MBB Transfer Portal Thread: Moser Year 4

WichitaSooner said:
The Athletic did an SEC preview today. They project us as the 15th place team, ahead of only Vandy. The writeup says it is “hard to paint this as anything but bleak,” and goes on to note that we lost 6 of our top 7 scorers and failed to sign any top 100 high school recruits or transfers. It describes a few of the transfers we signed as “solid pieces,” but not the kind of guys who make you think this is a team that will make the tourney. It closes by noting that Moser is still without a tourney appearance or winning conference record at OU.

All you wannabe journalists are welcome to check it out and offer your critiques of the manner in which it was written. I’m sure some of you will still question whether the writer knows anything about our roster, even though he names several of the incoming transfers. One funny thing is that he doesn’t even mention Wague … that seems to show how irrelevant he is, seeing as how it is an SEC writer who wrote the piece.
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Wanna wager we don’t finish 15th?
 
WichitaSooner said:
The Athletic did an SEC preview today. They project us as the 15th place team, ahead of only Vandy. The writeup says it is “hard to paint this as anything but bleak,” and goes on to note that we lost 6 of our top 7 scorers and failed to sign any top 100 high school recruits or transfers. It describes a few of the transfers we signed as “solid pieces,” but not the kind of guys who make you think this is a team that will make the tourney. It closes by noting that Moser is still without a tourney appearance or winning conference record at OU.

All you wannabe journalists are welcome to check it out and offer your critiques of the manner in which it was written. I’m sure some of you will still question whether the writer knows anything about our roster, even though he names several of the incoming transfers. One funny thing is that he doesn’t even mention Wague … that seems to show how irrelevant he is, seeing as how it is an SEC writer who wrote the piece.
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Do I think OU will finish 15th? No. I think that’s alittle pessimistic. I think they’ll probably finish over .500, but if Moser couldn’t get last years team to the tournament he sure ain’t getting this years squad to the tournament. He gets his obligatory hot seat year before he’s fired.
 
WichitaSooner said:
The Athletic did an SEC preview today. They project us as the 15th place team, ahead of only Vandy. The writeup says it is “hard to paint this as anything but bleak,” and goes on to note that we lost 6 of our top 7 scorers and failed to sign any top 100 high school recruits or transfers. It describes a few of the transfers we signed as “solid pieces,” but not the kind of guys who make you think this is a team that will make the tourney. It closes by noting that Moser is still without a tourney appearance or winning conference record at OU.

All you wannabe journalists are welcome to check it out and offer your critiques of the manner in which it was written. I’m sure some of you will still question whether the writer knows anything about our roster, even though he names several of the incoming transfers. One funny thing is that he doesn’t even mention Wague … that seems to show how irrelevant he is, seeing as how it is an SEC writer who wrote the piece.
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You finally found a writer who checked all the boxes you were hoping to have checked. Congrats! It's a big day for you!

It's interesting to note that the six players who left averaged a combined 58.2 ppg last season, while the four incoming players for whom the writer shared stats averaged 52.9 ppg. Throw in Nwankwo (I wonder why he opted not to?), and the five new players averaged 70.5 ppg, combined. That's plus-12 per game.

Yes, the new guys played weaker competition last season but then so did McCollum, Soares, Moore and Darthard (to varying degrees) before they arrived in Norman and three out of the exceeded (Soares, Moore) or nearly matched (McCollum) the previous year's output; only Darthard fell off by more than a couple of points and he was getting fewer minutes (and he contributed in other ways than scoring). In the end, this is a single article written by a guy who relied almost entirely on rankings and exhibited no actual firsthand knowledge of the players he was writing about. But he made you feel seen, so there's that.
 
skyvue said:
You finally found a writer who checked all the boxes you were hoping to have checked. Congrats! It's a big day for you!

It's interesting to note that the six players who left averaged a combined 58.2 ppg last season, while the four incoming players for whom the writer shared stats averaged 52.9 ppg. Throw in Nwankwo (I wonder why he opted not to?), and the five new players averaged 70.5 ppg, combined. That's plus-12 per game.

