piece offensively with his dribble-pass-shoot skill set.
