Corbin Merritt enters transfer portal

[Max Power]

Perhaps Hield, Cousins, Woodard, Spangler has skewed your perception of normal.

And Spangler left Gonzaga so he is no different than any other transfer

 

[tmeyer3307]

Good Luck to the guy. He needs to go play D2 ball for 2 years and have some success. I just don't think he can play low level D1 even. Hope we can land Trey Murphy, Trey Wertz or Bruner.

 

[thewez]

Is Kur not a center? Joe says in the article that Ricky is our only center. Also Manek isn’t a true center but he played the 5 all year

 

[CoachTalk]

Good Luck to the guy. He needs to go play D2 ball for 2 years and have some success. I just don't think he can play low level D1 even. Hope we can land Trey Murphy, Trey Wertz or Bruner.

Bruner has moved on. Okc kid though.

 

[WTSooner]

Weak take. Look at all programs.

Disagree. I guarantee we're in the top 25% or so in terms of players leaving "early" over the past 2-3 years.

But it's not just leaving early. It's also replacing them with JUCO's and transfers, guys that also won't be on campus for 4 years.

I can name A LOT of other programs that are hanging around that top 20-30 range that haven't had this kind of turnover. It's weak, and it's desperation to constantly be chasing transfers to fill out the roster and improve talent. Some of the potential transfers we've been linked to are nothing more than warm bodies.

 

[WichitaSooner]

Disagree. I guarantee we're in the top 25% or so in terms of players leaving "early" over the past 2-3 years.

But it's not just leaving early. It's also replacing them with JUCO's and transfers, guys that also won't be on campus for 4 years.

I can name A LOT of other programs that are hanging around that top 20-30 range that haven't had this kind of turnover. It's weak, and it's desperation to constantly be chasing transfers to fill out the roster and improve talent. Some of the potential transfers we've been linked to are nothing more than warm bodies.

Let’s see those stats to back up your guarantee.

 

[WTSooner]

Per my post above, we have now had at least 30 consecutive years of losing players to attrition. That means even Kelvin Sampson did not have even one season which he kept every single player with eligibility from the season prior. It's just part of college basketball. We lost Corbin Merritt, not Ryan Humphrey, JR Raymond or Scottie Reynolds. The key now is to replace him with someone who can help us either in 2021, 2022, or both.

lol, I'm not saying Kelvin didn't have transfers, but your list is pretty weak. I'll give you Hump, but Reynolds and that crew never made it to campus after Kelvin left and Raymond was booted for disciplinary reasons. Not exactly comparable to the turnover we've had over the last 36 months.

Players lost to transfer in recent years:
Merritt
Freeman
Lazenby
Polla
McGusty
Shepherd
Buford

That is in the last 36 months. 2.3 transfers a year over that time. PLUS.....since my point was constant turnover, here are the players that were only on campus for 2 years or less during that time due to transferring in:
Strong-Moore - 2 years
Calixte - 1 year
Reynolds - 1 year

And we'll lose Kur and Williams after next season, after two years.

Nine players over the last three seasons that have transferred out or only been on the roster for one year before leaving/graduating.

That's a lot. More than most in our tier of programs. I doubt the big boys are seeing that many transfers, but they do have the early NBA guys. They can overcome that with their recruiting though. We can't. We need better HS classes with guys that will be around. Not the constant roster turnover, looking for transfers, making excuses about how many new faces we have, and watching guys struggle. It's funny, some of the same ones defending this roster turnover are the ones that also make excuses about this being a rebuilding year, or giving guys time to get settled to D1 ball, etc. If we have constant turnover, that will be an issue every year. And in terms of transfers in, we aren't looking for guys to come in and sit the bench, we're looking for guys that can play b/c we've had some guys disappoint or not mature enough as players to be counted on.

I'm also hearing that Williams "may" not be on the team next year. That is one reason we're looking at so many transfer guards. So that would be another transfer out.

Maybe another way of looking at this would be to see how many 4 year players we've had over x number of years. Feels like that would be a low number.

 

[tmeyer3307]

lol, I'm not saying Kelvin didn't have transfers, but your list is pretty weak. I'll give you Hump, but Reynolds and that crew never made it to campus after Kelvin left and Raymond was booted for disciplinary reasons. Not exactly comparable to the turnover we've had over the last 36 months.

