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It's not necessarily about landing the #3 player in the portal or something, but in the end, McMahon has to get players who can play and play well over a lot of minutes.

I think Carter can play well in 20-25 minutes per game. It just may not be on the offensive end...which is not the ONLY end of the floor teams have to play. In fact, I'd argue it's more important to be better on the defensive end. So just because he may not be an incredibly efficient scorer doesn't mean he can't have a big impact on the game.

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It's not like he can be picky and only take 2 or 3 guys from the portal and wait things out for a 2 or 3 really good players. He is probably taking bare minimum 4 if not 5-6 guys this cycle once again from the portal.

You aren't going to get 5-6 "stars" from the portal. No one is. Some guys are going to have to be more role players

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Step up your game, increase your search and land a good player that isnt necessarily very high on everyone's radar, or get in with someone really early on and put the full court press on them. We cant just settle for a bunch of mid-tier talent in this portal season or we'll keep getting the same results over and over basically.

I don't think McMahon is not trying. LSU is just a tough sell right now. Certainly it's because of his performance to date. But you have to really get some momentum rolling to really attract the big time players.

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Wade didnt get to play the portal game long here but he made sure Tari Eason was coming here as soon as he hit the portal and it sure wouldnt surprise me if we had a lot of contact prior to him hitting the portal because Wade knew a ton about him very early on.

That's not true at all. Eason entered the portal shortly after the mutiny at Cincinnati in mid-march. He didn't decide to transfer to LSU until over a month later. Wade himself said he didn't know Eason before he entered the portal. However, the analytic service that Wade used at the time to evaluate portal player came back with data that evaluated Eason as a guy with All-Conference potential. That piqued Wade's interest. He then tried to figure out if there was any connection to Louisiana or LSU. That's a HUGE part of recruiting. Which is why you saw a lot of LA players transfer to LSU last season. Eason played HS ball in Seattle. LSU didn't recruit him out of HS. However, Wade soon learned that Eason had at one point lived with LSU signee Bradley Ezewiro in California for a brief period. Something Wade didn't know until he started looking to recruit Eason...AFTER Eason entered the portal. It wasn't some pre-portal recruiting coup by Wade. It was the good fortune of having a guy on the team that had a prior relationship with Eason.

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Gotta be aggressive like that. Still a lot of teams playing in postseason games not totally focused on the portal and thats when you can focus all your attention on someone like Clifford Omoruyi or Malik Mack and try and land them before many other schools even get a chance to get them on campus.

Look, I've been highly critical of McMahon. But I'm sure he knows of several players likely enter the portal...before they enter. McMahon talked about going to Nashville very soon after Wright entered the portal.

So yes, McMahon does need to get impact players from the portal. But to expect it's going to be 4 of the top 30 players or something like that is foolish. There hopefully will be a few "stars" along with some key experienced role players. Carter can be one of those role players while to continue to work for "stars"

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Posted by thunderbird1100

GSU Eagles fan

Member since Oct 2007

69125 posts

Posted on 3/27/24 at 10:28 am to Alt26

quote:
You aren't going to get 5-6 "stars" from the portal. No one is. Some guys are going to have to be more role players

I never said anything of the sort, so weird comment here. Just that if we are getting 4-5-6 players, we will wind up with a "carter" or two, but we really still need to find 3 really good players IMO. Carter is not one of those 3. So if he's a take, and we're taking say 5 from the portal, his list is narrowing quick of who he should be looking at for the other spots.

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I don't think McMahon is not trying. LSU is just a tough sell right now. Certainly it's because of his performance to date. But you have to really get some momentum rolling to really attract the big time players.

I mean this just seems like a cop out. Either you're good or you're not. We cant possibly still be blaming things on the now completely settled NCAA matter. McMahon went 9-9 this year in the conference which looks better than last year so it's not like he's trying to sell some bottom feeder. There are cases literally everywhere of teams getting turned around in year 1 and 2 with new coaches. We cant still be making excuses for McMahon in year 3, its just BS at that point. If he was better recruiting high school players, he wouldnt be in this position of having to take so many guys from the portal and needing most of them to be very good players. If he simply recruited a little bit more and better from high school early on we wouldnt still need to be leaning so heavily on the portal still going into next year. I dont mind leaning on the portal, but you still have to go out and get the players. If you strike out too much in high school recruiting and also portal recruiting, you get non-torunament teams, bottom line.

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But to expect it's going to be 4 of the top 30 players or something like that is foolish.

Again, not sure where you keep getting stuff like this, but nobody expects him to land 4 Top 30 (out of ultimately what, 1k-2k) players. But his predicament is exactly what it is, he needs to get 3 VERY good players out the portal. Also the portal rankings are so laughably bad, and rightfully so because trying to rank this many players so quickly is a really tough task to do especially when they come from so many different levels (mid major vs. major) and classes (Fr. vs. super senior). If you look at on3 transfer rankings, McMahon landed 2 Top 30 players just this past season in Cook and Stewart. Now we can look back and laugh hilariously anyone who would rank Carlos Stewart in the Top 30 basketball transfers, but that goes to show who really cares about the portal rankings because they really dont have a great clue about a lot of those guys.

Could care less where exactly they are ranked, but they have to be able to an SEC starter and play a lot of minutes and play very well. That's just the position he's put himself in. The only starters on the team next season returning should be Ward and maybe 1 out of Reed or Williams. And that's assuming either Reed or Williams take that next step needed. So that tells me we need 3 really good players out the portal, bottom line. No excuses can be made there, he's made his bed for what he needs to be successful in year 3, gotta get it done in the portal now.

This post was edited on 3/27/24 at 10:33 am

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