Jim Merritt - new associate AD for basketball development

[*23*]

lol, no I didn't miss your point. just disagreeing with you.
I don't believe not having a GM is causing us or anyone else to miss out on anyone. especially not anyone good. it's really easy to know who's entered the portal.

but sure ... I'm onboard with hiring a full time GM because I don't think the guys under CM do a great job with a lot of the admisitrative things that a GM should force to get right.

OK we just agree that the mechanics of not having a gm are failing us. Since we know nothing and moon shares nothing no one can win the argument. But based on the guys we have brought in the last two off-season, we are definitely not signing the best talent. Two years back it seems we were in on some talented guys, but missed and had to settle for late pickups, that were injured or had gaping holes in their games. The guys we missed on were like Chris Mannon. But at least we tried. This year we got some scorers pretty quick, but the evaluator outside our coaching staff identified gaping holes (defense) but we signed them early. Either way we need a gm that can help get the right guys. Because like gkiller mentioned, we dont know that NIL funding is even a true issue. I tend not to believe anything from the Triumvirate now.

 

[sman]

Manon went P5. unless we really up our NIL, we're not competing with that. I don't care who a GM is or how smooth talking a head coach is.

 

[brooklyn brownstone]

23, interesting point and it does make me think about how our staff may evaluate a potential transfer for impact on the team. in looking at the 4 years of the portal that UR has participated in, the first couple years seem to have had more well rounded guys, and the last couple of years the shift was to guys good mainly on offensive side of the ball. Who is the best defender in those last 2 years? Thomas, who I'd rate as about average? AP who we all thought was a liability on d last year, might be 2nd? Oof.

The other thing in looking at it from an overview standpoint is that in brining in the year 2 class, it brought 2 starters who were able to plug right in and fill kind of the exact needs that the team had (esp. as a strong backcourt), while the year 1 guys were able to play more confidently in Moon's systems in year 2. That fit and continuity has not really been present in the other years below. The other years have been sort of throwing everything at a wall and seeing what sticks. (in effect that also happened in the year 2 OOC when Moon played Noyes ahead of Dji, who turned out to be the perfect fit in that 5 man lineup. Costly error.)

LMK thoughts. Here is the list of guys I can recall since the 2022 NCAA year, IIRC our first real big portal year. If I missed anyone lmk:

Year 1
Quinn - 2 years, 1 average, one good year.
Roche - 3 years, all bench role player.
Bigelow - 1 average year, 1 good year.

Year 2
King - 1 great year
Hunt - 1 above average year, 1 (almost) very good year.
Harris - 1 solid year as a bench role player. (I think we tend to overstate his impact but he did what was needed off bench and you need guys like that.)

Year 3
Nescovic - 1 year, slightly below average (bc I think he was a bit of a ball stopper on offense even tho he could score.)
Roumoglou - 2 well below average years
G. Washington III - 1 non-impact year, well below average, but basically a zero grade.
Beagle - 1 below average year, 1 okay bench role player year (this one)
B. Artis White - 1 well below average year.

Year 4
Lopez - great individual scorer, not good on defense.
Johnston - streaky scorer, not good on defense
Daughtry - microwave scorer off bench, turnover machine, not good on defense
Thomas - average bench role player. Flashes of very good play, much less impact many other times.

 

[*23*]

Manon went P5. unless we really up our NIL, we're not competing with that. I don't care who a GM is or how smooth talking a head coach is.

You dont know what our NIL is. Only the folks feeding us lies really do. We heard Burton got 500k from us the year before Nova came calling.

 

[*23*]

Looks pretty accurate to me Brownstone. Year 1, nice haul with Quinn and Bigs. Both hit their stride in season 2. Year 2 yielded an instant impact back court. Winners, both were good 2 way players and had a lot of intangible winning qualities. 3 and 4 pretty much a wash. Like this years group a lot better than Year 3, but not yielding great results and defense tends to wipe out the offensive impact

 

[Spider17]

Manon went P5. unless we really up our NIL, we're not competing with that. I don't care who a GM is or how smooth talking a head coach is.

