April 23, 2025 • 17 mins
College basketball analyst Evan Miyakawa joined us to discuss the roster moves for UC, Xavier, and Kentucky, roster construction in this era of college basketball, and much more.
Check out EvanMiya.com.
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Check out EvanMiya.com.
Podcasts of The Mo Egger Radio Show are a service of Longnecks Sports Grill.
Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.
Listen Live: ESPN1530.com/listen
Get more: https://linktr.ee/MoEgger
Follow on X: @MoEgger
Instagram too: @MoEgger
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your chance to win one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Enter this nationwide qward on our website. Man greed, that's greed.
Enter it now. What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Five O five ESPN fifteen thirty m oeg. Thank you
for joining us. Read one today five to two. More
on that and more on the draft which is tomorrow night.
I was thinking about this over the weekend. We have
like an off season in college basketball now, and there's
there's been obviously a lot of goings, a lot of cummings,
(00:31):
been some big transfer portal news for UC, Richard Patino
obviously trying to fill out a roster, and Xavier Kentucky
spending reportedly twenty million dollars on Mark Pope's second team
in Lexington. And and so I was thinking over the weekend,
you know, I'm more interested in roster construction that I
am just looking at the individual profile of some of
(00:53):
these players, or you know, trying to figure out how
they might fit in at the next level if they're
jumping up a level, or you know that sort of thing.
And so I started to think about Evan Miakawa, who
has been on this show and is an awesome college
basketball analyst. Evanmia dot com. He actually has a post
that he put up earlier today how to build a
college basketball roster in twenty twenty five, And I was thinking,
(01:15):
I want to get Evan on just to talk about
how some area schools are building their roster and maybe
how we should start to formulate opinions for the upcoming
season for some of those schools. So Evan, we reached out.
He said yes, and now he's here. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Glad to be here. And like you mentioned, you know,
with all of this transfer portal movement that we have
seen this off season more than ever, I think the
question of how do you build a roster as you know,
a high major in this day and age to you know,
have championship level or Final four aspiration? Well, what is
the best way to do that? Because there's more avenues
(01:55):
than ever for recruiting, but not all of them are
the right one, and so it's really important to get
that right.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, there's assembling a collection of talent and there's building
a roster. And so you know, I go back to
UC last year and you and I talked about him
early in the season. There was a pretty nice collection
of talent. The team itself didn't gel, the pieces didn't fit.
I think there's a lot of folks who looked at
where some of the players who left UC went scratch
their heads, and I go, those are really good individual players.
(02:21):
The collection of parts didn't add up to as much
as maybe we would have liked. It's about roster construction
and team building and less so much about an accumulation
of talent. You want talented players, but that's not necessarily
constructing a good roster.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah. Well, basically, what my analysis in my study from
the last four years has shown is that obviously the
most important thing that a team can do in building
a roster is getting more talented players. You're always going
to want a more talented player over a less talented player.
I think that goes without saying. And so that's why
a team like Duke this year, who was you know,
(02:58):
mostly reliant on these you know, freshmen that were new
as well as some transfers, could still be successful enough
to be arguably the best team we saw this season
make a Final four, and you know, they came up
a little bit short of what they were capable of,
but it's because they have three lottery picks on their roster.
And a bunch of other players who are really really good.
But outside of that, the teams that have been the
(03:20):
most successful the last several years in this day and
age where you can retooled entire roster from scratch if
you want, is the teams that have focused on retaining
the key players that they had from the previous team
that were really good and really important, and then adding
a couple key new faces beat us through the transfer
(03:41):
portal or through the high school ranks in order to
raise the talent level on that roster, but the bulk
of the minutes on that team, over fifty percent of
those minutes need to come from returning players. That's the
trend that we've seen for all of the last four
national champions is that a majority of their minutes have
been played by returning players. We saw that for the
other three teams in the final four this year outside
(04:02):
of Duke, they were all at seventy percent or more
in terms of percentage of minutes played by returners. And
so I really think when you're as a coaching staff
looking at your roster and saying, what is our strategy
for finding long term success? Step number one is to
raise the talent level. If you have a crappy team,
it's fine to let guys go and recruit better ones.