Players lost to transfer in recent years:
Merritt
Freeman
Lazenby
Polla
McGusty
Shepherd
Buford

That is in the last 36 months. 2.3 transfers a year over that time. PLUS.....since my point was constant turnover, here are the players that were only on campus for 2 years or less during that time due to transferring in:
Strong-Moore - 2 years
Calixte - 1 year
Reynolds - 1 year

And we'll lose Kur and Williams after next season, after two years.

Nine players over the last three seasons that have transferred out or only been on the roster for one year before leaving/graduating.

That's a lot. More than most in our tier of programs. I doubt the big boys are seeing that many transfers, but they do have the early NBA guys. They can overcome that with their recruiting though. We can't. We need better HS classes with guys that will be around. Not the constant roster turnover, looking for transfers, making excuses about how many new faces we have, and watching guys struggle. It's funny, some of the same ones defending this roster turnover are the ones that also make excuses about this being a rebuilding year, or giving guys time to get settled to D1 ball, etc. If we have constant turnover, that will be an issue every year. And in terms of transfers in, we aren't looking for guys to come in and sit the bench, we're looking for guys that can play b/c we've had some guys disappoint or not mature enough as players to be counted on.

I'm also hearing that Williams "may" not be on the team next year. That is one reason we're looking at so many transfer guards. So that would be another transfer out.

Maybe another way of looking at this would be to see how many 4 year players we've had over x number of years. Feels like that would be a low number.

If Williams is out that really hurts! Hope that's not true. I kind of had a weird feeling that something may be up after all of these guard transfers kept popping up.

 

[TINY]

lol, I'm not saying Kelvin didn't have transfers, but your list is pretty weak. I'll give you Hump, but Reynolds and that crew never made it to campus after Kelvin left and Raymond was booted for disciplinary reasons. Not exactly comparable to the turnover we've had over the last 36 months.

Players lost to transfer in recent years:
Merritt
Freeman
Lazenby
Polla
McGusty
Shepherd
Buford

That is in the last 36 months. 2.3 transfers a year over that time. PLUS.....since my point was constant turnover, here are the players that were only on campus for 2 years or less during that time due to transferring in:
Strong-Moore - 2 years
Calixte - 1 year
Reynolds - 1 year

And we'll lose Kur and Williams after next season, after two years.

Nine players over the last three seasons that have transferred out or only been on the roster for one year before leaving/graduating.

That's a lot. More than most in our tier of programs. I doubt the big boys are seeing that many transfers, but they do have the early NBA guys. They can overcome that with their recruiting though. We can't. We need better HS classes with guys that will be around. Not the constant roster turnover, looking for transfers, making excuses about how many new faces we have, and watching guys struggle. It's funny, some of the same ones defending this roster turnover are the ones that also make excuses about this being a rebuilding year, or giving guys time to get settled to D1 ball, etc. If we have constant turnover, that will be an issue every year. And in terms of transfers in, we aren't looking for guys to come in and sit the bench, we're looking for guys that can play b/c we've had some guys disappoint or not mature enough as players to be counted on.

I'm also hearing that Williams "may" not be on the team next year. That is one reason we're looking at so many transfer guards. So that would be another transfer out.

Maybe another way of looking at this would be to see how many 4 year players we've had over x number of years. Feels like that would be a low number.

Kruger needs to improve his high school recruiting. No doubt about it.

Kelvin’s list of transfers is much worse than Lon’s, though. Lon has lost a bunch of nobodies except for mcgusty. Off the top of my head, Kelvin lost:

Ryan Humphrey 4-star
Alex Spaulding 4-star
Jr raymond
Drew lavender 5-star
Lawrence McKenzie 4-star
Deangelo Alexander 4-star

Those guys were stars and kelvin replaced them with a bunch of jucos.

 

[vbdad]

WT- OSU has lost that many in the last two years. WSU is losing that many this year.

McGusty wasn’t encouraged to stay. Hornbeak wasn’t eligible to stay for various reasons.

For what it is worth losing a guy that many of you think can’t play is a good thing. Hopefully replaced by a better player.

 

[WTSooner]

WT- OSU has lost that many in the last two years. WSU is losing that many this year.

