I started to post this in another thread but thought I'd do it here in a new thread.
You need 9-10 guys who can play at this level.
From the guys eligible to return, they have exactly one (1) who we know can. That's Ven Allen Lubin. They've got him back.
Collin Smith, if he's healed, could be one of the 9-10. But Achilles injuries are tricky; Mike Soroka (baseball player) had his career wrecked because of one..
Jason Rivera-Torres, if Stack didn't destroy his confidence, could also be one.
So both are "ifs" and both are in the portal at the moment.
Looks like JQ Roberts is back. Had a true shooting percentage of 46% and scored under 7 points per 40 minutes, and pulled under 7 boards per 40 minutes. Maybe that gets better, maybe it doesn't. I don't think I can put him in that 9-10 group yet based on what I've seen.
Which leaves him with a foundation of exactly one "certain" guy (Lubin) and two "maybes" if they're back.
And that "certainty" is probably the third or fourth-best player on your typical 8- or 9-seeded team in the NCAAs.
I'm not sure what they have in Tyler Tanner or Karris Bilal so we'll call them unknowns.
So again, that leaves Byington with one bankable commodity with which to start. It's probably more than that (maybe a freshman hits, maybe they get back a productive JRT, some combination of all that), but again, so maybe it's one or maybe it's three or four. But either way, that's a horrible starting point, especially when only one of those guys is a starting-level player on a good team and the others are more in that 6-to-10 range in terms of filling out that 9-10.
As for the additions...
- Tyler Nickel scored 14.6 points per 40 minutes, had about 1.5 assists to every turnover, had an effective field goal mark of 57%, shot 82% from the line. Didn't seem to do much else, had a defensive rating of 109. I'm confident he's one of those 9-10 guys but probably more in the 4-7 range on a good team.
- Grant Huffman is a point guard who's logged 3,020 career minutes and had 5.3 assists to 2.1 turnovers. Decent foul shooter (72%) last year but a below-average (thought not awful--48% eFG) mark last year. Defensive rating of 102 last year, so that's probably an improvement over what they had a year ago excepting Manjon. If you can check some other boxes with shooters (and Nickel gets one of those) then he's definitely among the 9-10 guys and probably in that 3-5 range (3.8 win shares last year suggests that also).
- Jaylen Carry scored 18.8 points, pulled 11.4 board, had 1.8 steals and 0.8 blocks per 40 minutes and had an elite effective field goal mark (69%) as well as defensive rating (95). Free throws (51%) were another matter but I see a ton of stuff to love here given he's a sophomore. How does that translate to a bigger role on a bigger stage? I don't know but he's absolutely in that 9-10 and probably the upper half of that group.
- MJ Collins had an assist-to-turnover ratio over 2, but an abysmal eFG (40%) and a 108 defensive rating that isn't great, either. But he is an 84% foul shooter and did log the third-most minutes on a top-60 KenPom team and so maybe there's something intangible there that suggests more value than meets the eye. Does he meet that criteria of 9-10 guys? I'd say so, probably as a backup point guard though probably your 8th or 9th guy.
So , that's five guys who can help for sure, maybe more depending on the variables where I started.
Where that leaves them as I see it:
- They absolutely need a volume scorer who can shoot it reasonably efficiently, someone who can be a best-player-on-the-team type.
- They probably need another Nickel-type contributor from an efficient-scoring standpoint. (Maybe that's JRT?) who starts or is the first guy off the bench.
- They probably need at least one more quality big.
- Maybe one more guy who does something of value to fit in that top 9-10 depending on whether a freshman hits or whether Smith or JRT return.
Feel free to pick this apart as needed, but this is how I look at roster building.
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