re: Whats our starting 5 next year w/ Malik Newman?

The 3 would be by far our best players so they will start

Blakeney 6'6 SG what a shooter
Newman 6'3 PG but can shoot lights out
Simmons 6'9 F The best player ever/high school
Victor 6'8 F
Epps 6'9 F

Backups

Quarterman 6'6 G/F
Hornsby 6'4 SG
Patterson 6'1 SG
Gray 6'1 PG
Malone 7'0 C
Robinson 7'1 C
Bridgewater 6'5 F

I went with Epps over TQ because we need another tall player to match up but he comes off the bench and plays as much or more than Epps/Victor. Epps is an ex high jumper and will get some of the blocks / rebounds we will lose from Mickey's output.

Very good athletic starting five with 4 McDonalds All Americans, the best 2 shooters that I have seen come out of high school in a long time and Ben Simmons who is High School player of the year and better than Kobe, Lebron, MJ, and Magic out of high school.

Actually the 7 listed back ups have talent and experience enough to replace some of the starters to where they can compete at high levels. You wonder that with Mickey and Martin we probably have the best team in the NCAA next year and would have been a lock for Elite 8 / Final 4 but they are not here. Even without them this team looks good on paper, and if the big 3 newcomers play like the past Kentucky freshmen, we will have a team that goes 24-6 and makes a long run into the tournament. What will make us a lose a few games that we are more talented is fatigue from the freshmen as they are not used to the grind of college, flights/hotel, overall traveling... But when they have their legs hardly any teams will be able to stay with their overall talent, shooting ability, etc...

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Some people think it's preposterous that you would start 3 freshman and send returning starters to the bench.

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Maybe the starting returners should declare for the draft as well. Start the freshman, they may not be here very long.

Hornsby will start. You need leadership on the floor with a completely new starting 5. Especially early in the season.

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Hornsby will not be coming off the bench.

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If Malik comes he will. Who is he going to start over? If 4 of your starting 5 are Victor, Simmons, Blakenly, and Newman, your 5th is Quarterman. You don't need another shooter in that rotation. You have 2 excellent shooters in Blakenly and Newman. Hornsby absolutely comes off the bench to provide an outside shooting threat when Blakenly or Newman sits.

newman blakeney hornsby simmons robinson

all robinson has to do is protect the rim get rebounds and stay out of the way on offense

I think the starting 5 next year is:

PG: Malik Newman
SG: Antonio Blakeney
SF: Tim Quarterman
PF: Benny Simmons
C: Craig Victor

At times I think we could go with a 4 guard lineup to give the forwards some rest, especially if we don't see a lot of improvement from Epps (who I think has to move to PF due to depth), Robinson, or Malone.

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If Malik comes he will. Who is he going to start over? If 4 of your starting 5 are Victor, Simmons, Blakenly, and Newman, your 5th is Quarterman. You don't need another shooter in that rotation. You have 2 excellent shooters in Blakenly and Newman. Hornsby absolutely comes off the bench to provide an outside shooting threat when Blakenly or Newman sits.

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Hornsby starts over Blakeney

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It sucks sending returning starters to the bench but fact is

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not really. We haven't done anything in basketball. Those freshman better start.

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Best guess. . Newman Blakeney Quarterman Simmons Victor

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That's possible but I believe Hornsby will continue to start. He brings the Senior leadership desperately needed and no one out hustles him, not to mention he's nearly a 40% 3 point shooter. If Newman does come, I'd predict he will start alongside TQ and Hornsby and Blakeney will provide instant offense off the bench along with Patterson.

With all this being said about lineups and depth at the perimeter positions, I would hope Johnny goes back to full court pressing teams throughout the game. Had a lot of success with that last year. All these players could go hard exerting energy and Quarterman's length would be the key on the opposition in bounding the ball. Only concern would be the bigs being able to do it as well because we are thin. But if you do a four guard lineup then that's not a big concern with Simmons and Victor playing the 5 spot when pressing.

Tons of steals, fast breaks, alleys, SC highlights... Run and gun is the way to go next year, it's just the type of bigs we have outside of Victor may not be able to keep up, thus we would be playing 4 against 5, but our 4 would be damn good.