But when you're talking about, hey, our team was already
(04:23):
like pretty good last season, we're trying to get to
that next step, you don't want to overlook the guys
on your own roster and prioritizing bringing them back as
opposed to just saying, hey, we can let this guy walk,
we can replace him like to like, because a lot
of times those, you know, those cases are not quite
as successful as the teams that are built mostly around
having that continuity from the previous season.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So that was well said. Let's let's talk about some
area schools here specifically, understanding that nobody's roster is complete
right now. There are still there are still players out there,
there are still decisions to be made. Cincinnati and the
Bearcats have had but I think most would call a
productive week after maybe a slow start during the portal period.
(05:04):
What do you make of what the new GM, Corey
Evans and Wes Miller have done to the Bearcat roster?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah? Well, you know, one of the things that I
look at on my website is I rank every single
incoming transfer class just the same way that you would
do high school and looking at based on the both
the equality and quantity of the players that you've brought in,
how good is your talent that you've amassed a transfer
portal kind of compared to all these other teams. I
have Cincinnati sixteenth in the entire country in terms of
(05:33):
the quality of their incoming transfer class. That's second in
the Big twelve, and so I really like a lot
of the pieces that they brought in. I think the
player I'm the most high on is, you know, the
big man from UCF with Stoppa them who as a
freshman showed a ton of potential last year and now
you're getting him in his sophomore season, where a lot
of players like him can see an even bigger jump.
(05:55):
So if he's able to realize that potential, I mean,
he's one of the best, has one of the best
defensive grades of any player in the portal in terms
of his predicted kind of value that he's going to
bring on the defensive end. So I really like that.
It is disappointing that, you know, Cincinnati lost Dylan Mitchell
and Dan Skillings just because those are the types of
players that you know, Assuming that you still feel like
(06:17):
they are would be a valuable addition to your team
for the next year and fit with the culture and
all that stuff, which I don't have any information on,
but you know, those are the types of players that,
like man, if Cincinnati had been able to keep even
one of those guys, like the outlook for this team
in terms of next year already be even better than
where it is right now. Obviously, it's it's easier said
than done to retain players because there they can potentially
(06:40):
get more lucrative offers we elsewhere. That's just kind of
how it goes now.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Unfortunately, you're a man after my own heart because and
I don't feel quite the same way about Dan Skillings.
I kind of felt like I was ready to move
on Dylan Mitchell, and I think a lot of folks
looked at where he just went. You know, he's going
to play for Saint John's Rick Patino defending Biggie's champs
the two seed this year, and maybe I've taken another
look at his game. I thought, with a better constructed roster,
(07:05):
if he would have stayed at Cincinnati this year, he
could have been a He could have been more than
just an asset.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yes, I agree. I mean, Dylan Mitchell is a player
that I've always loved, and I think my analytical model
that looks at more than just your counting stats, but
it just also looks at while you were on the floor,
are you having an impact on your team's production. He
has been one of these players, going back to his
days at Texas who always had a bigger impact on
(07:32):
the game than people realize just from looking at his
individual stats. I mean, get this, when he was on
the court this year. Defensively this year for Cincinnati, they
were night and day a much better defensive team. Their
defense when he was on the court gave up seventeen
points fewer per one hundred possessions when he was on
the court versus on the bench. That amounts to the
(07:54):
difference between a fine, okay defense to a great defense
when he was on the court there, and I think
if you watch Cincinnati closely enough, you understood the impact
that he had even if he wasn't there, you know,
leading scorer, most efficient shooter, or anything like that. So
I do think it's a shame for them to lose him.
I think in terms of fit, like he the kind
of player that he is does really fit the type
(08:16):
of player that Rick Patino loves to use in kind
of his unique system at Saint John's. So I think
he will be successful there. But it's definitely a shame that,
you know, Cincinnati wasn't able to retain him for another year.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Evanmia dot Com is the website and by the way,
he has transfer class rankings which are are worth your
your attention. It's it's it's a different offseason at Xavier
with a new head coach and they go outside the family,
so to speak, for the first time in over two decades.
