Pearl gets going

Few doubted that Bruce Pearl would infuse some talent into a historically mediocre Auburn program, and those who did may soon be proven wrong.  Pearl has gotten commits from two big-time 2015 forwards in the last week.

However, I'd rather focus on what happened Saturday night at midnight:  Pearl's show-cause penalty expired, and Auburn faithful gathered to celebrate.  You can't tell me they don't deserve each other.

You may choose to view that however you please.  Me?  I'll take the cynical view, shake my head, and hope Bruce Pearl gives Auburn even more to "celebrate" in a year or two...

h/t ESPN

Player profile: Yante Maten

Photo Credit:  miprepzone.com

Previously:  Juwan Parker 
Previously:  Nemanja Djurisic 
Previously:  J.J. Frazier 
Previously:  Osahen Iduwe 
Previously:  Cameron Forte 
Previously:  Kenny Paul Geno 
Previously:  Houston Kessler 
Previously:  Dusan Langura 
Previously:  Brandon Young 

Yante Maten

Height:  6'8"
Weight:  230
Position: PF
Year:  Freshman
Role:  Quick Study

Overview:  Last season did not end on a high note.  Georgia was run out of their own building and thrust early into an offseason that saw a team losing an effective-but-not-spectacular center and gaining nothing.  Literally, nothing.

As of April 4th, there were 0 high school basketball players committed to play their college ball at the University of Georgia.

I remember looking for something...anything to give me some hope when I stumbled across the Scout.com profile of Yante Maten.  A 3* power forward interested in Georgia?  The Gatorade Player of the Year in Michigan interested in Georgia?  The ever-hopeful side of me thought maybe, just maybe he'll sign, but the realist in me knew it would never happen.

And then it did.

He must not have had any good offers, right?  Only Indiana and Michigan State.  He was only the Class A player of the year, right?  Unlike in Georgia, that's the highest classification in Michigan.  So he has character issues?  Hardly.  This guy looks about as well put together as a high school senior can be, and he comes with a supportive family too (check the comments...and not just here...check them anywhere Maten gets a mention).  Seriously, if you're not excited about this kid, I can't help you.

Maten and Iduwe signing when they did gave the program a huge shot in the arm.  Less than three months from now, Yante will be stepping on the court for the first time as a Bulldog.  Can he help keep the program rolling?

Expectations:   I originally had Maten as the 7th or 8th most impactful guy on the team for 2014-15.  Then Brandon Morris did his thing, and suddenly there were some additional points and rebounds to go around, and no one looked to be in a better position to grab them than Yante.  The reality is, Georgia is thin in the post (a broken record around these parts), and he will be thrown into the fire.  We will know pretty quickly if he is ready to play with the big boys.

Will there be growing pains?  Sure.  Is the Mark Fox offense easy to master?  No.  But me?  I believe in Yante Maten.  A rotation of Thornton, Maten, Iduwe, and Djurisic at the 4 and 5 doesn't scare me at all.  Much of the success of this team will ride on Marcus Thornton's wide shoulders, but I think Maten is more than up to the challenge of bearing some of that burden.

What I'll Be Looking For:  I want to see if Maten can play center at the college level.  6'8" might not sound like much, but not many college teams have the luxury of trotting out 7 footers.  It's possible to be that tall and defend/rebound/score big - think Marcus Thornton or Jeremy Price.  Is that who Yante is?  We'll find out soon enough.

2014-15 Stats I Could Get Excited About:  6.1/5.3/.1 points/rebounds/assists per game.

Let's go Yante, and let's go Dawgs!

Happy Friday

Another quiet week in the offseason - which, as a Georgia sports fan, is music to my ears - leaves us with little to talk about, so instead of talking, let's watch this video of a follow-up slam by Yante Maten:

As I prepare to send in my season ticket request and get more and more excited about November, the question spinning in my head is simple:  are the freshmen ready?

The 2014-15 Georgia Bulldogs will have plenty of veteran leadership, but the reality is that they'll need production from the two freshmen - especially Maten.