According to JOC we are operating with $2 million in NIL. If we’re smart about how we distribute our money, we could absolutely compete with P5s on maybe 1-2 recruits where we offer significantly more because we are confident they will be that impactful of a player for us. We need to pay players commensurate to the value they bring or we strongly believe will bring on the court. Guys might get more for staying longer but that shouldn’t mean much. For instance Tanner should not be getting more than Argabright next year with NIL.

 

[Eight Legger]

Why is someone like Tanner (no offense to him) getting anything? If we have $2M to spend, I'm giving $1.5M of it to 3-4 guys and the rest to another 3-4. Everyone else can try to make more somewhere else if they want, but guys like Tanner aren't going to get rich anywhere.

 

[Section9_RowD]

Why is someone like Tanner (no offense to him) getting anything? If we have $2M to spend, I'm giving $1.5M of it to 3-4 guys and the rest to another 3-4. Everyone else can try to make more somewhere else if they want, but guys like Tanner aren't going to get rich anywhere.

Right - the new wild wild west model can't be both ways - it's just pure capitalism at its finest and its worst. Sub players (Tanner) need get nothing other than a UR degree .. Pay the players we need to stay, don't pay the players that could stay or could go, recruit better, and have someone other than the current staff evaluate transfers since we need to be better than 30% hitting good ones.

 

[vt4700]

According to JOC we are operating with $2 million in NIL. If we’re smart about how we distribute our money, we could absolutely compete with P5s on maybe 1-2 recruits where we offer significantly more because we are confident they will be that impactful of a player for us. We need to pay players commensurate to the value they bring or we strongly believe will bring on the court. Guys might get more for staying longer but that shouldn’t mean much. For instance Tanner should not be getting more than Argabright next year with NIL.

I have said the same..pay a lot for 1 or 2 high impact guys and then surround them with good fits who might not have the stats and attract as much money. And have more freshmen ready from day 1!!!!

 

[Spiderguy]

I have said the same..pay a lot for 1 or 2 high impact guys and then surround them with good fits who might not have the stats and attract as much money. And have more freshmen ready from day 1!!!!

Would love to know the breakdowns, but probably we’ll never get that. What you posted is practical. Not sure if it’s the Richmond way or not. To be competitive, it can’t be an altruistic exercise. Some of the guys that are marketable and producers should be compensated in accordance. Support guys who wouldn’t command demand elsewhere get a minimum or just free education and other benefits that go along with being a bb player, and that’s a lot more than the student population at UR who are there for academics.

 

[Spider17]

I have said the same..pay a lot for 1 or 2 high impact guys and then surround them with good fits who might not have the stats and attract as much money. And have more freshmen ready from day 1!!!!

Completely agree. Makes you wonder how we are spending our NIL currently. If we divided $2 million by 15 that comes out to $133K per person. I doubt the redshirt freshmen or Kirby are getting that much. We’ve also heard Mooney before say how he wants to pay players more for staying longer. So considering those two points I imagine there are guys on our roster who are probably close to $250K.

In order for us to be successful and use our NIL effectively there’s a few principles I think we should adhere to.

1. Best players get paid more. This is self explanatory but just because someone has seniority does not mean they should have more NIL. It should reflect the value they bring on the court. If players are upset with that then they can either work harder to improve their value or transfer. This also means that if a player regresses in play, they should get less NIL the next year.

2. Prioritize NIL with established players in our system first and not new players. So by this I mean, we know that Argabright is a great player. We need to prioritize increasing his NIL for next year considerably more first before looking at impact players/transfers.

3. One sure fire impact player should get more NIL than 2 role players. I would rather one guy get $600K but we know exactly what we’re going to get out of him. He’s a bona fide stud and a day 1 starter than give 2 maybe decent players $300K.