Give me an assessment of the way Richard Patino has
started to put together his first ever ROSTERODXU.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well, obviously, there's not really a lot of options in
terms of how you know, Richard Patino, you know, with
an entirely you know, potentially new squad with with all
these players leaving, you know, there's only so much power
that he has to kind of retain guys who are
on the team the previous year because he didn't have
a relationship with them, and so, you know, I think
it's one of these situations where it's like, hey, you
(09:11):
have to you know, retool rebuild an entire roster from
scraps through the portal. That's that's the only option you have,
and so the best that you can do is is,
you know, identify guys from the portal, you know, a
couple guys who can come with you from your previous
school what she's done, and then finding some other guys
who might be underrated potentially to kind of fill up
(09:31):
that roster. I do think generally speaking that it is
concerning for Xavier in year one with Richard Patino that
they are not going to have a single minute of
production returning from last year in terms of players who
played you know, minutes on the team. And we saw
I think six time majors this year this last season
(09:52):
who had exactly zero percent of their minutes returning. Only
two of them made the tournament, and that was Kentucky
and Louisville, who I think everyone would generally agree where
he had some outstanding coaching this year where they were
able to achieve more than maybe the sum of what
people thought was possible with the parts that they had.
But a lot of these other teams who were in
(10:13):
a similar boat were definitely disappointing and had higher hopes
than what they were able to do. So you know,
that is concerning to me, and I think there's not
really a lot you can do about that. You just
have to have, you know, a solid enough year one
that you can build on that hopefully retain some of
these guys the following year, and then you're really cooking
with gas. But this first year could be a bit
of an uphoke line.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So this might be a bit of a bizarre question.
In pro sports right which college basketball has become, we
could look at a player's statistical output, look at his age,
all those sort of things, and attach a general dollar,
you know, figure to what he's worth, maybe what you
would want to pay him. Have we started to be
(10:53):
able to do that in college basketball?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yes, And I'm actually doing that with my website this year,
which I think I'm the only public place that you
can find that. So basically, the way that this works
is the it's it's an easier task at the NBA
level because we have very defined rules about how much
can or can't be spent on players. We have salary caps,
we have all these we have minimum player amounts. In
(11:17):
college it is a much harder exercise to trying to
figure out how much a players should be worth, because
it's all dependent on this fluid, ever changing market of
how much players are going for. Based on kind of
the numbers that I've crunched in going rates for players
this year versus last year, the player this year or
last year who would have been worth about a million
(11:38):
dollars in the transfer portal, is going for about two
point five million dollars roughly speaking, this year. So we're
seeing a two hundred and fifty percent increase just in
just one season, from one season to the next. And
so the way that my tool works is basically my
model figures out, based on every single player's predicted production
for next year, how much they should be worth kind
(12:00):
of relative to other players in the country. And then
you as a coaching staff can use my tool and
actually put in data points of what represents the going
market rates for players. So if you're you know, let's
say you're the Xavier staff and you know what you're
paying a couple of your players, you could put those
exact dollar amounts in there. You could put in public
other publicly known or you know, suggested amounts for players,
(12:24):
and basically you put it as many as possible to
kind of represent where the market is at, and then
my model goes in and fills in how much every
other player in the country should be worth if they
were to play in college basketball next year based on
those going market rates. And so this tool has been
really helpful for teams this offseason in kind of, you know,
getting a lot closer to the ballpark of what they
(12:45):
should be playing players, because the reality is there is
so much inefficiency in this market where some guys are
going for more than a million dollars than what they
should be worth, even with these high market rates, just
because of you know them just you know, knocking on
people's doors and demanding more money. And the reality is
that the teams that are going to be the most
(13:06):
successful are the ones who are smart with their money,
make good investments, and that Austin can open up a
whole extra roster spot that they can give money to
instead of just burning it for one guy who maybe
won't be as productive as they think will be all.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Right, one more And again that was because I've struggled
with that. Right hear you hear in some of its conjecture,
you hear rumors of what a certain player is making
and I have said, like, I don't know, is that
a lot? Like I think we're still having a hard
time wrapping our brains around like what's good value for
you know, let's say a point guard who averages nine
(13:38):
points and four assists a game and at the big
twelve level, Like, I don't know, and so a tool
like that is exceptionally valuable. One more, and you mentioned
Kentucky and the job that Mark Pope did this past season.
Kentucky fans are really excited about the Portal Hall so far,
on top of the players who decided to not leave Lexington.
