Class of 2019 PG Dakota Leffew (GA) Portal to Georgia

[FrancoPizza]

This is the last time I'm going to speak on NIL because some people refuse to believe it. Villanova has a larger budget than Syracuse period. Our basketball NIL is by no means a "problem" for us but with that being said we also have major room for improvement. There are schools that have double our budget.

Having 1 or 2 big donors in the fold can make ALL the difference. See St Johns. What is the current plan to find some more white whales for Red? I would have expected football to have a much harder time with NIL given its futility over the past 20 years... so it's quite depressing to see that hoops with one of the largest fan bases in the country doesn't have more wealthy donors stepping up.

 

[SUFan44]

It depends right? The NIL isn't an unlimited pot of money it is a budget. Say we have a budget of 2.5 million per year and Nova has a budget of 2.0 million per year. We could have used up 2 million of our 2.5 million budget on JJ - Bell - Freeman - Lampkin - Davis - Westry etc and only have 500k left. Nova probably has more left to give to players because they don't have people already taking money like we do. So in turn Nova can offer Leffew more NIL but that doesn't mean our NIL situation is worse than Nova's.

Meh. Then our dollar allocation is off kilter. We don't have a point guard and are not a clear player for the better group of guys in the portal (and I don't even think this guy is an elite guy). Shows me what I need to know about where we are at.

 

[Orangezoo]

Meh. Then our dollar allocation is off kilter. We don't have a point guard and are not a clear player for the better group of guys in the portal (and I don't even think this guy is an elite guy). Shows me what I need to know about where we are at.

It’s April 17th- long ways to go. A bit early to come to conclusions at this point in portal madness.

 

[007]

That’s pretty much common sense. We can all name schools with a higher budget Nil. And Nova has no football so hoops is getting bread, ya dig.

I don't have a dog in this debate, but FWIW Nova has a D1 football team (FCS) and is supported by the FON NIL collective

 

[albanycuse]

I don't have a dog in this debate, but FWIW Nova has a D1 football team (FCS) and is supported by the FON NIL collective

So like i said they have no football lol

 

[SUFan44]

It’s April 17th- long ways to go. A bit early to come to conclusions at this point in portal madness.

Gets late early around here.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Why does a coach’s HC record mean anything as an assistant? 75 percent of this board wanted Mike Boynton as the AHC and he had a sht record with good to great talent.

You are so much better a poster than this comment. I mean, really?

Do all these great coaches have losing records? Don't they play games to, y'know, win?

How good a coach is someone, if their teams don't win games? Competition in most leagues is that of "rough equivalents", teams with similar financial profiles, budgets, etc. That's why these lower leagues are considered breeding grounds.

And that is usually measured in terms of guys who teach people good defense is evidenced by the product they put on the floor. Similarly, people who teach good offense, or good big men, or good point guards, point to those players, those teams that they put on the floor.

Guys who are better teachers tend to win with limited resources. Those guys have winning teams.

Guys who are not the best teachers, tend to have losing teams because they don't communicate what it is they want effectively enough for the players to execute it. Talent is generally pretty even across lower leagues. You don't see a lot of physical specimens in these leagues.

If the talent is all in the B/C range, and not A, tactics, strategy, teaching - all of that stuff is amplified and takes on greater correlation to the team's overall success.

That's how I see it, anyway. Feel free to tell us why generally losing coaches may be good. Any year or two, sure I agree. But 6 or 7 years of consistent losing is not what I look for in a coach.

 

[everja13]

Villanova 247 writer

This guy also claims (in the replies) that Leffew wouldn't be a guard in Nova's offense (presumably SF?). Is that really what Leffew wants? I'd assumed he was looking for a lead guard spot.

 

[phil77]

Meh. Then our dollar allocation is off kilter. We don't have a point guard and are not a clear player for the better group of guys in the portal (and I don't even think this guy is an elite guy). Shows me what I need to know about where we are at.

Budget allocation is a completely different argument and one I can get behind.

 

[Sherman20]

This is the last time I'm going to speak on NIL because some people refuse to believe it. Villanova has a larger budget than Syracuse period. Our basketball NIL is by no means a "problem" for us but with that being said we also have major room for improvement. There are schools that have more than double our budget.

Yeah, that’s a problem then. How is it not? I don’t care that Big East schools only have to fund basketball. We should have a bigger or close to the same NIL basketball budget as Nova, Gtown, SJU and the rest.

