JQ had a lot of chances to seize a bigger role here. He was turnover and foul prone and never developed into a reliable shooter. He represented the school well, but we need better. JD will be interesting to see how he does playing every night against bigger, stronger guards. Can he stay healthy? We will see.

Fact is that no team Drew has put together has made it to the NCAA Tournament, and until this year, Drew's teams hadn't event won A10 or NIT, MTE games. This was an older experienced team and it still wasn't good enough to win anything.

We need 1) Major Portal HELP, 2) Our Freshman need to take massive steps FORWARD, AND 3) Chuck Love needs to be a contributor day 1.

I also disagree about Kmany. He is limited as a PG. When VCU put Shulga on him, a bigger player, in A10 Tournament, he struggled. He also turns his body and backs in with dribble from half court. Your PG needs to be able to face forward and break teams down. We need a bona fide slick PG. Can't win without one. Whoever it is need to be able to shoot it and cause havoc.

We got a lot of work to do. If money is not a problem, we should be able to get some players.

We are going to miss JQ defensively...he was tough....He was also great at getting to the hoop, couldnt finish when he was younger but improved this year....not a good 3 point shooter which really hurt his offensive game overall. He was really a player with out a position offensively In todays game every player you have on the floor should be a 3 point threat.
But how soon we forget how long it takes for these new teams with tons of new guys to learn intricacies of the offense and defense and for the coaching staff to figure out the roles for the players. We could have used both of those guys back. We are now looking at replacing 6 guys with two incoming freshman, two freshman with limited experience, a red shirt freshman, a point guard with 8 games in the system and Houinsou who will most likely be learning a new position.
We just assume we can buy some new guys and they will be a team? Forgetting that watching 5 new, talented guys standing around wondering what the f am I supposed to be doing? seldom produces good basketball. I bring up 3 examples where experience is more important than talent. This years Drake team..guy brought in mostly DII players who had played with him b4....same at Indiana State when the SLU coach first went there. And do not forget our Final 5 team...while we had some good players that was not the most physically talented team but over years their experience turned into a well oiled machine. Sure there are examples where a coach has brought in 5 new guys and had success but they are super stars from the start with P5 level experience.
A dilemma for us is if we bring in more one and done guys or guys with two or more years of eligibility?. What is our philosophy to win going to be? are we going to be a defensive team or an offensive team. Seems we have put our eggs in the defensive basket with guys that can guard all 5 spots and these guys have not been the best shooters, Edwards being the exception but we had him for 3 years and he developed into a defensive player. I for one want to make sure that each player can handle the ball.If my stats are correct Des Watson averaged 5 turnovers per 40 minutes and Jalen Quinn 3.5 per 40 minutes. I wish I had just A10 stats as our non-con skewed things a bit. Of the players with big minutes only DeRoach had more turnovers than assists.
I for one would have like to see JD and JQ back and over all miss the time when you brought kids in and watched them develop over 4 years..Last comment I think we continue to undervalue the importance of loosing Justin Moore

To me, this is spot on. Kymany bailed us out big time this year, but I think he'll be better suited as a Swiss Army knife kind of player.

Losing JD really hurts. We have to get shooters and major go-to guy if we're going to be a better team next year.

And to nate's point, we're going to have a lot of new starters who need to gel very quickly and be ready to WIN BIG in November if we're going to have another crappy schedule. We have to be ready to pound teams in the 300s.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

I agree Nate, I think we'd be better off keeping JD and JQ than trying to replace them. Unfortunate reality of today's game, and I think about 95% of CBB fans miss the old transfer rules. There's always a small chance one of them withdraws from the portal, although that is very rare.

And you also bring up the problem we've run into in the Drew era, which is that team doesn't gel until conference play (or in 22-23, doesn't gel at all), meaning we don't get the non-con wins we need to have any sort of at-large chance.

Even if we do great in the portal, we're going to run into this again, and not sure what the solution is. Did poorly with the strong non-con schedule in 23-24. The early cupcakes this year didn't prepare us for USF and the MTE, and meant we basically had to go undefeated in the noncon to have an at-large chance.

You don't necessarily want Drew to dumb things down early, because his system clearly works in the A10. I think at least part of it is that Drew needs to figure out rotations earlier and be more realistic with playing time -- but then again, that's a tough call this year with two high-level freshmen recruits and potentially four portal transfers. Is Chuck Love gonna be like Miles or like Daniil/Seif? And so on.

I believe we will again see an easy noncon schedule from Drew in the upcoming 25-26 season to enable the players to mold together AND get some wins.

And Kansas…where he just committed to

Good for Jayden, that’s a big time step up and he is close to home. Good luck in the Big 12.

Good luck in the dance next year JD

I guess being a bench player who might not even be in the rotation on a tournament team at far less money than he would've made at loyola is somehow appealing.

I think he will be a rotation player and he will certainly be making more money there than at Loyola.