Yes, the new guys played weaker competition last season but then so did McCollum, Soares, Moore and Darthard (to varying degrees) before they arrived in Norman and three out of the exceeded (Soares, Moore) or nearly matched (McCollum) the previous year's output; only Darthard fell off by more than a couple of points and he was getting fewer minutes (and he contributed in other ways than scoring). In the end, this is a single article written by a guy who relied almost entirely on rankings and exhibited no actual firsthand knowledge of the players he was writing about. But he made you feel seen, so there's that.
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He did include our juco transfer. Guess you didn’t read it as closely as you thought. Again, though, you know better than college basketball analysts, and are clearly more objective than national writers.
 
WichitaSooner said:
He did include our juco transfer. Guess you didn’t read it as closely as you thought. Again, though, you know better than college basketball analysts, and are clearly more objective than national writers.
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I guess you didn't read my post as closely as you thought. He mentioned Nwankwo but did not include his scoring average from last season, something he cited for every other player mentioned in that section of the story. With Nwankwo's stats included, the five incoming transfers averaged 12 points more per game last season than the six departing players did. Hope that clears it up for you.

And no, I don't know better than anyone, but then I haven't made a single prediction about next season--not about a player or the team as a whole. I don't pretend to have a clue how good the team will be, because a) I haven't seen the new players in action and b) because no one--not a soul on God's green earth--can claim to know how this particular group of players will perform together--how well they'll mesh, how their talents and abilities will compliment each other, how good their chemistry will be--so I'm taking, as I generally do, a wait-and-see attitude. If only you--just once--would do the same.
 
CoachTalk said:
Yes
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I’ll tell you what, how about this: I’ll bet we finish bottom four in the league. That puts us in the bottom quarter of the league. You win if we finish anywhere in the top 12. You should still like those odds if you really believe our incoming players are as good as you say. Only reason I hesitate to bet we will finish bottom two is because there are a couple other teams that are also coming off awful seasons, and unlike the Big 12, I’m not quite as familiar with their coaches and newcomers.
 
skyvue said:
I guess you didn't read my post as closely as you thought. He mentioned Nwankwo but did not include his scoring average from last season, something he cited for every other player mentioned in that section of the story. With Nwankwo's stats included, the five incoming transfers averaged 12 points more per game last season than the six departing players did. Hope that clears it up for you.

And no, I don't know better than anyone, but then I haven't made a single prediction about next season--not about a player or the team as a whole. I don't pretend to have a clue how good the team will be, because a) I haven't seen the new players in action and b) because no one--not a soul on God's green earth--can claim to know how this particular group of players will perform together--how well they'll mesh, how their talents and abilities will compliment each other, how good their chemistry will be--so I'm taking, as I generally do, a wait-and-see attitude. If only you--just once--would do the same.
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We have had three years. Way past the wait and see point. And not counting his stats makes complete sense because it is juco, which is a far lower level of basketball and generally consists of much higher scoring games. Should he also account for high school stats?
 
WichitaSooner said:
We have had three years. Way past the wait and see point. And not counting his stats makes complete sense because it is juco, which is a far lower level of basketball and generally consists of much higher scoring games. Should he also account for high school stats?
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Should he have omitted some of the other scoring averages, since they too occurred as a much lower level of play than the Big 12 or SEC? Of course not, and he didn't. And he should have included Nwankwo's stats (he'd already mentioned he was a juco player--his readers aren't idiots, they know what that implies). So I included Nwankwo's stats and I'll repeat: The five incoming players averaged 12 more combined points last season than the six outgoing players did. Will that prove to be fools' gold? Very possibly, but we won't know for sure for several months.

