Maybe it's too Soon

But We Gotta Talk Really Quick About Next Season

*Update: a few hours after this article deployed, Zay Mason entered the transfer portal. We aren’t surprised by this, we alluded to it briefly in the paragraph where he is mentioned. We wish him the best, but now this will open up TWO scholarships for the Norse*

Article by Kyle Craven

Recruiting Table created in-house — we are working on a way to get this up on the Substack, but no luck so far — stay tuned.

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I never know how long to wait to send out this article. You know, the one where the season JUST ended and you want to be respectful to the players that competed in a hard fought NCAA Tournament game, but at the same time you need to talk about the elephant in the room: the Transfer Portal and the final recruiting push.

Although I have to admit, every time I revisit this topic, I go to my recruiting table and clear off the names of the graduating players — a part of me gets really sad for some reason. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Texas, thus religiously watched the movie Friday Night Lights and always think back to this scene of Coach Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) taking the name plates off of his depth chart of letting them fall gently out of his fingers into a bin below. Sadly, life moves on.

Ok take a second to wipe the tears from your eyes and let keep this train moving.

I feel like I need to be clear here: NKU’s season ended last Thursday. This is the first Monday after they got back into town from Alabama — so it’s entirely possible that some transfer requests could be processed today. Who do we think could be transferring? Well, let’s discuss.

…. JUST KIDDING! We learned our lesson with that speculative nonsense. Nope, we’ll sit back and wait for any news that comes out like the rest of you. Instead, let’s address what we know.

For starters, NKU returns all but 3 players (Chris Brandon, Trevon Faulkner and Xavier Rhodes), however those 3 players were HUGE pieces to NKU’s overall success in 2022-23. They accounted for:

• 39.6% of NKU’s total minutes played

• 33.4% of scoring

• 45.5% of rebounding

• 38.4% of the assists

• 41.6% of the steals

• 39.8% of the blocks

So who do we have to replace these guys in 2023-24? Well, this isn’t a perfect science but one thing we can do is look at how players performed compared to some of the players leaving PER 100 possessions. This is not a perfect stat, but it is a really nice efficiency stat that is used to judge similar data across the same period of time.

Obviously the players on our roster that will have to fill bigger roles next year didn’t play nearly the same percentage of the game’s minutes as the three players leaving, so the idea then is that if you were to extrapolate Player A’s stats over 100 possessions and compare them to Player B’s stats over the same period, you can get an idea of where certain players stand. It’s not perfect in that if Player A is a starter and Player B is a reserve then Player B’s stats may be slightly inflated due to not playing against the highest level of competition in games.

POINTS: While Trevon Faulkner averaged 21.8 pts per 100 possessions, the Norse can look to Trey Robinson (19.7), A’lahn Sumler (18.2), Imanuel Zorgvol (18.0) to replace some of that production.

REBOUNDS: Chris Brandon averaged 21.4 rebounds every 100 possessions, so the Norse will need to rely on Imanuel Zorgvol (19.7) LJ Wells (14.8) and maybe more help from Trey Robinson (10.6) to make up for what is leaving.

ASSISTS: The hardest thing for NKU to replace will be Xavier Rhodes and his 8.3 assists per 100 possessions. Only 2 Norse had over 5.0 assists per 100 possessions this past season — Jake Evans and Sam Vinson and it’s unlikely that either of those are 30 MPG PG type players. Jake can step in during certain games and give some PG minutes and Sam will often rotate to PG while Bryson (last year) or Xavier get a breather, but neither have held this role for the majority of a season. Although it’s my opinion that Sam could be the PG, it would likely take a little away from his scoring which the Norse will also need to improve. Another option could be letting Marques run the point for short stints, but not for long stretches, let alone the majority of the game.

If you were asking my opinion, it’s critical that the Norse try to find a PG in the transfer portal, preferably another grad transfer like Xavier. We will see how the offseason wraps up. The Norse appear to have 1 scholarship left — with offers and interest having already reportedly been made.

WHAT ABOUT THE ‘OTHERS’: Okay, obviously not the best term to use here but don’t shoot the messenger. Often times you will hear this term used in reference to NBA players who play roles and help out in ways that they can, but they are not considered to be superstars or major statistical contributors. NKU has plenty of these guys, some of which have the ability to dramatically improve, others who have gotten their chances during the course of a season and really taken advantage of their opportunity. Here are those guys, in case you needed a reminder.

(Update: as of Monday, March 20th — shortly after this article deployed — Zay Mason entered the tranfer portal so we have removed part of the next paragraph).

The Norse will need to look elsewhere (either their incoming freshmen or hopefully a transfer portal upperclassman) to give the team quality minutes during important stretches next season.

What do you think? We’d love to hear from you? We’ve created a discussion thread below and we’ll be engaging with your comments as they come in. We’ll feature some of the really good ones in future articles and in Tweets as well, crediting you of course.

DISCUSS: https://norsereport.substack.com/p/discussion-were-losing-a-lot-to-graduation/comments