Is the 24-25 roster our version of 'Moneyball'?

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Costa Rican Gopher said:
Is the 2024-2025 roster our version of 'Moneyball'? i.e. We can't afford to replace players like Christie, Payne, Hawkins & JoJ, but we can try to replace their production in the aggregate with multiple, lower priced players?
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Yes. I have been using that term since the end of the season.
 


matt said:
They won 102 games the year before their “moneyball” year.
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And then what? They got a new roster and no one thought they would be good again.
We might be awful, we might be ok, we might be pretty good.
 


GopherWeatherGuy said:
That's for football too.

So you think Cal has enough money to give JOJ nearly half of what they raised for both sports at that time? If they have 500k to give to JOJ, then they should be loading up with 4* and 5* recruits, right?

Oh wait, they have none. Just a bunch of middling 3*s like the Gophers.

Lay off the Ryan James pipe. There are posters on this site that have more knowledge then him.
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- I stand corrected, it wasn't 500k. I believe that's what Payne's getting at A & M? I'll own that mistake.

- JoJ is still getting what is believed to be six figures this season from Cal, and Cal absolutely has lot's of NIL money.

I'm lifting a quote from Ryan James here.:

"Although shocklingly, what JOJ got at Cal, would be about 4 times what he would have got here. If I hadn't triple confirmed it I wouldn't believe it. What JOJ got at Cal will be more than all but two Gophers made this year. Yes, its wild."

- Cal recently raised over $700k just for basketball in less than 30 days, not including the sizable NIL fund they already had, or what they've collected since.

"Thanks to the Cal community for their hard work over the last few weeks in answering the call for donations for the Bears. Thanks to your efforts, thanks to an array of donors of all types, the Cal Legends NIL Collective has fundraised $930,000 for football (93% to goal out of a million) and over $700,000 for men’s basketball (140%+ to a goal of half a million). And the outcomes have been tangible, with huge commitments via the transfer portal in both sports."

Cal Legends Collective raises over $1.6 million for the Bears in the past month

- Cal basketball signed the #8 transfer portal class in 2023 & is currently ranked #10 in the nation for 2024.

Cal basketball lands a top 10 transfer class, headlined by two top-40 transfers

2024 College Basketball Team Transfer Portal Rankings

- They did indeed load up with four, 4* transfers this year.

2024 California Basketball Transfer Portal

- There's not a person in the state who knows more about Gopher basketball, our players, the AAU scene, etc. than Ryan James. No one on this site has anywhere close to the knowledge Ryan James has. The people who do share things almost always get that info from Ryan James on 247, then pass it on here without crediting him.
 
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Ski-U-Ham said:
You mean during the season when he left or after the season when he entered the portal?
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After the season. He entered the portal, didn't find any interest, came back to meet with CBJ about returning, and was told "No, thanks". Someone gave Carrington very bad advice, and he's still looking for a new team.
 


Costa Rican Gopher said:
- I stand corrected, it wasn't 500k. I believe that's what Payne's getting at A & M? I'll own that mistake.

- JoJ is still getting what is believed to be six figures this season from Cal, and Cal absolutely has lot's of NIL money.

I'm lifting a quote from Ryan James here.:

"Although shocklingly, what JOJ got at Cal, would be about 4 times what he would have got here. If I hadn't triple confirmed it I wouldn't believe it. What JOJ got at Cal will be more than all but two Gophers made this year. Yes, its wild."

- Cal recently raised over $700k just for basketball in less than 30 days, not including the sizable NIL fund they already had, or what they've collected since.

"Thanks to the Cal community for their hard work over the last few weeks in answering the call for donations for the Bears. Thanks to your efforts, thanks to an array of donors of all types, the Cal Legends NIL Collective has fundraised $930,000 for football (93% to goal out of a million) and over $700,000 for men’s basketball (140%+ to a goal of half a million). And the outcomes have been tangible, with huge commitments via the transfer portal in both sports."

Cal Legends Collective raises over $1.6 million for the Bears in the past month

- Cal basketball signed the #8 transfer portal class in 2023 & is currently ranked #10 in the nation for 2024.

Cal basketball lands a top 10 transfer class, headlined by two top-40 transfers

2024 College Basketball Team Transfer Portal Rankings

- They did indeed load up with four, 4* transfers this year.

2024 California Basketball Transfer Portal

- There's not a person in the state who knows more about Gopher basketball, our players, the AAU scene, etc. than Ryan James. No one on this site has anywhere close to the knowledge Ryan James has. The people who do share things almost always get that info from Ryan James on 247, then pass it on here without crediting him.
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I'm not shocked by your reports of Cal's basketball fundraising. Cal may have been bad in recent years but they had pretty fair basketball teams earlier this century (9 NCAA tournaments this century). I'm mildly surprised that the funds raised for basketball weren't that much lower than for football but Cal's football program has been pretty lackluster for the last 15 years. Of course, Cal is also located in an area with a very large population and considerable wealth.
 

bga1 said:
And then what? They got a new roster and no one thought they would be good again.
We might be awful, we might be ok, we might be pretty good.
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That's not what you said. You said:

bga1 said:
No. Oakland wasn't good before that season started.
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But they had the second best record in baseball the year prior. That doesn't make it an apt comparison for the Gophers who have been mostly bad over the last few years (or decades really).
 



