covtgr

Burrell crushed that ball in the 6th with the bases loaded. Thank God the wind was whipping in. What an awesome day.

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I'll admit to being slightly alarmed by the complete silence on portal additions. Then I saw this tweet from last night. Will Wade and Damon Stoudamire in attendance at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament. If unaware, this is a tournament where college seniors (and only college seniors) showcase for NBA and international scouts. That's a strange place for your head coach and his assistant to be during a critical period of time trying to build next season's roster.

But when taking this into consideration, it starts to make sense -
Delly

It's quite a gamble, because you are counting on the NCAA ruling (somewhat quickly) that any 4 year senior receives another year of eligibility...and get a standalone portal window after the current window closes next week. It seems likely that will happen, but the exact timeframe is unknown and there are no guarantees.

However, if these 4 year seniors become eligible for next season, the market will be inundated with high value guys. A lot of schools aren't going to have money left. The price should be significantly cheaper than what is being reported for underclassmen in the portal right now with less demand. It seems to me Will Wade thinks this is going to happen and is reserving capital so he can aggressively go after college seniors that would much rather get paid for another season of college basketball vs go overseas or hope to get picked up by an nba team but more likely end up in the G league.

I looked at the box score of the game he attended last night. Here are some guys that have only played 4 years of college ball:
Mark Mitchell - Missouri - 18.3ppg / 5.2rpg
AJ Storr - Ole Miss - 15.5 ppg / 3.1 rpg
Devin McGlockton - Vandy - 9.5ppg / 6.8rpg
Quadir Copeland - NC State - 13.9ppg / 3.6rpg / 6.5apg
Anthony Roy - Oklahoma St - 16.9 ppg / 4.1 rpg
Solomon Washington (from NOLA) - Maryland - 9.8ppg / 9.2 rpg
Ven-Allen Lubin - NC State - 13.6ppg / 7.1 rpg

This was just one game. There are multiple teams playing up there with guys carrying similar credentials.

We obviously want to add some younger guys but if this rule is passed, there are going to be dozens of guys that would easily fall in any top 100 portal prospect list if they were available right now. Seems to me they are gambling that these players are going to be available and are positioning their money to clean up once it happens.

Sounds like Graves is LSU vs Duke. What a massive land that would be if Wade can reel him in. Obvious concern there is he proceeds with NBA draft process, rises up the boards, and your biggest fish never shows up.

Johnson has off the charts athleticism. Massive hops. Can’t imagine Wade won’t be very interested.

He wore his baseball uniform with helmet to punt. Was a fun day with my Grandad attending both.

I followed them closely. A couple things -

They needed a rim protector badly and just didn't have one. There was a foreign guy that committed and something fell through with NIL and the kid went to Kansas. Don't think he made much of a contribution there, but probably would have been valuable to NC State. Wade runs a 1-5 switching defense where everyone has to be able to guard everyone. If you don't have a big that can clean up around the rim it can create some mismatches and leave you vulnerable on the boards. They gave up a ton of second chance points.

Their biggest acquisition was a guy named Darrion Williams from Texas Tech that was the #2/#3 option for Texas Tech and everyone thought was ready to be a total star. He was the preseason player of the year in the ACC...when you had guys like Boozer at Duke and Caleb Williams at UNC. That didn't pan out. He had a decent season, but not nearly the level they were expecting. It was a miss.

Like people said, the team lost games in pre conference they could have won, then got hot, but then collapsed down the stretch. They still made the tournament and certainly could have won multiple games considering UT beat them at the buzzer and then went to the sweet 16. Wade did not hide his dislike for the team and basically called them a bunch of soft nice guys.I would expect a much tougher team next season because he's not going to want to deal with a soft group again.

I’m gonna continue being excited as hell. Thanks though.

Mulkey loves Will Wade. She probably didn’t know if anything was official and obviously it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment if not. Plus she is preparing for a sweet 16 game. Nothingburger.

Williams is out of eligibility.

Arceneaux didn't work out, he won't be coming.

I'm sure he'll try to bring McNeil, but he's a North Carolina guy, so could be tough.

NC State people thought Able was transferring before all this took place, so I would also doubt he comes.

Raleigh is burning right now. Don't think anyone is going to want to wait until April. In everyone's best interest to go ahead with the $3 million right now.