Remember All Those Guys the Gophers Almost Signed? How they Doing?

Remember how exciting last year was recruiting wise, what with the Gophers making so many top 10 lists and top 5 lists only to pretty much not ever sign anybody?  Yeah, I was wondering how every's doing so far this year.  Keep in mind it's awfully early in most of these guys' careers.  All rankings from 247sports.

PG Tyus Jones (Apple Valley, MN)
247 Rank:  #8 overall, #2 PG
Commit:  Duke
Close?:  Not really
Bummer?:  Not really, it was known
Season Stats:  11.3 points and 5.3 assists in 31.5 minutes.
Outlook:  He's basically been everything everyone said he would be.  Maybe the only point guard the Gophers looked at last year who has a clearly brighter future than Nate Mason.  He should die.

PG Ja'Quan Newton (Philadelphia, PA)
247 Rank:  #42 overall, #7 PG
Commit:  Miami (FL)
Close?:  Maybe?
Bummer:  He jumped on a Miami offer so quickly it was hard to get too excited.  Still, kind of a bummer.
Season Stats:  3.5 points and 1.3 assists in 12 minutes.
Outlook:  Typical freshman point guard line so far, and his shooting has been pretty bad (not rare for a freshman).  Having Angel Rodriguez there (transfer from Kansas State) has really cut his potential minutes down.

PG Lourawls Nairn (Wichita, KS)
247 Rank:  #85 overall, #17 PG
Commit:  Michigan State
Close?:  Yes, until Izzo got involved.
Bummer?:  Yes.  After a whole bunch of misses he looked like he might be the big time recruit Pitino would finally sign.  Then Tom Izzo called.
Season Stats:  2.0 points and 2.5 assists in 16.7 minutes.
Outlook:  I was surprised his minutes are this high because I rarely notice him when I watch the Spartans, but that's probably pretty much what Izzo wants on a team with Travis Trice, Denzel Valentine, and Branden Dawson.  His 2.5-to-0.9 assist to turnover ratio is nice for a freshman.  Interested to see if he can add any offense next year, since he pretty much never shoots.

SG Riley LaChance (Brookfield, WI)
247 Rank:  #133 overall, #34 PG
Commit:  Vanderbilt
Close?:  At least somewhat.
Bummer?:  Not really.  Just as his buzz was starting to build he suddenly committed to Vandy.
Season Stats:  12.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.6 assists in 33.3 minutes.
Outlook:  Basically a starter from day 1 and looking like a pretty big recruiting steal for Vandy.  He's the team's second leading scorer, has hit double figures in 17 of 23 games this year, gashed Purdue for 26 points, and is hitting 40% of his threes.  Maybe wasn't a bummer to lose out on at the time, but he sure is now.

SG Rashad Vaughn (Henderson, NV)
247 Rank:  #13 overall, #5 SG
Commit:  UNLV
Close?:  Not really
Bummer?:  Yeah, but we knew it was coming, particularly after the move to Nevada.
Season Stats:  17.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in 32.2 minutes.
Outlook:  Dude loves to shoot.  He takes 33% of the Rebs shots when he's on the floor and hits a respectable enough 44%.  The one and done looks like it's not going to happen (hopefully for the kid) since NBADraft.net ranks him 65th and DraftExpress ranks him 37th (14th among freshman), but he's definitely a talented kid.  Another year in college should help polish his game and can only help.

SG Isaiah Whitehead (Brooklyn, NY)
247 Rank:  #10 overall, #3 SG
Commit:  Seton Hall
Close?:  Painfully close.  Close enough I watched his press conference hopefully until twitter broke the news.
Bummer?:  Extreme bummer.  Would have made a huge national splash, and it seemed like they were so close until the Pirates offered his high school coach an assistant coaching gig.  Sucked.
Season Stats:  11.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 3.1 assists in 25.3 minutes
Outlook:  Good bet he's the Big East freshman of the year.  He's extremely polished, as advertised, and though he's shooting just 37% this year it's a good bet he's going to challenge for BE player of the year before his career his over.  Yeah, this one hurts.