(13:59):
Give me a snap shot of Mark Pope's off season
as he gets set for year number two.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah. Well, obviously, I think the big, big storyline with
Kentucky has been the amount of money that they're willing
to have been willing to invest through the Portal, specifically
in you know, building off this roster. And so when
you look at their you know, potentially their their starting
lineup for next year, it's basically otega Oway, who was
a really solid shooting guard for them, and then the
(14:25):
rest of the lineup potentially in terms of starters, could
all be really high level transfers. When you look at
the overall amount of work that they've done in terms
of these five guys that they brought in, all of
them are really really quality pieces. And when you amass
all of that, I have Kentucky ranked second in the
country in terms of their incoming transfer class and second
(14:45):
overall in terms of transfer activity. So that's both looking
at the quality of guys they brought in through the
portal minusing out the quality of guys that they've lost
through the portal, and so all things considered, they've been really,
really good in this department. And I think, you know,
they they were left in a little bit of a
pickle with last year's roster because a lot of the
(15:07):
guys that they recruited last offseason when they completely rebuilt
that roster were guys who were only going to have
one year of eligibility left. So I think the only
player on that team, notable player really who you know,
could have played somewhat significant minutes for them this year,
but they you know, went left through the portal was Kerkresa,
(15:27):
who you know is in you know, in the Cincinnati
neck of the woods now. But outside of that, they've
kept all the key players from last year and They've
really really invested through the portal, and so I think
the the amassment of talent they have there has been
pretty impressive. And so yeah, they're not necessary. They didn't
have the option of having the same level of roster
continuity as some of these other teams, but they've they've
(15:49):
they've obviously kept the players they could, and they've gotten
a lot of really good guys for the portal. So
I'm really excited to see what happens there.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Awesome insight. Man. I can't thank you enough. We love
having you on. Have a great off season. I'm sure
we'll bother you as we get closer and closer. October Man,
thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, this is great, Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Good stuff. Evan mia Kay would check out his website.
Evan Miya, he is awesome. We are late, by the way.
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(16:27):
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(16:47):
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Your chance to win one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Enter this nationwide qward on our website. Man greed, that's greed.
Enter it now. What's that?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Five O five ESPN fifteen thirty m oeg. Thank you
for joining us. Read one today five to two. More
on that and more on the draft which is tomorrow night.
I was thinking about this over the weekend. We have
like an off season in college basketball now, and there's
there's been obviously a lot of goings, a lot of cummings,
(00:31):
been some big transfer portal news for UC, Richard Patino
obviously trying to fill out a roster, and Xavier Kentucky
spending reportedly twenty million dollars on Mark Pope's second team
in Lexington. And and so I was thinking over the weekend,
you know, I'm more interested in roster construction that I
am just looking at the individual profile of some of
(00:53):
these players, or you know, trying to figure out how
they might fit in at the next level if they're
jumping up a level, or you know that sort of thing.
And so I started to think about Evan Miakawa, who
has been on this show and is an awesome college
basketball analyst. Evanmia dot com. He actually has a post
that he put up earlier today how to build a
college basketball roster in twenty twenty five, And I was thinking,
(01:15):
I want to get Evan on just to talk about
how some area schools are building their roster and maybe
how we should start to formulate opinions for the upcoming
season for some of those schools. So Evan, we reached out.
He said yes, and now he's here. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Glad to be here. And like you mentioned, you know,
with all of this transfer portal movement that we have
seen this off season more than ever, I think the
question of how do you build a roster as you know,
a high major in this day and age to you know,
have championship level or Final four aspiration? Well, what is
the best way to do that? Because there's more avenues
(01:55):
than ever for recruiting, but not all of them are
the right one, and so it's really important to get
that right.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, there's assembling a collection of talent and there's building
a roster. And so you know, I go back to
UC last year and you and I talked about him
early in the season. There was a pretty nice collection
of talent. The team itself didn't gel, the pieces didn't fit.
I think there's a lot of folks who looked at
where some of the players who left UC went scratch
their heads, and I go, those are really good individual players.
(02:21):
The collection of parts didn't add up to as much
as maybe we would have liked. It's about roster construction
and team building and less so much about an accumulation
of talent. You want talented players, but that's not necessarily
constructing a good roster.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah. Well, basically, what my analysis in my study from
the last four years has shown is that obviously the
most important thing that a team can do in building
a roster is getting more talented players. You're always going
to want a more talented player over a less talented player.
I think that goes without saying. And so that's why
a team like Duke this year, who was you know,
(02:58):
mostly reliant on these you know, freshmen that were new
as well as some transfers, could still be successful enough
to be arguably the best team we saw this season
make a Final four, and you know, they came up
a little bit short of what they were capable of,
but it's because they have three lottery picks on their roster.
