AAS Article on Brown and the Curse of Rick Barnes

[IndyHorn]

There was short piece in Austin American Statesman previewing JCovan Brown's draft prospects. The article listed some statistic that, if I have it right, mentioned Rick Barnes has had 16 kids go pro early at Texas with 10 first round picks and 6 second round selections. I think that is bunk as now, including JCovan and Maurice Evans, Texas has had a few kids bolt and not get picked at all. I bet JCovan wishes he had stayed to graduate now. I hate that Texas routinely has kids leave for flimsy shots at getting picked (including PJ Tucker, and Chris Owens). Not sure why we are always rebuilding and our players leave early to play overseas. That is all, just my routine gripe on Rick Barnes' ability to hold onto any talent

 

[Texdoc]

Amen. Mack getting Ricky to return for his senior season kept the team in the national spotlight & put the program on a fast track to prominence.

HOOK 'EM,
Texdoc

 

[Statalyzer]

IIRC, Chris Owens played his senior year, got injured like 8 games in, and wasn't able to get a medical redshirt.

 

[Horns11]

Maurice Evans didn't have a choice but to leave. He didn't go to any classes during his spring semester.
OK, so we've established that Barnes doesn't have a knack to "hold onto any talent," despite some of the success we've had with him at the helm. What about every other team in college basketball?

Only 10 of the first round picks were upperclassmen (or the foreign equivalent of a 20-to-21-year-old). The first senior wasn't taken until #17. John Calipari doesn't seem to be whining his *** off that he lost his entire lineup. Why are we whining that we lost one semi-decent player?

If we're going to compete with the best basketball schools in the country, we need to worry less about who is leaving for the NBA and worry more about the product that we're putting on the floor against college teams. We've been playing in a motion-less, PG-less system since Augustin left, and Kabongo needs to take that role and make it powerful again. We could hope to get a bunch of 3-star kids who are willing to stick around for 4 years, but that's obviously not what the best programs are doing.

I think Lanier is taking some steps in the right direction by getting role players to come here, just like we had with the 2003 Final Four team. That team had the defensive stopper guard (Ivey), the sparkplug swing guard who could score 20 if he wanted to (Mouton), the three-point specialists (Boddicker and Harris), the dirty board guys (Thomas and Buckman), and some solid bench players who could pick up a few minutes doing basically what their "role" counterpart could do (Klotz, Erskin, Ross). We haven't had anything close to resembling that since 2004.

This is the real problem... not Brown leaving school.

 

[old65horn]

don't think I would complain either if the Horns won the NC and then everyone left.

 

[Bill in Sinton]

Carmelo Anthony left Syracuse after one year as expected to go pro. But at least he produced an NC for them. We haven't got one yet.