SG J.P. Macura (Lakeville, MN)
247 Rank:  #136 overall, #36 SG
Commit:  Xavier
Close?:  Tough to say, it was never really clear what the interest level was from either side.
Bummer?:  Moreso now than then.  Pitino had a lot of fires going and J.P. was lower priority, so he decided Xavier was more for him.  After the whiffs on higher profile targets (so many whiffs) maybe making him a higher priority would have been the way to go.  Hindsight, and all that.
Season Stats:  6 points and 1.5 rebounds in 13.9 minutes.
Outlook:  His shooting has been pretty bad which isn't good when it's your #1 skill, but again, not unusual for a freshman.  He's been coming on lately with 21 and 25 minutes played in X's last two games, and is starting to look like a quality four year player.  I understand why Pitino didn't go hard after him early in the signing period, but man, it'd be nice to have a second young building block beyond Nate Mason right now.

SF Terry Larrier (Malvern, PA)
247 Rank:  #23 overall, #4 SF
Commit:  VCU
Close?:  Not really
Bummer?:  Not really.  It was actually pretty exciting knowing a top 25 recruit from the east coast was considering the Gophers.  Signaled a whole new recruiting world.  Of pain.  So far.
Season Stats:  7.0 points and 2.0 rebounds in 17.4 minutes
Outlook:  Pretty good freshman numbers though, stop me if you've heard this before, his shooting kind of stinks at under 40%.  Still, coming into a system like VCU's and grasping it as a freshman well enough to play 17 minutes per game speaks well of his future.  No big whoop, since I don't think he was really ever close to signing with the Gophers.

PF Reid Travis (Minneapolis, MN)
247 Rank:  #49 overall, #10 PF
Commit:  Stanford
Close?:  Agonizingly close.
Bummer?:  Hurt so bad.  Came right down to the wire and all reports the night before his press conference were that it was looking like the Gophers.  Something changed.  Still hurts, especially because I don't even think Stanford fans cared.
Season Stats:  6.7 points and 6.0 rebounds in 23.6 minutes
Outlook:  Ugh.  Look at those rebounds.  His season got derailed a bit with a foot injury where he missed about a month and he's just now starting to get back into the swing of things, but leading a major conference team in rebounding as a freshman (pre-injury he as at 6.9 and the team leader)?  Playing those kind of minutes on a team with a pretty solid frontcourt already?  Gross.  I kind of wish I hadn't done this now, or at least skipped this one.

SF Djuan Piper (Seattle, WA)
247 Rank:  #153 overall, #36 SF
Commit:  North Idaho College
Close?:  Uh.  Yeah.  He was basically all ready to commit and then stupid academics got in the way.
Bummer?:  Yeah.  It was pretty late in the recruiting game at this point and the Gophers were hopefully about to get a decent player late.
Season Stats:  I can't find anything, but he's often mentioned in game recaps and there are pictures of him playing and stuff.
Outlook:  Tough to say when I can't find tangible stats.  The impression I got from looking for nearly five minutes is that, at a minimum, he's a rotation player, and Idaho is, believe or not, a pretty good JuCo hoops area so that's good.  I also found a reference to him being suspended for at least one game, so that's bad.  Stay tuned.

PF Abdoulaye Gueye (Birmingham, AL)
247 Rank:  #301 overall, #77 PF
Commit:  Georgia Tech
Close?:  I think this was a case of Gueye willing to commit, but the Gophers holding him off and then he went elsewhere.
Bummer?:  No.  He was always more of a back-up plan, or at least that's the vibe I got.
Season Stats:  0.3 points and 0.7 rebounds in 3 minutes per game.
Outlook:  He's only played 6 games this year and has only a total of 18 minutes played (what, no redshirts at G-Tech?).  It doesn't bode well that he couldn't get more PT than that at Georgia Tech, but who knows what the future holds?