And a bunch of other players who are really really good.
But outside of that, the teams that have been the
(03:20):
most successful the last several years in this day and
age where you can retooled entire roster from scratch if
you want, is the teams that have focused on retaining
the key players that they had from the previous team
that were really good and really important, and then adding
a couple key new faces beat us through the transfer
(03:41):
portal or through the high school ranks in order to
raise the talent level on that roster, but the bulk
of the minutes on that team, over fifty percent of
those minutes need to come from returning players. That's the
trend that we've seen for all of the last four
national champions is that a majority of their minutes have
been played by returning players. We saw that for the
other three teams in the final four this year outside
(04:02):
of Duke, they were all at seventy percent or more
in terms of percentage of minutes played by returners. And
so I really think when you're as a coaching staff
looking at your roster and saying, what is our strategy
for finding long term success? Step number one is to
raise the talent level. If you have a crappy team,
it's fine to let guys go and recruit better ones.
But when you're talking about, hey, our team was already
(04:23):
like pretty good last season, we're trying to get to
that next step, you don't want to overlook the guys
on your own roster and prioritizing bringing them back as
opposed to just saying, hey, we can let this guy walk,
we can replace him like to like, because a lot
of times those, you know, those cases are not quite
as successful as the teams that are built mostly around
having that continuity from the previous season.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So that was well said. Let's let's talk about some
area schools here specifically, understanding that nobody's roster is complete
right now. There are still there are still players out there,
there are still decisions to be made. Cincinnati and the
Bearcats have had but I think most would call a
productive week after maybe a slow start during the portal period.
(05:04):
What do you make of what the new GM, Corey
Evans and Wes Miller have done to the Bearcat roster?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah? Well, you know, one of the things that I
look at on my website is I rank every single
incoming transfer class just the same way that you would
do high school and looking at based on the both
the equality and quantity of the players that you've brought in,
how good is your talent that you've amassed a transfer
portal kind of compared to all these other teams. I
have Cincinnati sixteenth in the entire country in terms of
(05:33):
the quality of their incoming transfer class. That's second in
the Big twelve, and so I really like a lot
of the pieces that they brought in. I think the
player I'm the most high on is, you know, the
big man from UCF with Stoppa them who as a
freshman showed a ton of potential last year and now
you're getting him in his sophomore season, where a lot
of players like him can see an even bigger jump.
(05:55):
So if he's able to realize that potential, I mean,
he's one of the best, has one of the best
defensive grades of any player in the portal in terms
of his predicted kind of value that he's going to
bring on the defensive end. So I really like that.
It is disappointing that, you know, Cincinnati lost Dylan Mitchell
and Dan Skillings just because those are the types of
players that you know, Assuming that you still feel like
(06:17):
they are would be a valuable addition to your team
for the next year and fit with the culture and
all that stuff, which I don't have any information on,
but you know, those are the types of players that,
like man, if Cincinnati had been able to keep even
one of those guys, like the outlook for this team
in terms of next year already be even better than
where it is right now. Obviously, it's it's easier said
than done to retain players because there they can potentially
(06:40):
get more lucrative offers we elsewhere. That's just kind of
how it goes now.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Unfortunately, you're a man after my own heart because and
I don't feel quite the same way about Dan Skillings.
I kind of felt like I was ready to move
on Dylan Mitchell, and I think a lot of folks
looked at where he just went. You know, he's going
to play for Saint John's Rick Patino defending Biggie's champs
the two seed this year, and maybe I've taken another
look at his game. I thought, with a better constructed roster,
(07:05):
if he would have stayed at Cincinnati this year, he
could have been a He could have been more than
just an asset.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yes, I agree. I mean, Dylan Mitchell is a player
that I've always loved, and I think my analytical model
that looks at more than just your counting stats, but
it just also looks at while you were on the floor,
are you having an impact on your team's production. He
has been one of these players, going back to his
days at Texas who always had a bigger impact on
(07:32):
the game than people realize just from looking at his
individual stats. I mean, get this, when he was on
the court this year. Defensively this year for Cincinnati, they
were night and day a much better defensive team. Their
defense when he was on the court gave up seventeen
points fewer per one hundred possessions when he was on
the court versus on the bench. That amounts to the
(07:54):
difference between a fine, okay defense to a great defense
when he was on the court there, and I think
if you watch Cincinnati closely enough, you understood the impact
that he had even if he wasn't there, you know,
leading scorer, most efficient shooter, or anything like that. So
I do think it's a shame for them to lose him.