4. Core of players come from high school recruiting and fill the gaps with transfers. Relying on 1-2 year transfers every year to be our best players is not a recipe for sustained success. At least 3 of our starters should be high school recruits (ideally from difference classes). That way we can identify key needs and really hone in on getting the best impact transfers. Replacing essentially a starting line up worth of transfers this year leads to too variable outcomes.

When you think of really good players like Burton getting $500K for one year, it’s reasonable to expect that UR can have 2-3 high caliber players like Burton on its roster at one time. This is why many of us rightfully called out that excuse about not being able to compete in the A10 with the NIL money we had. Of course we can, we are just spending the money poorly.

 

[Spider17]

I looked at our roster for next year and this is what I personally think what the NIL breakdown should be for returners (assuming no transfers). I am going to operate under assumption of $2 million/yr

Freshmen:
Deuce Simmons - $100K. 3 star recruit. Had offer from Tennessee early on but likely Tennessee backed off. Maybe overlooked because of height. Still, ranked top 300.
Chad Cook - $25K. 0 star recruit. No other good offers. Freshmen minimum for non-walkons
Dane Caldwell - $50K. Couldn’t find any star rankings but had other decent mid major offers

Freshmen total: $175K

Redshirt Freshmen/Sophomores:
Donovan Richardson - $25K. Hasn’t proved anything at collegiate level
Dylan Homenick - $25K. Hasn’t proved anything at collegiate level
Kirby Mooney - $0. Walk-on
Will Harper - $50K. Showed some promise, has potential to be A10 role player. Slight increase from minimum
Aidan Argabright - $200K. A10 level player. Starting PG.

Sophomores: $300K


Redshirt sophomores/Juniors:
Jaylen Robinson - $75K. Likely expecting larger role next year but still not quite proven player.
Bryson McGlothin - $25K. Hasn’t proved anything at collegiate level.

Juniors: $100K

Seniors:
Mikkel Tyne - $100K. Hasn’t done much to bring confidence as A10 level player but knows system well, has been starter for us, is a senior.
Jaden Daughtry - $150K. Likely our starting 4.
David Thomas - $100K. Been solid role player. Likely to have more minutes next year.
Collin Tanner - $75K. Senior, had moments of playing more meaningful minutes, but likely a role player.

Seniors: $425K

So total for the 14 returning players (assuming no transfers) and incoming freshmen is $1 million with another $1 million left over. We can definitely afford to find 1-2 really proven high impact players and pay each $500K. Let’s also assume we have some transfers from 2 players who are freshmen or sophomores. That means we’ll have a little more than $1 million to spend for 4 players. We can definitely have a breakdown of transfer 1: $500K, transfer 2: $250K, transfer 3: $250K, and transfer 4: $100K.

Another way to think about it is our starting line up should have over $1 million NIL valuation.

1: Argabright - $200K
2: TBD - $150-$250K
3: TBD: - $150-$250K
4: Daughtry - $150K
5: TBD. Proven big man. $300-500K.

 

[MrTbone]

Completely agree. Makes you wonder how we are spending our NIL currently. If we did $2 million by 15 that comes out to $133K per person. I doubt the redshirt freshmen or Kirby are getting that much. We’ve also heard Mooney before say how he wants to pay players more for staying longer. So considering those two points I imagine there are guys on our roster who are probably close to $250K.

In order for us to be successful and use our NIL effectively there’s a few principles I think we should adhere to.

1. Best players get paid more. This is self explanatory but just because someone has seniority does not mean they should have more NIL. It should reflect the value they bring on the court. If players are upset with that then they can either work harder to improve their value or transfer. This also means that if a player regresses in play, they should get less NIL the next year.

2. Prioritize NIL with established players in our system first and not new players. So by this I mean, we know that Argabright is a great player. We need to prioritize increasing his NIL for next year considerably more first before looking at impact players/transfers.