 

[Cusefan0307]

You are so much better a poster than this comment. I mean, really?

Do all these great coaches have losing records? Don't they play games to, y'know, win?

How good a coach is someone, if their teams don't win games? Competition in most leagues is that of "rough equivalents", teams with similar financial profiles, budgets, etc. That's why these lower leagues are consider breeding grounds.

And that is usually measured in terms of guys who teach people good defense is evidenced by the product they put on the floor. Similarly, people who teach good offense, or good big men, or good point guards, point to those players, those teams that they put on the floor.

Guys who are better teachers tend to win with limited resources. Those guys have winning teams.

Guys who are not the best teachers, tend to have losing teams because they don't communicate what it is they want effectively enough for the players to execute it. Talent is generally pretty even across lower leagues. You don't see a lot of physical specimens in these leagues.

If the talent is all in the B/C range, and not A, tactics, strategy, teaching - all of that stuff is amplified and takes on greater correlation to the team's overall success.

That's how I see it, anyway. Feel free to tell us why generally losing coaches may be good. Any year or two, sure I agree. But 6 or 7 years of consistent losing is not what I look for in a coach.

MAAC schools are playing 8-11 buy games a year to fund their AD’s. They are scheduling automatic losses to fund their AD at that level. His school also jumped conferences which would be the equivalent of Cornell joining the ACC. These schools are automatically losing their best players to transfers these days.

If they kept Leffew they may be good next year, but like most of the MAAC last year the top 20 scorers all leave. The fact he had them near .500 in the MAAC is a feat in itself with the conference jump. I’m not sure why Red likes this guy, but I sense it’s something to do with his defensive acumen based on his background.

 

[Sherman20]

Maybe it's just me getting older or maybe it's just twitter getting worse, but the amount of 12 year olds that claim to be recruiting experts has increased exponentially in the past couple of years.

So true. All very lame.

 

[Orangezoo]

You are so much better a poster than this comment. I mean, really?

Do all these great coaches have losing records? Don't they play games to, y'know, win?

How good a coach is someone, if their teams don't win games? Competition in most leagues is that of "rough equivalents", teams with similar financial profiles, budgets, etc. That's why these lower leagues are consider breeding grounds.

And that is usually measured in terms of guys who teach people good defense is evidenced by the product they put on the floor. Similarly, people who teach good offense, or good big men, or good point guards, point to those players, those teams that they put on the floor.

Guys who are better teachers tend to win with limited resources. Those guys have winning teams.

Guys who are not the best teachers, tend to have losing teams because they don't communicate what it is they want effectively enough for the players to execute it. Talent is generally pretty even across lower leagues. You don't see a lot of physical specimens in these leagues.

If the talent is all in the B/C range, and not A, tactics, strategy, teaching - all of that stuff is amplified and takes on greater correlation to the team's overall success.

That's how I see it, anyway. Feel free to tell us why generally losing coaches may be good. Any year or two, sure I agree. But 6 or 7 years of consistent losing is not what I look for in a coach.

I’m curious who is your realistic better choice then? A non tactician recruiter unproven as a position coach? A former coach out of the game for many years? You’ve gone way too deep into evaluating fit for an asst job measuring the credentials of a coach as a head coach. You’ve managed to dismiss the change in conferences to boot.

No one is saying losing coaches generally are good but you have to dig deeper than that when assessing a HC for a AC job. Not to mention before coming to D1 he was a proven winner. Getting talent at a program like MSM while navigating CoVid and then the portal is not some simple matter. He’s done well to bring some talent in - talent that was on no one else’s radar that he evaluated and then only to have them get poached.

When you get into advanced analytics the numbers won’t look good because weaker conference teams are weaker in general in those metrics by the nature of the algorithms.

 

[pwong]

It depends right? The NIL isn't an unlimited pot of money it is a budget. Say we have a budget of 2.5 million per year and Nova has a budget of 2.0 million per year. We could have used up 2 million of our 2.5 million budget on JJ - Bell - Freeman - Lampkin - Davis - Westry etc and only have 500k left. Nova probably has more left to give to players because they don't have people already taking money like we do. So in turn Nova can offer Leffew more NIL but that doesn't mean our NIL situation is worse than Nova's.

