It's tough to be excited about idea of "being better next year" because being a better team has yet to come into fruition.
With the obvious caveat that you never fully know with the portal. . .
It's also very hard to be optimistic about next year. We lose two of our top three guys in Pavs and Hadaway, and just don't have much production returning. Of the recruits from the last two years, only Kelly's proven he's likely to be a consistent contributor. Kuany and Burris have shown little bits here and there, but aren't in the rotation meaningfully. Elliott took a major step back. Evans and Fisher don't see minutes at all.
We're basically gonna return 15% of our production from a 500-ish team. Hard to envision how we're good next year without a major overhaul.
Next season is looking pretty rough right now. This year's portal class was the best we've had on paper and we're still not seeing any improvement overall.
Speaking of, as we remain stagnant, NIL donations/resources will likely decrease rather than increase.
I'm a broken record at this point, but I feel like we recruit based on rankings. That's the heaviest weight column surely. We routinely have the highest ranked class. I believe our only year under Boals not ranked 1 or 2 was Clayton's year (that worked out okay). We just don't see it on the court.
I'd love to give the kid credit who said it, but we have a ton of shooters and no makers.
We have assembled the best pick-up basketball tournament team ever... unfortunately, we need rebounders, defenders, spot-up guys, creators. We currently have Pavs surrounded by 9 shooters and... Hadaway who *wants to be a shooter and Simmons, who wants to be a bully but is undersized.
Last Edited: 1/15/2026 9:10:30 AM by M.D.W.S.T