I think in terms of fit, like he the kind
of player that he is does really fit the type
(08:16):
of player that Rick Patino loves to use in kind
of his unique system at Saint John's. So I think
he will be successful there. But it's definitely a shame that,
you know, Cincinnati wasn't able to retain him for another year.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Evanmia dot Com is the website and by the way,
he has transfer class rankings which are are worth your
your attention. It's it's it's a different offseason at Xavier
with a new head coach and they go outside the family,
so to speak, for the first time in over two decades.
Give me an assessment of the way Richard Patino has
started to put together his first ever ROSTERODXU.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well, obviously, there's not really a lot of options in
terms of how you know, Richard Patino, you know, with
an entirely you know, potentially new squad with with all
these players leaving, you know, there's only so much power
that he has to kind of retain guys who are
on the team the previous year because he didn't have
a relationship with them, and so, you know, I think
it's one of these situations where it's like, hey, you
(09:11):
have to you know, retool rebuild an entire roster from
scraps through the portal. That's that's the only option you have,
and so the best that you can do is is,
you know, identify guys from the portal, you know, a
couple guys who can come with you from your previous
school what she's done, and then finding some other guys
who might be underrated potentially to kind of fill up
(09:31):
that roster. I do think generally speaking that it is
concerning for Xavier in year one with Richard Patino that
they are not going to have a single minute of
production returning from last year in terms of players who
played you know, minutes on the team. And we saw
I think six time majors this year this last season
(09:52):
who had exactly zero percent of their minutes returning. Only
two of them made the tournament, and that was Kentucky
and Louisville, who I think everyone would generally agree where
he had some outstanding coaching this year where they were
able to achieve more than maybe the sum of what
people thought was possible with the parts that they had.
But a lot of these other teams who were in
(10:13):
a similar boat were definitely disappointing and had higher hopes
than what they were able to do. So you know,
that is concerning to me, and I think there's not
really a lot you can do about that. You just
have to have, you know, a solid enough year one
that you can build on that hopefully retain some of
these guys the following year, and then you're really cooking
with gas. But this first year could be a bit
of an uphoke line.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So this might be a bit of a bizarre question.
In pro sports right which college basketball has become, we
could look at a player's statistical output, look at his age,
all those sort of things, and attach a general dollar,
you know, figure to what he's worth, maybe what you
would want to pay him. Have we started to be
(10:53):
able to do that in college basketball?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yes, And I'm actually doing that with my website this year,
which I think I'm the only public place that you
can find that. So basically, the way that this works
is the it's it's an easier task at the NBA
level because we have very defined rules about how much
can or can't be spent on players. We have salary caps,
we have all these we have minimum player amounts. In
(11:17):
college it is a much harder exercise to trying to
figure out how much a players should be worth, because
it's all dependent on this fluid, ever changing market of
how much players are going for. Based on kind of
the numbers that I've crunched in going rates for players
this year versus last year, the player this year or
last year who would have been worth about a million
(11:38):
dollars in the transfer portal, is going for about two
point five million dollars roughly speaking, this year. So we're
seeing a two hundred and fifty percent increase just in
just one season, from one season to the next. And
so the way that my tool works is basically my
model figures out, based on every single player's predicted production
for next year, how much they should be worth kind
(12:00):
of relative to other players in the country. And then
you as a coaching staff can use my tool and
actually put in data points of what represents the going
market rates for players. So if you're you know, let's
say you're the Xavier staff and you know what you're
paying a couple of your players, you could put those
exact dollar amounts in there. You could put in public
other publicly known or you know, suggested amounts for players,
(12:24):
and basically you put it as many as possible to
kind of represent where the market is at, and then
my model goes in and fills in how much every
other player in the country should be worth if they
were to play in college basketball next year based on
those going market rates. And so this tool has been
really helpful for teams this offseason in kind of, you know,
getting a lot closer to the ballpark of what they
(12:45):
should be playing players, because the reality is there is
so much inefficiency in this market where some guys are
going for more than a million dollars than what they
should be worth, even with these high market rates, just
because of you know them just you know, knocking on
people's doors and demanding more money. And the reality is
that the teams that are going to be the most
(13:06):
successful are the ones who are smart with their money,
make good investments, and that Austin can open up a
whole extra roster spot that they can give money to
instead of just burning it for one guy who maybe
won't be as productive as they think will be all.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Right, one more And again that was because I've struggled
with that. Right hear you hear in some of its conjecture,
you hear rumors of what a certain player is making
and I have said, like, I don't know, is that
a lot? Like I think we're still having a hard
time wrapping our brains around like what's good value for
you know, let's say a point guard who averages nine
(13:38):
points and four assists a game and at the big
twelve level, Like, I don't know, and so a tool
like that is exceptionally valuable. One more, and you mentioned
Kentucky and the job that Mark Pope did this past season.
