re: MBB Offseason '26 Transfer Portal / HS Tracker

Boom!!!

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His mistake would be not re-recruiting the roster as a baseline to building a team.

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He did re-recruit the ones worth paying for, some others just decided to pay a lot more

I will say $3M for Nwoko now sounds not as ridiculous as it was a few weeks ago, prices have escalated way more than I thought they would. Definitely on the exponential scale each year it seems now

So with just the reality of the pairing without stats first. You have a 6’0 170lb guard in Thomas from UNLV a once proud program that has fallen on hard times. He was the leading scorer on one of the worst offensive teams in college basketball. He is not athletic for his small stature. Is best described as the liability of liabilities on defense. Then you pair him with Mackinnon who is a 6’5 190lb flame throwing guard coming from Elon and Portland. He is not athletic nor does he play bigger than his size. But he is even more anemic on defense than Thomas but cant use being 6’0 160lb for an excuse.


They both averaged 15ppg and about 2.5 boards, Thomas put up really good assist numbers and is pretty good in space and pace. However when they stepped up into SEC play their numbers drop like a rock. Their EFG went down a lot, in conference play Mackinnon shot under 40% from the field. But both had their 3pt percentages get a lot worse with usage factored in, so Mackinnon in non con shot about 38% that’s pretty good. In conference it drops to 33%, Thomas 3pt% stayed about the same regardless but both shot more in the SEC. But both shoot great from the FT line in SEC play, neither one of them get to the line though. And of course most SEC players numbers and advanced metrics will generally take a hit, step up in competition, more true road games, and generally more focused and prepared scouting. But Thomas and Mackinnon’s drop way more compared to not even every backcourt in the SEC just the bottom 5 teams ahead of us.

The 5 schools ahead of us in the standings they are bad teams but atleast they had competent backcourts. Every one of them has larger tandems in size, more athletic, more experienced as in if they were transferred they came from big programs. Couldn’t be much worse defensively than Thomas and Mackinnon but not only are those 5 backcourts better defensively they aren’t so bad that most teams best day offensively is against them. 4 of those 5 teams backcourts had their best SEC single game performances offensively against LSU.

But again he did it for 3 years. Like we just got Bashir who is a 6’7 guard from Kansas State. I mean that alone is enough.

Outside of maybe Miller though, they don’t fit in a Wade system at all. Different coach and player fits but also money wise they were the worst team in the SEC, so you would be paying more to keep them for an expected growth where? I actually would have liked to have kept Miller and maybe another.

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Outside of maybe Miller though, they don’t fit in a Wade system at all.

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Not true at all. Thomas and Reece are guards that resemble past players in Wade’s system. Irregardless, he’s currently at the mercy at what’s available. You can’t really recruit to a system at this point anyway.

Agreed, try and go get the best available talent that’s left. Very interested to see if Hampton will reclassify would be sweet.

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You put Thomas as the starting point guard on this team with Bashir and potentially a burks or graves, he'd probably average 6+ assist a game

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That’s not a stretch considering he averaged 6.5 last season lol.