McGusty wasn’t encouraged to stay. Hornbeak wasn’t eligible to stay for various reasons.

For what it is worth losing a guy that many of you think can’t play is a good thing. Hopefully replaced by a better player.

And OSU has been terrible.

While I agree in part that replacing leaving players with better players is a good thing, it's still turnover. And we've seen that we aren't always replacing guys with better players. So in some ways, it's turned into constant turnover for mediocre, back-up types. Still hurts. Hurts chemistry (IMO). Continuity. Growth. It's just not good for the program. Again, IMO.

 

[thebigabd]

I know it means nothing.... but it's weird that the two times I even remember Corbin being in the game, he hit a nice hook shot against ISU after being in the game for like 5 seconds... then against someone else (Texas? I forget) he hits a 3 after being in the game for about 5 seconds.

That was it. Both times he played in Big 12 games he scored after being in the game for a few seconds, and that was it.

 

[WaymanFan]

lol, I'm not saying Kelvin didn't have transfers, but your list is pretty weak. I'll give you Hump, but Reynolds and that crew never made it to campus after Kelvin left and Raymond was booted for disciplinary reasons. Not exactly comparable to the turnover we've had over the last 36 months.

LOL? About what? You obviously missed the point. We have non-senior attrition EVERY YEAR. Again, EVERY YEAR.

The list of 4-year players in 12 years under Kelvin Sampson:

1) Eduardo Najera
2) Hollis Price
3) Johnny Gilbert
4) Kevin Bookout
5) Renzi Stone
6) Tim Heskitt

You can make an argument for Hootie Wiley despite him being a Billy Tubbs recruit, since he did not transfer out. However, he only lettered three years.

The list of 4-year players in 9 years under Lon Kruger:

1) Buddy Hield
2) Isaiah Cousins
3) Jordan Woodard
4) Khadeem Lattin
5) Nate Odomes
6) Christian James
7) Kristian Doolittle
8) CJ Cole
9) Jamuni McNeace

Note: If Coach Kruger is back for a 10th season, Brady Manek will be #10.


Finally, let's see who would win an All-Attrition team matchup:

Kelvin's Team:
G - Drew Lavender
G - DeAngelo Alexander
G - JR Raymond
F - Ryan Humphrey
F - Larry Turner

Note: Other than Ryan Humphrey, Kelvin kept all his valuable forwards / centers...he just couldn't keep guards. There are several guards not listed above such as Lawrence McKenzie, Alex Spaulding, Jarrett Hart, Blake Johnston, and Prince Fowler, though Johnston left for medical reasons and the Fowler was signed by Billy Tubbs. Still, that is a lot of guards which left the program early.


Lon's Team:
G - Kam McGusty
G - Jelon Hornbeak
G - Frank Booker (or Jordan Shepherd)
F - Matt Freeman
F - Dante Buford

Note: Technically, Amath M'Baye could be placed here, but he transferred in, graduated, and chose to play overseas...don't think he ever planned to stay more than one year.

I guess if you put M'Baye and Trae Young on Lon's team, it becomes a competitive game, but neither of those players transferred out...not sure anyone expected either to be around for more than one year.

The stat which truly stands out above is that out of the who-knows-how-many freshman guards Kelvin signed, he was only able to keep TWO of them for four years.

 

[WTSooner]

LOL, that is misleading. Kelvin built his teams on JUCO's. Everybody knew that. But he'd get them in, let them grow a year, and then let them takeover. Difference college basketball environment back then. And I don't think anybody would argue that he made it work, and did it in a way that didn't cause gaping holes in the roster year to year, right? Of course he had less 4 year guys, that wasn't how he recruited. But it is how Lon has tried to recruit, he's just had too many misses, and the "fix" has been to go after transfers or average-ish JUCO's.

Basketball has changed a lot since Kelvin was here. Wasn't ever my intent to try to compare the two. The better comparison, as my initial comment suggested, is to other teams that are handing around the top 20-30 in recent years. And even that doesn't matter to some extent. The point is I feel like it's hurting our program. So yeah, I'd like Lon to do a better job of keeping guys on the roster instead of the constant turnover.