Kentucky fans are really excited about the Portal Hall so far,
on top of the players who decided to not leave Lexington.
(13:59):
Give me a snap shot of Mark Pope's off season
as he gets set for year number two.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah. Well, obviously, I think the big, big storyline with
Kentucky has been the amount of money that they're willing
to have been willing to invest through the Portal, specifically
in you know, building off this roster. And so when
you look at their you know, potentially their their starting
lineup for next year, it's basically otega Oway, who was
a really solid shooting guard for them, and then the
(14:25):
rest of the lineup potentially in terms of starters, could
all be really high level transfers. When you look at
the overall amount of work that they've done in terms
of these five guys that they brought in, all of
them are really really quality pieces. And when you amass
all of that, I have Kentucky ranked second in the
country in terms of their incoming transfer class and second
(14:45):
overall in terms of transfer activity. So that's both looking
at the quality of guys they brought in through the
portal minusing out the quality of guys that they've lost
through the portal, and so all things considered, they've been really,
really good in this department. And I think, you know,
they they were left in a little bit of a
pickle with last year's roster because a lot of the
(15:07):
guys that they recruited last offseason when they completely rebuilt
that roster were guys who were only going to have
one year of eligibility left. So I think the only
player on that team, notable player really who you know,
could have played somewhat significant minutes for them this year,
but they you know, went left through the portal was Kerkresa,
(15:27):
who you know is in you know, in the Cincinnati
neck of the woods now. But outside of that, they've
kept all the key players from last year and They've
really really invested through the portal, and so I think
the the amassment of talent they have there has been
pretty impressive. And so yeah, they're not necessary. They didn't
have the option of having the same level of roster
continuity as some of these other teams, but they've they've
(15:49):
they've obviously kept the players they could, and they've gotten
a lot of really good guys for the portal. So
I'm really excited to see what happens there.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Awesome insight. Man. I can't thank you enough. We love
having you on. Have a great off season. I'm sure
we'll bother you as we get closer and closer. October Man,
thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, this is great, Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Good stuff. Evan mia Kay would check out his website.
Evan Miya, he is awesome. We are late, by the way.
It's the michelob Ultra five o'clock Happy Hour on ESPN
fifteenth threty. We broke up some of the draft conversation
because that was that was good. Michelob Ultra five o'clock
Happy Hour a service of michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer,
Superior Taste. You can join a michelob Ultra with us
(16:27):
tomorrow at Long Next and Wilder. We're on from three
to six James Repeat tomorrow, like getting James Repeat on
your show on Draft Day is I'm trying to think.
I was gonna say it's like getting Santa Claus on Christmas,
but that's not a good comparison. It's like getting an
hour with my daughter on Christmas morning. It's like if
(16:47):
she said I'll give you an hour of my time
on December twenty fifth, her favorite day of the year.
That's like getting James tomorrow. He's gonna join us. Hopefully
you do too. It's twenty two after five o'clock on
ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Station Cincinnati's ESPN fifteen thirty. Traffic from the UCE Health
Traffic Center. At you See Health, you'll find comprehensive care
so personal it makes your best tomorrow possible. That's boundless
care for better outcomes. Expect more. U seehealth dot com.
Traffic sowing on the two seventy five the Combsail Bridge
(17:22):
right lane block. The delay is to Douba Highway. We
also have the crash on two seventy five east spawn
Turkey Foot to Madison Pike. Sewing crash on the shoulders
seventy five so southbound at Ronald Reagan Highway and seventy
five southbound approaching seventy four my Rick Shrimp with traffic.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
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