Every season is its own entity. My anti-Moser bona fides are well established, but we're stuck with him for at least another season. If the team stinks, there'll be plenty of time and opportunity to moan about it in-season, so why not go neutral for a few months? The persistent proactive bitching and moaning is beyond tiresome, but you know that. A long list of posters have told you as much. So you clearly have reached the point where you like the negative attention. There's a word for that.
 
skyvue said:
Should he have omitted some of the other scoring averages, since they too occurred as a much lower level of play than the Big 12 or SEC? Of course not, and he didn't. And he should have included Nwankwo's stats (he'd already mentioned he was a juco player--his readers aren't idiots, they know what that implies). So I included Nwankwo's stats and I'll repeat: The five incoming players averaged 12 more combined points last season than the six outgoing players did. Will that prove to be fools' gold? Very possibly, but we won't know for sure for several months.

Every season is its own entity. My anti-Moser bona fides are well established, but we're stuck with him for at least another season. If the team stinks, there'll be plenty of time and opportunity to moan about it in-season, so why not go neutral for a few months? The persistent proactive bitching and moaning is beyond tiresome, but you know that. A long list of posters have told you as much. So you clearly have reached the point where you like the negative attention. There's a word for that.
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Actually, a list of the same handful of posters dislike my posts. Many more like them.

And if you want to include juco stats, feel free. I wonder how many he averaged in 6th grade. Probably would really boost our numbers if you mix those in. May result in some first place projections.
 
WichitaSooner said:
The Athletic did an SEC preview today. They project us as the 15th place team, ahead of only Vandy. The writeup says it is “hard to paint this as anything but bleak,” and goes on to note that we lost 6 of our top 7 scorers and failed to sign any top 100 high school recruits or transfers. It describes a few of the transfers we signed as “solid pieces,” but not the kind of guys who make you think this is a team that will make the tourney. It closes by noting that Moser is still without a tourney appearance or winning conference record at OU.

All you wannabe journalists are welcome to check it out and offer your critiques of the manner in which it was written. I’m sure some of you will still question whether the writer knows anything about our roster, even though he names several of the incoming transfers. One funny thing is that he doesn’t even mention Wague … that seems to show how irrelevant he is, seeing as how it is an SEC writer who wrote the piece.
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Imagine still subbing to the athletic in 2024
 
WichitaSooner said:
The Athletic did an SEC preview today. They project us as the 15th place team, ahead of only Vandy. The writeup says it is “hard to paint this as anything but bleak,” and goes on to note that we lost 6 of our top 7 scorers and failed to sign any top 100 high school recruits or transfers. It describes a few of the transfers we signed as “solid pieces,” but not the kind of guys who make you think this is a team that will make the tourney. It closes by noting that Moser is still without a tourney appearance or winning conference record at OU.

All you wannabe journalists are welcome to check it out and offer your critiques of the manner in which it was written. I’m sure some of you will still question whether the writer knows anything about our roster, even though he names several of the incoming transfers. One funny thing is that he doesn’t even mention Wague … that seems to show how irrelevant he is, seeing as how it is an SEC writer who wrote the piece.
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Kyle Tucker's opinion is exactly that. His opinion. I fully expect him to be knowledgeable about Kentucky basketball and the SEC while still having fairly average knowledge about teams outside of it.

All I need to know about sports writers is watching them talk about OU and Texas football like they are experts and not even knowing we had 7 NCs and just as many Heisman winners...then not knowing we are closet to DFW than Austin is.

I like how you take a beat writers opinion as golden but act like CoachTalk and others who coach for a living as not having relevant opinions.

We may be 15th in the league....or we may be 10th or better....who knows? But that won't be decided by one beatwriter in July.

You'll be glad to know I thought our post recruiting was horrendous. I thought the process was botched early then recovered "OK". I'm ok if PM gets fired after this year. But still holding out hope we are better than people think.
 
NorthCarolinaSooner said:
Kyle Tucker's opinion is exactly that. His opinion. I fully expect him to be knowledgeable about Kentucky basketball and the SEC while still having fairly average knowledge about teams outside of it.

All I need to know about sports writers is watching them talk about OU and Texas football like they are experts and not even knowing we had 7 NCs and just as many Heisman winners...then not knowing we are closet to DFW than Austin is.

I like how you take a beat writers opinion as golden but act like CoachTalk and others who coach for a living as not having relevant opinions.