And if you can't the see the difference in the guys Lon is losing vs Kelvin losing guys to discipline reasons, that isn't apples to apples. Alexander cheated in school and was at best going to have to sit out an entire season. Raymond got booted for too many failed drug tests. Even Lav and McKenzie had drug/legal issues. These, for the most part, weren't guys that were leaving b/c they a) couldn't cut it, or b) weren't happy. These were mostly guys leaving b/c they couldn't stay out of trouble and the school made them leave. But again, at the end of the day, none of that matters b/c Kelvin had us in the top 30 every year. I'd be a lot let critical of Lon and his roster mgmt if that were true of the program under him.

 

[BCSooners]

lol, I'm not saying Kelvin didn't have transfers, but your list is pretty weak. I'll give you Hump, but Reynolds and that crew never made it to campus after Kelvin left and Raymond was booted for disciplinary reasons. Not exactly comparable to the turnover we've had over the last 36 months.

Players lost to transfer in recent years:
Merritt
Freeman
Lazenby
Polla
McGusty
Shepherd
Buford

That is in the last 36 months. 2.3 transfers a year over that time. PLUS.....since my point was constant turnover, here are the players that were only on campus for 2 years or less during that time due to transferring in:
Strong-Moore - 2 years
Calixte - 1 year
Reynolds - 1 year

And we'll lose Kur and Williams after next season, after two years.

Nine players over the last three seasons that have transferred out or only been on the roster for one year before leaving/graduating.

That's a lot. More than most in our tier of programs. I doubt the big boys are seeing that many transfers, but they do have the early NBA guys. They can overcome that with their recruiting though. We can't. We need better HS classes with guys that will be around. Not the constant roster turnover, looking for transfers, making excuses about how many new faces we have, and watching guys struggle. It's funny, some of the same ones defending this roster turnover are the ones that also make excuses about this being a rebuilding year, or giving guys time to get settled to D1 ball, etc. If we have constant turnover, that will be an issue every year. And in terms of transfers in, we aren't looking for guys to come in and sit the bench, we're looking for guys that can play b/c we've had some guys disappoint or not mature enough as players to be counted on.

I'm also hearing that Williams "may" not be on the team next year. That is one reason we're looking at so many transfer guards. So that would be another transfer out.

Maybe another way of looking at this would be to see how many 4 year players we've had over x number of years. Feels like that would be a low number.

So you would say Ace McGee, Terrell Everett, Quannas White, & Taj Gray should count against Sampson because they weren’t at OU for 4 years?

Transfers are the new JUCO. Spangler, M’baye, Osby, Reaves.

 

[CMSOONER]

lol, I'm not saying Kelvin didn't have transfers, but your list is pretty weak. I'll give you Hump, but Reynolds and that crew never made it to campus after Kelvin left and Raymond was booted for disciplinary reasons. Not exactly comparable to the turnover we've had over the last 36 months.

Players lost to transfer in recent years:
Merritt
Freeman
Lazenby
Polla
McGusty
Shepherd
Buford

That is in the last 36 months. 2.3 transfers a year over that time. PLUS.....since my point was constant turnover, here are the players that were only on campus for 2 years or less during that time due to transferring in:
Strong-Moore - 2 years
Calixte - 1 year
Reynolds - 1 year

And we'll lose Kur and Williams after next season, after two years.

Nine players over the last three seasons that have transferred out or only been on the roster for one year before leaving/graduating.

That's a lot. More than most in our tier of programs. I doubt the big boys are seeing that many transfers, but they do have the early NBA guys. They can overcome that with their recruiting though. We can't. We need better HS classes with guys that will be around. Not the constant roster turnover, looking for transfers, making excuses about how many new faces we have, and watching guys struggle. It's funny, some of the same ones defending this roster turnover are the ones that also make excuses about this being a rebuilding year, or giving guys time to get settled to D1 ball, etc. If we have constant turnover, that will be an issue every year. And in terms of transfers in, we aren't looking for guys to come in and sit the bench, we're looking for guys that can play b/c we've had some guys disappoint or not mature enough as players to be counted on.

I'm also hearing that Williams "may" not be on the team next year. That is one reason we're looking at so many transfer guards. So that would be another transfer out.

Maybe another way of looking at this would be to see how many 4 year players we've had over x number of years. Feels like that would be a low number.