See you Monday for another player profile which may or may not be Yante Maten himself (ok, yes, it's definitely going to be Maten).  Only 4 players left.  Can you believe it?

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Attrition in Nashville

Vanderbilt gets just a little bit weaker.

Kedren Johnson and Dai-Jon Parker (coveted greatly by Georgia fans coming out of high school) aren't major pieces, by any means, but Vandy also isn't a team overflowing with quality depth.

Georgia plays Vanderbilt twice this season.  For whatever reason, Mark Fox has struggled to beat Kevin Stallings' coached teams.  2015 would be a great time to get over that hump.

h/t ESPN

Old man basketball?

Old man football is old news.  How about some old man basketball?

The rumor mill is starting to heat up a bit around Jaylen Brown, and much of it seems favorable to Georgia.  Along those lines, let's talk a little bit about Brown without counting (too many of) our chickens before they hatch.  Here are some things to know:

1.  Jaylen Brown is still improving.  Consider the following from the linked article:

Brown is one of the most aggressive players in the class of 2015, and his ability to score against any defender has pushed him to the No. 2 spot in the senior class. At this time last year, Brown was still a touted prospect – but his stock certainly wasn't this high.

...

The Wheeler (Ga.) product is not content with his ranking right now, continuing to work on his game – he says he has a “long list of things” to improve.

He has risen about 20 spots in the class rankings since his junior year, which would be good for any top 100 kid, let alone a kid who was already ranked in the 20's.  On top of that, he did so the old fashioned way:  he figured out what he needed to improve, and he worked at it.

Yet he's not yet content with his ranking.  His No. 2 ranking.  Do you want this kid on your team yet?

2.  Jaylen Brown is a program changer.  Unfortunately for Brown, he cannot enter the NBA draft after his senior year.  That means some lucky college will have an NBA-ready talent in school for at least a year.  For a school like Georgia, that can be a game-changer.  The last 5* to come to Athens and play basketball was Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.  KCP was and is a fantastic player, but there are indications that Brown could be even better.  Add to that the fact that Brown would be coming to play for a talented and veteran team, and ok, I have to stop, I'm getting too excited.

3.  Jaylen Brown is a small forward.  Georgia could really, really use a small forward and a center in this next class, and if you made me choose, I'd say small forward is the position of greatest need.  Inking Brown would be a spectacular way to meet that need.

One thing Georgia is doing is pushing the "coming home" theme popularized recently by one Lebron James:

“After LeBron with the coming home campaign, it looks real good,” Brown said. “Georgia Tech said they would do the same campaign, and UGA said the same. Those two are in my top five automatically.”

Hey, whatever it takes.  All I'm saying is, this 2-deep looks pretty nice, no?

PG - Charles Mann, Will Jackson
SG - Kenny Gaines, Juwan Parker
SF - Jaylen Brown, Kenny Paul Geno
PF - Yante Maten, Cameron Forte
C - Osahen Iduwe, Osahen Iduwe (ok...maybe we do need that center)

Read the article.  Get your hopes up.  Hope is good.

h/t Jeff Borzello

Dollars and sense

Interesting blog post from Neil Greenberg trying to quantify what a men's basketball player is actually worth to his school.  He readily admits this probably isn't the true fair value, but the goal is simply to find a calculation and see how close it is to the $20,000 over 4 years that an athlete could be paid under the system suggested by Judge Wilken.

Greenberg methodology is simple.  He peeks into a basketball program's revenues and expenses to figure out net revenue.  He then divides that revenue by the team's 2013-14 wins to arrive at a "cost per win" figure.  Finally, he takes each player's Win Shares - as determined by Basketball-Reference.com - and slices up the pie accordingly.

Doing this, he arrives at some fairly eye-popping numbers for guys like Julius Randle ($1,535,888) and Andrew Wiggins($904,205).

So let's run the math for Georgia and see what we come up with.