We may be 15th in the league....or we may be 10th or better....who knows? But that won't be decided by one beatwriter in July.

You'll be glad to know I thought our post recruiting was horrendous. I thought the process was botched early then recovered "OK". I'm ok if PM gets fired after this year. But still holding out hope we are better than people think.
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Why would I think a high school basketball coach has more knowledge about college basketball than someone who covers college basketball nationally for a living? Guys like Tucker and CJ Moore and the national writers for ESPN and CBS watch several hundreds of games a year. They break down tape. They attend practices. They talk to coaches and assistants and scouts. I have watched every OU game going back more years than I can remember, and watch far more games of other teams than 95 percent of the population. Yet that isn’t even close to putting me on the same level as national reporters. If you were to ask me to name Georgia’s roster right now, I wouldn’t be able to name a single guy, let alone their starting lineup and key reserves. I’m pretty sure the same is true of Coach and every person on this board unless they google it. So yeah, we are all absolutely entitled to our opinions. But I’ll continue to put more stock in the opinions of guys with a much greater knowledge base. Same reason I trust an accountant over a car mechanic when it comes to taxes, or a plumber over a lawyer when it comes to fixing a sink.

It’s just interesting to me that no matter how many national writers and reporters write about how bad our offseason was and how bad our team is likely to be, some of the people on here continue to (a) bash the writing ability of the author, (b) pretend that the author doesn’t actually know anything about the sport or OU in general, or (c) act like it’s just a lone wolf. If you can find any national writers speaking well of us, I’d be more than willing to read those. But from what I’ve seen, the only people in that camp are people like Lusk, who is probably still waiting at a draft party for McCollum to be picked.
 
WichitaSooner said:
Why would I think a high school basketball coach has more knowledge about college basketball than someone who covers college basketball nationally for a living? Guys like Tucker and CJ Moore and the national writers for ESPN and CBS watch several hundreds of games a year. They break down tape. They attend practices. They talk to coaches and assistants and scouts. I have watched every OU game going back more years than I can remember, and watch far more games of other teams than 95 percent of the population. Yet that isn’t even close to putting me on the same level as national reporters. If you were to ask me to name Georgia’s roster right now, I wouldn’t be able to name a single guy, let alone their starting lineup and key reserves. I’m pretty sure the same is true of Coach and every person on this board unless they google it. So yeah, we are all absolutely entitled to our opinions. But I’ll continue to put more stock in the opinions of guys with a much greater knowledge base. Same reason I trust an accountant over a car mechanic when it comes to taxes, or a plumber over a lawyer when it comes to fixing a sink.

It’s just interesting to me that no matter how many national writers and reporters write about how bad our offseason was and how bad our team is likely to be, some of the people on here continue to (a) bash the writing ability of the author, (b) pretend that the author doesn’t actually know anything about the sport or OU in general, or (c) act like it’s just a lone wolf. If you can find any national writers speaking well of us, I’d be more than willing to read those. But from what I’ve seen, the only people in that camp are people like Lusk, who is probably still waiting at a draft party for McCollum to be picked.
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Most reporters are not much more familiar with teams outside of their region than most active fans. They'll watch some games but they aren't spending hours breaking down film and watching hours of games. You are giving some of these guys way too much credit. Most of them watch all the games for whoever their beat is (i.e. SEC beat writer....or Kentucky beat writer, etc). All you have to do is read the opinion of some of these guys and know they rarely watch much, if any stuff on other teams. (I.e. the reporter who had no idea OU had 7 Heisman winners, nor how many NCs they had) to know they haven't done a lot of extensive research.

Now there are some that are exceptional and very thorough but stop with the idea that they all are super knowledgeable about teams all across the country. MOST simply are guys who know quite a bit about their area but have a very regional bias.
 
NorthCarolinaSooner said:
Most reporters are not much more familiar with teams outside of their region than most active fans. They'll watch some games but they aren't spending hours breaking down film and watching hours of games. You are giving some of these guys way too much credit. Most of them watch all the games for whoever their beat is (i.e. SEC beat writer....or Kentucky beat writer, etc). All you have to do is read the opinion of some of these guys and know they rarely watch much, if any stuff on other teams. (I.e. the reporter who had no idea OU had 7 Heisman winners, nor how many NCs they had) to know they haven't done a lot of extensive research.