C Anas Mahmoud (Orlando, FL)
247 Rank:  #87 overall, #9 C
Commit:  Louisville
Close?:  Maybe?  They were at least in the mix.
Bummer?:  Kind of.  Everything happened so fast there was no real build up time to the heartbreak, plus losing out on him to Louisville is kind of like supposed to happen once they're involved.
Season Stats:  1.2 points and 1.9 rebounds in 9.7 minutes
Outlook:  Had a brief burst of consistent playing time in the non-conference, but he's seen that trail off to spot duty and he hasn't broken the 10 minute mark in playing time since Louisville's first ACC game in early January.  Clearly, Rick Pitino doesn't know how to properly use him and he should look to transfer somewhere he already felt comfortable when he visited and has a desperate need for post players. (TRANSFER TRANSFER TRANSFER!  FREE ANAS!)


And then there's a handful of players who were once Gophers (on some level) who left:

SG Alvin Ellis
Who?:  Gophers signee of Tubby, transferred after the coaching change, although rumor was he would have stayed if anybody had bothered to talk to him.
Where?:  Michigan State
Class?:  Sophomore
Season Stats:  1.5 points and 0.6 assists in 9.4 minutes
Summary:  His stats are actually worse than his freshman year, mainly due to his inability to make a basket (6-30 shooting this year).  I haven't noticed him when I've taken in a Spartan game so I don't know if he's overmatched, but his 2-year results don't look good.

PF Alex Foster
Who?:  Gophers signee of Tubby, transferred after the coaching change.  Seemingly made his college choice based on playing for Tubby.
Where?:  Texas Tech
Class?:  Sophomore
Season Stats:  1.1 points and 0.9 rebounds in 6.3 minutes
Summary:  He's basically completely failed to crack the rotation in two seasons in Lubbock, and this for teams that have gone 14-18 and 12-13.  Tubby's playing a deep bench this year with 10 guys averaging at least 10 minutes per game, and Foster not being one of them is not a real good sign for the future.

SF Joe Coleman
Who?:  You remember him.  Played two decent, if uneven, seasons for the Gophers before bolting when Richard Pitino got hired, even though Pitino's system probably would have been really good for him.
Where?:  St. Mary's
Class?:  Junior
Season Stats:  3.0 points and 1.0 rebounds in 14 minutes
Summary:  Played in one game for the Gaels before a leg injury caused him to shut it down.  I seriously can't find any more information on him than "leg injury."  Hopefully it's not too serious and he'll get two more years as a Gael to show the world what he can do.

SG Chip Armelin
Who?:  The hyper athletic, somewhat wild but deserved more of a chance shooting guard who played for Tubby for two years before transferring to get more playing time.  Yes he's still around.
Where?:  Southern Miss
Class?:  Senior
Season Stats:  15.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in 34.3 minutes
Summary:  He's having a fantastic senior season, leading the Golden Eagles in scoring.  Southern Miss had a pretty solid year for them last year before being bested by the Gophers in the NIT quarters, and with their five top players graduating there was going to be a scoring void, which Armelin stepped into admirably.  Of course, Southern Miss is 6-16 and 1-10 in a terrible C-USA and recently self-imposed a postseason ban (lol) because of questions around former coach Donnie Tyndall's recruiting practices.  Nice to see him have some personal success though.  I always liked him.


Also Better Call Saul has been awesome so far.

Welcome aboard, Malik Smith

Because apparently Coach Pitino doesn't believe in every slowing down, there's even more Gopher news to report in this weird last 24 hours with Malik Smith transferring from FIU to join his former coach with the Gophers.  Smith is a true chucker who does very little else, but is a good athlete and is familiar with the system Pitino runs in which he did manage to average 14 points per game last year while shooting 36%. 

The hope is that Smith's game will be able to fit next to the other pieces the Gophers have so that rather than be the guy who has to carry the entire team's offense he's merely another cog in the great magnificent machine and his percentages and efficiency should go up, and hopefully he'll consider an assist here and there and maybe even grab a rebound if it bounces right to him.  One would think he could at least play some defense considering FIU was one of the best in the country at forcing turnovers last year, but he had the 2nd worst steal percentage on the team, a number that was only higher than Mo Walker and Elliot Eliason among Gophers last year. 