The most recent numbers I can find on http://ope.ed.gov/ for the University of Georgia are for the 2012-13 season.  The basketball team racked up $5,953,014 in expenses and took in $8,469,928 in revenue.  In 2014 dollars, that equates to a healthy net revenue of $2,575,105.  Georgia won 22 games last season, so assuming a similar revenue figure in 2014, every win was worth about $117,050.

Using the Win Shares totals, we get the following results:

So, are you surprised?

Remember, Georgia isn't even a basketball school, right?

h/t Neil Greenberg

Player profile: Juwan Parker

Photo Credit:  247sports.com

Previously:  Nemanja Djurisic 
Previously:  J.J. Frazier 
Previously:  Osahen Iduwe 
Previously:  Cameron Forte 
Previously:  Kenny Paul Geno 
Previously:  Houston Kessler 
Previously:  Dusan Langura 
Previously:  Brandon Young 

Juwan Parker

Height:  6'4"
Weight:  200
Position: G/F
Year:  Sophomore
Role:  Brandon Morris

Overview:  So we've reached the final five players (barring any late transfers) for the 2014-15 Georgia Bulldogs.

Juwan Parker came all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma to play his college ball in Athens, and it's possible to find him rated anywhere from a 2 star (ESPN) to a 4 star (247sports) shooting guard coming out of high school.  Parker was a two time All-State player, and was actually a nice get for Mark Fox, choosing Georgia over schools like Memphis and Stanford.

His freshman season was a mixed bag, seeing him break double figures only twice while struggling to find any shooting touch from the field and giving Fox few reasons to put him on the court in front of Kenny Gaines.  His free throw shooting (79%) was a bright spot, but his 29% field goal shooting and 19% 3-point shooting leave a lot of room for improvement.

Expectations:  Does the fact that I have Juwan as the fifth most impactful Georgia player mean I think he'll start?  No, at least not right off the bat.  His natural position just happens to be manned by Kenny Gaines, someone who probably isn't going to cede his starting role until he graduates.

However, you'll notice I added '/F' to his position above.  Small forward may not be a perfect fit, but the *ahem* departure of Brandon Morris might make it a necessity.  In fact, Morris' dismissal, while far from ideal, opens up some interesting rotation possibilities for Coach Fox.  Parker isn't huge, but against smaller teams or lineups he may be called upon to play a little outside of his comfort zone, and while there may be a size disadvantage at the defensive end, that should turn into a quickness advantage on the other side of the court.

I am, of course, being a bit facetious when I tag his role as "Brandon Morris," but he is going to have to shoulder some of the scoring burden that Morris can no longer lighten.  At his best, Parker looks like a guy with a nose for the basket and no fear of contact.  Assuming the shots fall a little more often this year (and how could they not?), Parker should absolutely contend for Most Improved Bulldog by the end of the season.

Areas for Improvement:  Shooting, obviously.  Get the field goal percentage into the 40's and the 3-point percentage into the 30's.  Nudge the free throw percentage up into the 80's.  Do all of that, and keep the assist-turnover ratio about where it is (3 assists for every 2 turnovers), and Juwan will be cooking with gas.

Thing I Learned About Juwan From GeorgiaDogs.com:  If he doesn't dunk in warmups, he plays poorly.  Uh oh.

2014-15 Stats I Could Get Excited About:  7.3/3.2/1.6 points/rebounds/assists per game.

Let's go Juwan, and let's go Dawgs!

Schedule released

The SEC schedule is (almost) official:

Tue. Jan. 6 Arkansas
Sat. Jan. 10 at LSU
Wed. Jan. 14 at Vanderbilt
Sat. Jan. 17 Florida
Wed. Jan. 21 Ole Miss
Sat. Jan. 24 at Mississippi State
Wed. Jan. 28 Vanderbilt
Sat. Jan. 31 at South Carolina
Wed. Feb. 4 at Kentucky
Sat. Feb. 7 Tennessee
Wed. Feb. 11 at Texas A&M
Sat. Feb. 14 Auburn
Wed. Feb. 18 South Carolina
Sat. Feb. 21 at Alabama
Wed. Feb. 25 at Ole Miss
Sat. Feb. 28 Missouri
Tue March 3 Kentucky
Sat. March 7 at Auburn

The Dawgs play Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Kentucky, and Auburn twice each.  Not a bad draw at all.  Also, both Florida and Kentucky make trips to Stegeman, so attendance should get a nice shot in the arm.