Now there are some that are exceptional and very thorough but stop with the idea that they all are super knowledgeable about teams all across the country. MOST simply are guys who know quite a bit about their area but have a very regional bias.
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I have no idea what the football example is that you’re citing. I don’t doubt you, but have no clue how it’s relevant to this discussion. Yes, there are hacks in every profession. But none of the articles I have posted have been written by guys like that. And even you acknowledge that guys do know quite a bit about their own beat, so an SEC writer clearly has a pretty good feel for how the teams in the conference stack up against each other. It’s also worth noting that we almost always came in near the bottom of the preseason projections in the Big 12 the past three seasons in most of these publications, and I’d say that proved accurate.
 
This is actually some good discussion, albeit minus both sides taking shots at one another. (Yes, both sides)

So here are some datapoints to help with the bet.

Using my scoring system, here are the scores for the starting lineups of every SEC team (will need to verify I have all players right, but this was done prior to the end of the transfer portal window, so I may be off):

TeamStarting Lineup Score Avg
1​
Auburn
60.2​
2​
Arkansas
58.5​
3​
Texas
57.9​
4​
Kentucky
57.7​
5​
Oklahoma
57.2​
6​
Ole Miss
56.8​
7​
Florida
56.4​
8​
Vanderbilt
56.3​
9​
Mississippi St
55.3​
10​
Alabama
54.8​
11​
Missouri
54.0​
12​
Tennessee
53.8​
13​
Texas A&M
53.3​
14​
South Carolina
52.4​
15​
LSU
51.1​
16​
Georgia
43.5​

Goodine, Miles, Moore, Godwin, and Jones for us...again, Uzan and Oweh played pretty meh based on their scores last year. I think fit matters more, but we downgraded in athleticism and not addressing Godwin's replacement body is/was annoying.

Here are the KenPom finishing scores over the last 4 years (sorted by average over 4 v. SEC teams):
Team
2024​
2023​
2022​
2021​
average KP
Tennessee
5​
6​
9​
28​
12​
Alabama
14​
4​
28​
9​
13.75​
Texas
25​
5​
15​
26​
17.75​
Kentucky
23​
27​
6​
49​
26.25​
Auburn
4​
32​
12​
60​
27​
Arkansas
108​
22​
18​
18​
41.5​
Oklahoma
46​
54​
30​
39​
42.25​
Florida
26​
74​
59​
41​
50​
Mississippi St.
34​
53​
49​
67​
50.75​
Texas A&M
35​
33​
33​
137​
59.5​
LSU
95​
151​
21​
24​
72.75​
Mississippi
86​
122​
108​
51​
91.75​
Missouri
145​
57​
137​
47​
96.5​
Vanderbilt
183​
81​
64​
104​
108​
South Carolina 6
54​
221​
99​
124​
124.5​
Georgia
84​
154​
219​
95​
138​

Keep in mind, OU had a harder schedule than most of the SEC teams as well. I think saying OU finished bottom of the SEC is quite a stretch. Considering that the worst year we had, we would have been 9th in the SEC (2023).

SEC teams to finish 100+ in KenPom the last 4 years...

2024 - 3
2023 - 4
2022 - 3
2021 - 3

Since 1997, OU has only finished lower than 75th in KenPom 3 times. 2010-2012 the transition from Capel-Capel to Kruger.

Teams that finished lower than 75th in the SEC in the last 4 years...

2024 - 6
2023 - 5 (one at 74)
2022 - 4
2021 - 4

I am not saying that OU is a better team than last year. I am citing that I think it is unlikely, given our history and roster that we have a worse finish/outcome than 2023 where we finished 15-17 and 54th in KenPom.

If you say bottom 4, I think you are just stealing whatever from @WichitaSooner . I fair bet would be top half v. bottom half. Then at least both sides are sweating it more.
 
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