I'm not necessarily concerned over end of the bench guys transferring in regards to there being some sort of major underlying issue. Outside of Hornbeak, McGusty & Shepherd I can't think of any core player who has left and even they were fringe Core players. Hornbeak was always going to be a 6th man. Shepherd was solid backup quality PG and likely never would have ever been a starter. McGusty is the best player to transfer out since Drew Lavender. That's not bad, because McGusty was a good player but not great by any means. Plus if McGusty stays we don't get Reaves and I'd rather have Reaves.

Buford was mostly in the dog house during his time in Norman and never would have started over Doo. Freeman played a lot, but wasn't a core player or an OU caliber player. Frank Booker was an ok bench guy who transfered again after leaving OU. Polla and Lazenby were never going to be any sort of contributors. Merritt I had hopes for, but my crimson colored glasses can run strong and the reality is if he were good enough to be a contributor next year he would have played minutes similar to Iwuakor.

 

[WaymanFan]

LOL, that is misleading. Kelvin built his teams on JUCO's. Everybody knew that.

One can only dream that Lon could recruit JUCOs like Kelvin or Billy could...but it's not misleading because of one undisputed fact: Kelvin only kept TWO of his freshmen guards during his tenure. It's a terrible stat against him; no way around that.

 

[WTSooner]

One can only dream that Lon could recruit JUCOs like Kelvin or Billy could...but it's not misleading because of one undisputed fact: Kelvin only kept TWO of his freshmen guards during his tenure. It's a terrible stat against him; no way around that.

There is a way around that. Their names were:

Nate Erdmann
Corey Brewer
Eric Martin
Kelley Newton
Nolan Johnson
Ebi Ere
Quannas White
Jason Detrick
Terrell Everett

When you recruit JUCO guards like, along with the few HS kids he got to stay, the HS kids he missed on are far less important. Kelvin didn't recruit many HS guards, thus you throwing the out the number that lasted four years is misleading. The transfer number wasn't all that great either. I'd take every player on that list above over any Lon guard recruits not named Young or Hield. I'd probably take Erdmann, Brewer, Ere, and TE over any other Lon recruits period. Kelvin often had two guys from that list above on the same team. One would graduate, one would step up as a senior, and one would come in as a JR and contribute. It was a process that he worked perfectly.

Also a little misleading to not give him credit for four year players Austin Johnson, David Godbold, and Longar Longar. I know they finished under different coaches, but they were recruited under Kelvin, and I doubt any of them (maybe LL) would have left.

 

[WaymanFan]

C'mon, WT. If I looked up the number of freshmen guards Kelvin had during his 12 seasons, I'm going to get to double-digits without breaking a sweat. He kept TWO of them...and lost some really good players - at least 5 of them were at or above the level of Kam McGusty. It goes back to the original point that we're simply going to lose players EVERY YEAR. It is inevitable. Feel free to tell me the last year which we didn't lose at least one non-senior to transfer, grades, career-ending injury (think Bobby Joe Evans or Blake Johnston), or NBA Draft (Wayman, Blake and Trae). I went back 30 years and came up empty. Good luck.

As for the guys who were there when he left, I believe 90% chance Goldbold stays, 10% chance T Griffin stays, 33% L Longar stays, and 50% chance Austin Johnson stays (was he recruited over with Scottie Reynolds or could they have played alongside each other?).

 

[MJSooner]

Kruger needs to improve his high school recruiting. No doubt about it.

Kelvin’s list of transfers is much worse than Lon’s, though. Lon has lost a bunch of nobodies except for mcgusty. Off the top of my head, Kelvin lost:

Ryan Humphrey 4-star
Alex Spaulding 4-star
Jr raymond
Drew lavender 5-star
Lawrence McKenzie 4-star
Deangelo Alexander 4-star

Those guys were stars and kelvin replaced them with a bunch of jucos.

Hard to compare transfers from 10-15 years ago to the current environment in college basketball. Players are quicker to transfer today if they are unhappy or don't get PT. It's like saying Coach K must be doing something different now because his players are now turning pro where 15 years ago no Duke player left early.

Plus, it's hard to label Deangelo Alexander as a "transfer" for basketball or team related reasons.