I realize this probably makes me sound like I'm pretty down on this, and maybe I am a bit, but not completely.  Smith is a scorer, pure and simple, and those don't grow on trees (I don't believe) so picking up a guy who can put the ball in the basket and is aggressive with it to join a team who was an offensive mess last year is probably a positive move.  His efficiency wasn't terrible last year despite the poor shooting percentage, and if he can take on a more complimentary role both of those should go up since in theory he won't be needed to jack up a ton of shots.  I do have concerns that he can't modify his behavior, as well as wondering if he'll be effective against better competition (FIU played Louisville and nobody else at all last year), but those things are for the coach to figure out.

Since Smith is a senior he only has one year left to play and he is supposed to be eligible right away so there's no waiting involved and another scholarship will be open for 2014.  Basically Pitino traded Joe Coleman for Smith and an additional scholarship that year.  He's clearly come in and decided to rebrand this team as his own and obviously his guy Smith fits his vision better than Coleman so he made the swap (no, I haven't seen anything definitive but the pieces and timing fit).  No doubt this move will probably rub some people the wrong way, just as letting Coleman go (meaning no more Minnesota born players are on the roster) will rub some the wrong way.  Me?  I was a fan of the hire from the get go and so naturally I believe in Pitino and generally support what he's done thus far, including jettisoning Tubby's recruits for next season and bringing in his own guys (by the way, Alex Foster is following Tubby to Texas Tech).  This move - the Coleman for Smith swap - however, has me feeling a bit unsure.  I liked Coleman's potential within the system Pitino was going to install.  Hopefully I love Smith.

These MLB Playoffs are Pretty Neat, Guys (+ new Gopher BBall Commit)

Taking a break from the NCAA Hoops Previews to weight on on the baseball playoffs, an awesome collection of series so far.  I'm enjoying the hell out of this, and it helps that I have a ton of money down on futures (Tigers to win AL, Cards to win both NL and World Series not to mention loads of props on every game).  Seriously, it would be great if there was some kind of player rewards card for people who make way too many bets.

Speaking of, check out this information for more on players reward card.  Before I talk hardball, however, I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that the Gopher hoops team picked up another recruit for 2013 in power forward Alex Foster, joining Alvin Ellis as a future Gopher.  Foster is a 6-8 skinny kid from Chicago who was thought of as one of the best players in Chicago way back when he was in 8th grade, but who has since tailed off a bit and is ranked by ESPN as a middle-of-the-road 3-star recruit (his other offers were from Tennessee and Nebraska, again according to ESPN).  The good news here is that he is super athletic, and with that pedigree (yes back to 8th grade but still) offers considerable upside.  Like Ellis he has been a target of the Gophers for quite some time, which means that even if Tubby isn't signing the greatest players he is at least able to get the guys he really wants to sign here.  Good, not great, signing, but at least things are moving in the right direction again, not to mention setting up a regular pipeline to Chicago (Ellis is also a Chicago kid) can only be a positive.

Also, quick, the reports on my new favorite Gopher Charles Buggs are in from the "Midnight" Madness scrimmage last Friday and by all accounts HE.  IS.  AWESOME.  Led all scorers with 10 pts on 4-4 shooting including 2-2 from 3 and grabbed 2 rebounds, plus was apparently one of the more impressive dunkers in the dunk contest?  Are you kidding me?  He's everything I always knew I always wanted.  I seriously can't wait.  We goin' Sizzla.  

Ok, now on to baseball and I'll start with the Wild Card.  From day one I was in favor of the change to two wild card teams per league with a 1-game playoff and I'm pretty sure I'm right.  I understand the criticisms many people had such as complaining that they were just trying to manufacture drama, that anything random can happen in a 1-game series so it was meaningless, and so on.  But the fact is, winning the Wild Card the last few years was basically the same as winning your division.  Other than not having home field advantage (and one division winner wouldn't have it anyway) and playing the best team (if that team happened to not be from your division) what was the difference?  Basically nil.  Now?  Winning the Wild Card puts you at a drastic disadvantage compared to a division winner because if you get hit with a bad call (Atlanta) or run into a hot pitcher (Texas) you're done.  I think it's awesome and if you don't I hope you get a stomach parasite.