Nova spent $3M+ last year though. They don’t have to compete with football for NIL allocations

 

[MikeSU02]

Maybe it's just me getting older or maybe it's just twitter getting worse, but the amount of 12 year olds that claim to be recruiting experts has increased exponentially in the past couple of years.

And the issue with this is that there are a lot of "analysts" (*cough cough, people at the mcdonalds game) that blow up almost everyone just to be in the good graces of guys to get access.

 

[phil77]

Having 1 or 2 big donors in the fold can make ALL the difference. See St Johns. What is the current plan to find some more white whales for Red? I would have expected football to have a much harder time with NIL given its futility over the past 20 years... so it's quite depressing to see that hoops with one of the largest fan bases in the country doesn't have more wealthy donors stepping up.

I wonder if it has to do with the football coaches' philosophies about new-age recruiting, social media, creating buzz, and asking for money compared to the basketball philosophies that have been learned from JB who hated that stuff. There seems to be a disconnect someplace within the basketball way of doing things. It seems they are stuck

 

[Orangezoo]

This guy also claims (in the replies) that Leffew wouldn't be a guard in Nova's offense (presumably SF?). Is that really what Leffew wants? I'd assumed he was looking for a lead guard spot.

Curious just what kind of leader this guy really is…

 

[CardiacCuse]

This is the last time I'm going to speak on NIL because some people refuse to believe it. Villanova has a larger budget than Syracuse period. Our basketball NIL is by no means a "problem" for us but with that being said we also have major room for improvement. There are schools that have more than double our budget.

can y0u provide any evidence of your assertions?

 

[SUFan44]

Nova spent $3M+ last year though. They don’t have to compete with football for NIL allocations

I understand where you're coming from - a lot of fans that are basketball fans are football fans too.

I would really like to understand better how many cross-over donors the basketball program has compared to the football program. Specifically higher end donors.

Because you say this is an issue - and I'm not sure I necessarily disagree with you. But I'd like more data points to show this to be true.

 

[Orangezoo]

Gets late early around here.

It seems that there are a lot of people close to the conclusion that hoops at SU is washed and simply using the board to put that on repeat in every thread…. Before we know the outcome of who will be the PG addition this year.

 

[Sherman20]

Feels the board's excess worry is based in that with a Malik Mack, there was a clear alternative plan in Leffew. No Leffew, things get very interesting, and mighty unclear.

I think this is a fair read. A few weeks ago, we were hoping for Mack or Reynolds. But Leffew seemed like a good alternative as a top 100 transfer. Now some posters are hinting that Nova might overtake us for Leffew. So it’s reasonable that people would be disappointed, if this is actually true, especially since we’ve known for a month or more that we’d need a new starting PG. But we also assume Red has a pivot planned. Maybe there’s somebody interested in us that hasn’t hit the portal yet, and Red is working behind the scenes on that.

 

[pwong]

I understand where you're coming from - a lot of fans that are basketball fans are football fans too.

I would really like to understand better how many cross-over donors the basketball program has compared to the football program. Specifically higher end donors.

Because you say this is an issue - and I'm not sure I necessarily disagree with you. But I'd like more data points to show this to be true.

That’s fair, I don’t follow football at all but I think bball has it’s own higher end boosters and football has theirs. But I think Fran did a good job going into the community raising funds and the athletic department focused their fundraising efforts more towards football so individual businesses/people are less likely donate to basketball right after donating to football

 

[PauliePeppas]

can y0u provide any evidence of your assertions?

If Ballo getting 1.2 mill we can connect the dots. SU is not doing that

 

[Orangezoo]

Nova spent $3M+ last year though. They don’t have to compete with football for NIL allocations

Winning has never been about just having deeper pockets and never will. Being smart about managing a program from every side of it including how you build your staff and the model you use to coach your team (as well as being capable of coaching) paired with work ethic in this social media driven world all plays its role.

Until the major college sports model changes - NIL will have to level out simply by the fact resources are not infinite anywhere and euphoria won’t persist as an adequate ROI.

 

[Lukeyloo]

Truthfully, we are very selective. At the end of every year, we have a nomination (of posters on this board) and see who we would like to ask to join us. If one person says no, that is it. But if everyone agrees, we ask the person if they would like to join. Only Alsacs has ever turned us down. And he wasn't really asked. I asked him if I could nominate him and he said he was already on a private board and that was enough for him.

freaking illuminati always gatekeeping..