Why Mason-Griffin left Oklahoma >>> Fox News/Houston

[mattham4]

but we still gotta back TMG's decision

Ummm, no we don't

"accept", sure "back" not at all

 

[ousooners1baby]

I feel the way as most others with a mix of neutral in there. Make sense? neither does being the teams big brother. You have to allow a relationship to grow; you also have to have someone think they are letting you down. These players, like TMG, obviously did not care about letting anyone down but themselves.

I wish him luck and hope we never have to watch another player like him on our Sooner squad. I enjoyed his offense before I found out he was leaving the team. Then to find out everyone knew after the CU game just blew me away. He would have never seen the court for me after that. What would our record have been if he did not play after that game?

 

[BigTime]

Some folks just aren't cut out for college. TMG was going to have to be at least a 3 year guy to get drafted (most likely a 4 year guy). If you want to blame someone, blame Coach Capel. He recruited him knowing full well where TMG came from and what he stood for...

I wish Tommy success in his pursuit of professional basketball. I have little doubts that he will be able to play somewhere and make a good living. I would have loved to see him play with Blake as we would have been treated to some amazing alley-oops and great passes.

 

[Edmond_Sooner]

Good luck TMG...

You were fun to watch while you were here...

I dont think we every see him in the NBA, but i hope he gets a shot in a camp...we will probably see him in the summer league at least...

 

[Edmond_Sooner]

I am disturbed as well by the Big Brother comment...

Just very weird to hear that from a player towards a coach, i dont think i have ever seen an ex-player ever reference their coach in that manner...I had asst coaches where i had that type of relationship with, but never a head coach...

 

[Big Old Booger]

Some folks just aren't cut out for college. TMG was going to have to be at least a 3 year guy to get drafted (most likely a 4 year guy). If you want to blame someone, blame Coach Capel. He recruited him knowing full well where TMG came from and what he stood for...

I wish Tommy success in his pursuit of professional basketball. I have little doubts that he will be able to play somewhere and make a good living. I would have loved to see him play with Blake as we would have been treated to some amazing alley-oops and great passes.

Are you saying Capel knew before TMG signed with OU that TMG would probably be in Norman for only 1 year?

This certainly goes against what Capel said on Friday and in the interview with the sports blitz.

 

[Big Old Booger]

I feel the way as most others with a mix of neutral in there. Make sense? neither does being the teams big brother. You have to allow a relationship to grow; you also have to have someone think they are letting you down. These players, like TMG, obviously did not care about letting anyone down but themselves.

I wish him luck and hope we never have to watch another player like him on our Sooner squad. I enjoyed his offense before I found out he was leaving the team. Then to find out everyone knew after the CU game just blew me away. He would have never seen the court for me after that. What would our record have been if he did not play after that game?

I agree. Some on here say Capel wouldn't have been able to recruit if he'd done that, but I disagree. I'd agree it might hurt his chances of signing players good enough to be a "one and done", but we've only had 1 of those and he even stayed 2 years.

 

[playmakr]

Are you saying Capel knew before TMG signed with OU that TMG would probably be in Norman for only 1 year?

This certainly goes against what Capel said on Friday and in the interview with the sports blitz.

And it goes against his comments during the presser.

 

[CokeSooner]

I wish him luck and hope we never have to watch another player like him on our Sooner squad. I enjoyed his offense before I found out he was leaving the team. Then to find out everyone knew after the CU game just blew me away. He would have never seen the court for me after that. What would our record have been if he did not play after that game?

Capel knew Blake would be leaving after last season. Calipari knew Rose, Wall, and others would be leaving after their seasons. Martin knew Beasley would be leaving, Barnes knew Durant would be leaving. You'd have benched all them too?

TMG left for the same reason as all of them. Just because he's not a top 10 pick shouldn't change anything.

 

[OULad]

I wish him luck, i think its a bad decision. I dont hate TMG, i am just disappointed on how his time here turned out.

 

[Big Old Booger]

Capel knew Blake would be leaving after last season. Calipari knew Rose, Wall, and others would be leaving after their seasons. Martin knew Beasley would be leaving, Barnes knew Durant would be leaving. You'd have benched all them too?