A 3-0 start in conference would certainly be sweet before the showdown with Florida.

Every road game aside from Kentucky looks very winnable.  In light of the fact that Georgia won every conference home game last season (aside from the head-scratcher against Vanderbilt that still has me shuddering), all of those should be winnable as well, including Kentucky.

It's certainly a schedule that can get a team to the tournament, so scratch that from the list of potential excuses.

h/t Marc Weiszer

Thompkins tries to hang on

Some more NBA Dawg news for you as the summer drags on.  Trey Thompkins has resurfaced with the Lakers and has a chance to make it to training camp.  His offense has looked good:

Offensively, he’s skilled.  He has a face-up jumpshot that extends out to 21′.  He showed a couple of post moves 12′ away from the basket, where he backed down a defender after a couple dribbles, and used a fadeaway jumpshot to create spacing.  He showed good touch in the painted area, but did not demonstrate tremenous post-up skill, such as a jumphook, finishing with either hand, using and up-and-under, etc.

His defense has been shakier:

 Defensive issues arose during the week as well.  While he had a couple of games of solid defense, he had three games of four fouls or more with roughly 20 minutes per game.  While he played in the paint, he’s not a tremendous shotblocking or rebounding presence.

Nothing in the article will surprise anyone who has watched Trey play.   The author claims Thompkins barely makes the cut size-wise as an NBA center prospect, but I'd be stunned if he caught on as anything other than a 4.

I'd still consider him a long shot to make an NBA roster this year, but here's hoping he impressed enough in summer league to get an honest look.

h/t Mike Garcia

KCP dominates NBA summer league

It's old, but you may want to read this article on Kentavious Caldwell-Pope's early summer league performance.  After a shaky rookie season, KCP has a real chance at a breakout sophomore year in the NBA.

He finished off his freshman campaign going shot for shot with Kevin Durant in Oklahoma City, and now he's trying to carry that momentum into the 2014-15 season.  The Pistons' signing of Jodie Meeks may offer a little extra motivation.

Not surprisingly, his scoring and defense are starting to come around:

Over the first two games at the NBA Summer League in Orlando, KCP is averaging a league-high 28 points on 46 percent shooting, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals and 2 turnovers per contest.  He's also getting plenty of attention from the whistle, getting to the line 8 times per contest and converting on those shots at 88%.  Pope is matching this offensive performance with trademark defensive hustle, playing the role of de facto defensive playmaker.  Beyond his main focus at shooting guard, Pope is switching off onto the opponent's hot hand at the point and small forward as needed.  The results have been a little mixed, but the effort is noteworthy in an exhibition where defense is usually left at the door.

More surprising, he's starting to find his voice:

Beyond the numbers, it's the voice of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope that has been the most surprising this summer.  On court, Pope actively coaches the still-very-raw Tony Mitchell on offensive sets.  He echoes every play call Peyton Siva shouts after crossing half-court.  He challenges Justin Harper to either put the ball or the player on the floor when they penetrate, a lesson Harper just didn't seem to learn against Memphis' Jordan Adams.  He even encourages 33-year-old Brian Cook to box out on one end and find the stroke that's evading him on the other.  In two games this summer, I heard more communication out of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope than I did last year in Orlando and the entire regular season in Detroit.

It should be exciting for Dawg fans to see KCP's maturation into (hopefully) a productive pro.  Setting aside the obvious benefits to the program, it's just been awhile since a Georgia fan could tune into an NBA game and see a Bulldog making a difference (no offense intended, Damien Wilkins).

As a bonus, USA Today pegged Caldwell-Pope one of the "9 players who gained the most" in summer league play.

Keep it up, Kentavious.  Dawgnation is watching.

h/t Mike Payne