gravejd

😫 that i'll never get to see Chuma in an AU uniform . But ecstatic to hear he is likely to have an opportunity to pursue his dreams in the NBA. He is a very unique talent with everything that he can do. When i was reading through the top 100 NBA players i was thinking to myself Chuma outplayed several that are ranked ahead of him. Beyond stoked to hear Harper is performing well. I want him to make the NBA so bad......partly because he has worked so hard and achieved so much for my university. But also because i've been saying all year that has to be a place in the NBA for a player with his skill set. Height be damned!!

The NBA will soon be moving their line back so i don't have any problem with college doing it first. I expect the result will be similar to the last time they moved it back. Percentages will dip for a bit and then as players get use to the new distance percentages will go back up. I don't expect to have a huge impact on the way the game is played overall. Shot clock reset to 20 i like. The rest i am pretty indifferent about. The ejection for bad words is a little PC for me and i see some controversy coming out of that cause i could easily see the ref mis-hearing what a players says...they get ejected and then its a ref's word vs players word situation.

I kinda feel like all the posts about us not missing Harper are somewhat in response to my post above. I was certainly not trying to downplay the impact of losing Harper. He was literally the heart and soul of our team. Not only will we miss his playing ability but the way he carried himself with unbelievable calm and a chip on his shoulder will be missed as well. Dude has ice water in his veins and i think the rest of the team fed off that. Javon also does not have his range so defenses will not have to extend as far out and Javon certainly doesn't have Harpers skills as a passer. Anyone that hopes he can continue in the path Harper made need to adjust their way of thinking. Auburn will be a COMPLETELY different team next season. Some players return yes, but I expect next years team to look very different mostly due to Harper being gone but also cause we are losing BB and the others. But even if we are a completely different team i still think we can be successful. We'll have to see how it all comes together. We have a LOT of scoring and leadership to replace. But i stand by my post that Javon was more then serviceable during our SEC and NCAA tourney runs and outplayed Harper at times. During the LSU game last season i thought he was done and we had wasted a scholarship on Mr. McCormick. But he kept working and was a huge reason for our success at the end of the season. I won't be doubting the kid again!

Gus has had some of the most amazingly great and terrible offenses while at AU. That one man can produce such wild results is pretty amazing. I predict we will be better on offense this season when compared to last season. Will that be good enough to not lose 5 or more games? We shall see....

Tough to call Javon just serviceable IMO. I thought he outplayed Harper much of the way through our SEC and NCAA tourney runs. He certainly won't replace everything that Harper did and we'll need other guys to step up but Javon was a beast to end last season and i expect him to keep that going into next season. I also really look forward to this turbo kid coming in......he'll give us a bit more size at the PG position then we've had recently

Bruce was complimentary of all our signees as you'd expect but i recall him having some particular high praise for Okoro. Bruce sees him on par with the top players coming out of HS this year. I can't remember the quote but he basically laughed at his current ranking and said it would be hard to find 10 better players in this class. So i'm very much looking forward to seeing what this kid can do next year!

Yeah I remember hearing that on here. And I have no idea what his plans are. I was just relaying what he said in the article

He was easily our best option at RB last season. I expect he will be again this year. I'm not sure why some folks on here are down on him and say he isn't a "game-changer". He looks to have good vision, can make the cuts, and has lots of speed. He's not Swartz fast but not many are

Very true on Harper....his recruiting picked up later in the process. We were very lucky to get on him early

some talented PGs in this 2020 class we have to sort through......Sharif, Sears, Murr . Hard not to fall in love with these under the radar types after the run we had with Harper and Brown

I agree....not saying i know enough about the situation to say if he really did anything wrong but if the keep him they better be prepared to answer hard question about why they decided to keep him. And the answer better be more then he has connections to Sharif

If Purifoy can raise his level of play to even close that of Brown then he has a chance to be a solid player for us. I hope he can change the bust narrative he was trending toward until the very end of last season. He gave us some very solid minutes though against some good teams. Not quite what you want out of a highly regarded four star player 3 years into their career but suspensions for shady dealings are known to set good players back.

There are a lot of really good coaches out there. Let's go get one not under investigation for a college bribery scandal.

That people were talking about him re-classifying only because Harper went pro. That he had no plans to re-classify

I think that would just depend on when he is actually able to graduate HS. If he can do it over the summer he would come in during fall per usual but if it took another semester he'll have to wait and enroll for spring. Seems odd to me that this is so up in the air. Its getting close to summer time for HS so i'd think he would know if its possible at this point or not. But maybe he is struggling with the decision to forgo his Senior year. I could certainly understand where that would be a hard decision.