TMG left for the same reason as all of them. Just because he's not a top 10 pick shouldn't change anything.

You make a good point. The difference is we lost 9 games in a row and finished 13-18 and looked ugly doing it. Seems to me like at some point, you start preparing for the future and you start playing players that will return next year.

The players you mentioned were all on elite 8 or final 4 teams, except Beasley (and maybe Durant) but both their teams did advance to the NCAA tournament. That's a big difference from what we did.

 

[CokeSooner]

You make a good point. The difference is we lost 9 games in a row and finished 13-18 and looked ugly doing it. Seems to me like at some point, you start preparing for the future and you start playing players that will return next year.

The players you mentioned were all on elite 8 or final 4 teams, except Beasley (and maybe Durant) but both their teams did advance to the NCAA tournament. That's a big difference from what we did.

In effect though, you'd be punishing him for his decision. He'd go from 40 minutes a game to non starter minutes because he wanted to go pro after the season, for whatever reason. That just isn't right.

 

[Sooner Quick]

Capel knew Blake would be leaving after last season. Calipari knew Rose, Wall, and others would be leaving after their seasons. Martin knew Beasley would be leaving, Barnes knew Durant would be leaving. You'd have benched all them too?

TMG left for the same reason as all of them. Just because he's not a top 10 pick shouldn't change anything.

Great point Coke. You can't just stop playing him, especially when we had no other PG to prep much less play without WW. Capel had no choice but to play him, you still wanna win and some of those games we were in close late in the 2nd half.

 

[jmizzy4ou]

Capel knew Blake would be leaving after last season. Calipari knew Rose, Wall, and others would be leaving after their seasons. Martin knew Beasley would be leaving, Barnes knew Durant would be leaving. You'd have benched all them too?

TMG left for the same reason as all of them. Just because he's not a top 10 pick shouldn't change anything.

Excellent post Coke. If we should be mad at anyone, it should be the people who make the rules which govern NCAA Hoops. It is a new thing for Sooner fans because we have not had many guys who could play one yr and then leave. I gurantee that if football allowed 1 and done players, we would have seen countless Sooners in Norman for 1 yr and then they would be gone to the NFL.

Schools who have bigtime traditions had to know that it would be a problem immediately after the 1 yr rule was placed. If OU is going to recruit with the Carolinas/Kansas'/Kentucky's of the hoops world, then we will have to live with 1 and done kids unless the NCAA revises the rule.

You don't bench a guy because he says he is going pro. You do bench a guy for lack of effort/bad attitude/missing practice/etc. Throughout Blake's last yr here he never committed to being 100% sure that he would leave. At least he didn't publicly. If he had done so, he would have still been out main guy, and we would have wanted it that way. I remember when we were going through our terrible stretch this past season, WW was injured, and the other young guys were struggling, TMG was our main offensive threat, not to mention that he was our only ballhandler. Coach Capel never threw in the towel and gave up on the season. He was still trying to win games, and benching TMG would not have helped him do that at all.

I will also say that most coaches believe that they can convince a young man to stick around even if the youngster is leaning towards leaving. I'm sure that Capel believed that he could keep TMG around. Of course a player like Blake, the coach should tell him to move on, but guys like TMG are usually told to stick around.

 

[SilliSooner]

I hope both TMG and WW make it in the NBA. Contrary to whatever, that helps Oklahoma. At the first of the year, during pre-season practices Capel said that TMG was the best player on the floor. That was at a time when we had a healthy WW and Tony Crocker. I think he'll make it. Good luck to him.

 

[OKUman]

I think the team over in Enid can use him

 

[afaSooner]

I'm a Tommy Mason-Griffin fan. I hope he lands in the NBA somewhere. The more players Jeff Capel lands in the NBA the better.

 

[Top Dog]

afasooner -

I hope that you are right. It is a shame that the kid feels as though he needs to bear the burden of the family when he could clearly improve his stock by coming back...

 

[ousooners1baby]

THat is an absolute great rebuttal. I guess I still feel that TMG had a different perspective of the team than Blake. Maybe it was no different than Rose's though. I don't know. I am so confused at the condition of our hoops program I could gag. I also want someone to blame.