TwistingMyMelon said:
I'm not shocked by your reports of Cal's basketball fundraising. Cal may have been bad in recent years but they had pretty fair basketball teams earlier this century (9 NCAA tournaments this century). I'm mildly surprised that the funds raised for basketball weren't that much lower than for football but Cal's football program has been pretty lackluster for the last 15 years. Of course, Cal is also located in an area with a very large population and considerable wealth.
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Cal, is also one of the top/or top public universities in the country. Those students generally make more coin when they graduate.
 

matt said:
That's not what you said. You said:



But they had the second best record in baseball the year prior. That doesn't make it an apt comparison for the Gophers who have been mostly bad over the last few years (or decades really).
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We are between seasons. The question is whether the roster being put together is a low cost but sneaky good one- as seen with Money ball,
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
After the season. He entered the portal, didn't find any interest, came back to meet with CBJ about returning, and was told "No, thanks". Someone gave Carrington very bad advice, and he's still looking for a new team.
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Guessing this happens to a lot of players. They get lured in by the idea of being able to cash in and then find out they aren't in demand.

At some point it will be interesting to see if someone goes back and does a deep dive on the number of college football and basketball careers that have been ended by jumping into the portal and not being able to find a new school.
 

MNVCGUY said:
At some point it will be interesting to see if someone goes back and does a deep dive on the number of college football and basketball careers that have been ended by jumping into the portal and not being able to find a new school.
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I'm not sure what you mean by a "deep dive" but there have been examinations of the percentages of players entering the portal who haven't found new homes.
 



TwistingMyMelon said:
I'm not sure what you mean by a "deep dive" but there have been examinations of the percentages of players entering the portal who haven't found new homes.
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I think up to now, the extra Covid year kind of skews the data. A lot of players who wouldn't otherwise put their name in to "see what happens" knowing they probably won't end up anywhere. This should be the last year of that.
 

Costa Rican Gopher said:
Is the 2024-2025 roster our version of 'Moneyball'? i.e. We can't afford to replace players like Christie, Payne, Hawkins & JoJ, but we can try to replace their production in the aggregate with multiple, lower priced players?
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Moneyball doesn't work with every player having unrestricted free-agency every year.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Guessing this happens to a lot of players. They get lured in by the idea of being able to cash in and then find out they aren't in demand.

At some point it will be interesting to see if someone goes back and does a deep dive on the number of college football and basketball careers that have been ended by jumping into the portal and not being able to find a new school.
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Reminds me of the NBA before the put in the draft evaluation and all this high school ballers screwed themselves out of a free college degree by declaring for the draft, chasing that bag
 

bga1 said:
I like all three of those guys. Yet when we had them a lot of us, present company included, complained that there was no identity. Hawkins while a great facilitator was never going to be a good defender because of how small he is and he couldn't finish at the rim. Christie had a pure shot but he was not a good defender and also couldn't finish at the rim. Payne is a guy I really liked on the defensive end but offensively he was limited to a couple feet and he a Garcia seemed clunky together. What we had got us to 9-11 in the Big Ten.

Can Ben take a different mix of guys, many of whom have a past of being good defensive players and mold them into a squad with an identity that wins more games? Okudale, Rigsby, Patterson, Frank Mitchell, Asuma and Edmunds might be a more physical and defensive minded group than the dearly departed Gophers. I am not saying Ben will- the question is can he do it?

I always go back to this: During the Monson era he had Kris Humphries a star offensive player who went NBA. I think they won one or two Big Ten games that year. Then, under the same coach and with the help of Molinari....without the superstar...they took ARob, Coleman, Lawson, Hagen and Grier ( a juco transfer) and went to the NCAAs. Nobody would have predicted that. Its not always the star talent that gets you there.
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Being a bubble team is our absolute high watermark, once in a while. With many lousy seasons.

We'll never have a team as good as the one we'd have had if we kept our players.
 

TwistingMyMelon said:
I'm not sure what you mean by a "deep dive" but there have been examinations of the percentages of players entering the portal who haven't found new homes.
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Get some of the stories from players it didn’t work out for. Were they given false promises, was there tampering involved. Really find out what the whole process was like for them.
 

howeda7 said:
I guess that's the hopium Ben has to sell. Hawkins, Christie and Payne were 3 of your 4 best players and have been replaced by lesser talented players. Depth can offset it but only so much. Especially if you only want to use 7 guys.
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Was Hawk predicted to be our second best player when he announced he was coming to Minnesota?
 

EasyThere Pilgrim said:
We'll never have a team as good as the one we'd have had if we kept our players.
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Odds are that you are correct on that, as we lost value player out for player in - considering the top 3 we lost.
IF we close the deal with Patterson:
Payne > Mitchell - Payne a better defensive presence and more potential but Mitchell a better rebounder
Christie > Odukale - I say this because Christie would likely have been all Big Ten this coming year if he does the offseason work. Odukale might be the overall equal of what Christie was last year as he is reputed to be far better at driving to the basket and defending
Hawkins > Patterson - Maybe. I really liked Hawk but perhaps Patterson is the better two way player?

I think past that I would guess we have scored a depth upgrade:

Edmunds > Wilson
Rigsby > JOJ
Betts > Ihnen
Asuma > Carrington


It is up to Ben to find a way to mold a better team out of the guys he has gotten. We were not a good defensive team. That's the place to start. If we are an upper half of the Big Ten team defensively, which is effort and team work- then we have a chance.
 

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