3. One sure fire impact player should get more NIL than 2 role players. I would rather one guy get $600K but we know exactly what we’re going to get out of him. He’s a bona fide stud and a day 1 starter than give 2 maybe decent players $300K.

4. Core of players come from high school recruiting and fill the gaps with transfers. Relying on 1-2 year transfers every year to be our best players is not a recipe for sustained success. At least 3 of our starters should be high school recruits (ideally from difference classes). That way we can identify key needs and really hone in on getting the best impact transfers. Replacing essentially a starting line up worth of transfers this year leads to too variable outcomes.

When you think of really good players like Burton getting $500K for one year, it’s reasonable to expect that UR can have 2-3 high caliber players like Burton on its roster at one time. This is why many of us rightfully called out that excuse about not being able to compete in the A10 with the NIL money we had. Of course we can, we are just spending the money poorly.

Do we know for sure that Burton got 500k from us? I thought that’s what he got paid by Villanova.

 

[Spider17]

Do we know for sure that Burton got 500k from us? I thought that’s what he got paid by Villanova.

Ya, I meant it with Villanova giving him $500K. At the time, I guess we couldn’t match it, didn’t want to match it, or we did match it and Burton still wanted to play somewhere else.

Still, when thinking about how we’re spending our NIL money there is absolutely opportunities for us to compete with P4 programs for 1 or 2 guys. Assuming we don’t overspend unnecessarily for other non-impact players.

 

[MrTbone]

Ya, I meant it with Villanova giving him $500K. At the time, I guess we couldn’t match it, didn’t want to match it, or we did match it and Burton still wanted to play somewhere else.

Still, when thinking about how we’re spending our NIL money there is absolutely opportunities for us to compete with P4 programs for 1 or 2 guys. Assuming we don’t overspend unnecessarily for other non-impact players.

Yeah I agree, your math seems rational. I think given our level of recruits, we aren’t paying a ton. Question is are the market rates for better players 3x what you projected.

 

[Spider17]

Yeah I agree, your math seems rational. I think given our level of recruits, we aren’t paying a ton. Question is are the market rates for better players 3x what you projected.

It’s hard to say. The highest paid player is getting a little over $4 million. At least according to this site. It drops off pretty quickly and the 10th highest NIL paid player is $1.5 million. Not too much of a stretch to think a top 200 transfer would be around $500K and can still definitely be impactful at the A10 level.

https://www.on3.com/nil/rankings/player/college/basketball/

 

[*23*]

Hard to get true numbers. local news did an interview with Alex Karaban the other day. He is making 2 million and would bet at least 2 to 3 on uconn are getting a lot more. I do wonder if it ever comes down, as big donors get tired of dishing out.

 

[MrTbone]

It’s hard to say. The highest paid player is getting a little over $4 million. At least according to this site. It drops off pretty quickly and the 10th highest NIL paid player is $1.5 million. Not too much of a stretch to think a top 200 transfer would be around $500K and can still definitely be impactful at the A10 level.

https://www.on3.com/nil/rankings/player/college/basketball/

I’m actually thinking about the math for the rest of the team. If those figures are 2x-3x what you think squeeze at the upper end becomes tight pretty quick.

My guess is there’s more than enough data out there that you don’t have an excuse as a coach or GM to not know where you need to be.

 

[MrTbone]

Hard to get true numbers. local news did an interview with Alex Karaban the other day. He is making 2 million and would bet at least 2 to 3 on uconn are getting a lot more. I do wonder if it ever comes down, as big donors get tired of dishing out.

Short of regulating it or imposing a cap, no real chance it comes down.

 

[*23*]

Probably right. I know Hurley and Rick Pitino were actually suggesting the Big East should try to impose a 11 million minimum per team per season.

St. John’s Pitino proposes NIL spending floor for Big East teams

St. John’s Pitino proposes NIL spending floor for Big East teams

www.nj.com