The sucky thing about the Division Series is we lost all the interesting teams.  Only Oakland, Baltimore, Cincy, and Washington haven't been regular playoff fixtures in recent times, and all four lost.  I was glad, actually, to see Washington get bounced just because their decision to shut down Strasburg irked me so irksomely, but I would have loved to see Baltimore, Cincinnati, and/or Oakland advance just because it's more interesting than watching New York and Detroit again.  That being said, how great was it that every single series went the full five games?  And it wasn't just that they went down to sudden death, but how it all happened.  If even one of these scenarios happened this would have been an awesome round of the playoffs:

• St. Louis falls behind 6-0 in the third inning of Game 5 and are down to their final strike twice before rallying for four in the ninth to win their sixth straight elimination game.
• The underdog Orioles refuse to die and push the hated Yankees to the final game with two games going extra innings (back-to-back 12 and 13 inning affairs) and three total one-run games.
• Oakland scares the crap out of Detroit by winning games 3 & 4 after having been down 2-0, leading to Justin Verlander throwing one of the best games in playoff history (in Oakland no less) to advance the Tigers.
• The Giants lose the first two games at home, then win the next three in Cincinnati to knock out the Reds.

So yeah, it sucks that none of interesting teams are still left, but there's still plenty of interesting things going on here in the LCS's, including the incredibly enjoyable collapse of the Yankees.   Granderson and A-Rod are striking out at a World Record pace, but even they aren't hurting the team as much as Robinson Cano (who not only hasn't hit but also made a game killing error (I know it wasn't technically an error because you can't assume a double play but that was an error)) and Nick Swisher (who has been so awful both at the plate and in the field that he's definitely played his way out of New York and may have cut his contract in half both in terms of money and duration).  This has been great in so many ways, and I'm so glad the Yankees hit like crap in the Orioles series as well as this one, because otherwise this would be so set-up to add to the legend of Jeter.  This would all be blamed on them not having "The Captain" and everyone would be in boner mode.

Now I can see this series going one of two ways.  The best way would be that Justin Verlander completely shuts them in game 3 in near no-hitter fashion, they continue to desperately scramble at the plate and resort to crazy tactics (such as hit-and-running with Raul Ibanez and his Matthew LeCroy like speed) to try to score any runs at all and they end up getting swept while the world rejoices.  Or, because the Yankees are some evil demon and everyone knows that demons are notoriously hard to kill, they will somehow manage to destroy Verlander and end up winning this series in 7 games.  I know that would suck, but in another way it would be good to get to root against the Yankees for another series.  I'm still rooting for them to get swept here though, because they are dicks.

As for the NL, how freaking sweet must it be to be a Cards fan?  All they ever do is win.  In 2006 they won just 83 games but played in a crappy division so they won a playoff berth where they managed to beat two superior teams, setting up a World Series against the massively favored Detroit Tigers.  Naturally the Cards won by somehow getting the Tigers to make 8 errors in 5 games and holding them to a .199 batting average despite pitching dudes like Anthony Reyes, making them the worst team (record-wise) to ever win a World Series.  In 2011 they again made the series against the Rangers after qualifying for the Wild Card on the final day of the regular season and fell behind 3-2 and were twice down to their final strike before rallying to win and then won game 7 to take another World Series.  Now they were basically about to be eliminated by the Nationals but somehow turned it around to win that one as well.

I mean, enough is enough, right?  Stop rubbing it in, guys.  They're like the anti-Twins with their postseason play, not to mention that they lost the best hitter of the last 10 years to free agency, lost their starting first baseman (Lance Berkman) and starting shortstop (Rafael Furcal) to injury, and got just 20 starts from Jaime Garcia and 3 from Chris Carpenter, yet here they are.  I like the Giants and all, even without the usual Lincecum, but how can anybody fight that Redbird mojo?  It's a true law of nature like water or dinosaurs.  Sorry Giants, but you can't fight against dinosaurs.