ChanmanV

Is she in the portal?

Unfortunately, the team isn't set up right now to capitalize on Maddie's last season. Very few teams on the women's side get to the Final Four with mostly new players on their roster much less win a championship in Vic's system. Unless we get a couple experienced stars in the portal that can pick up things fast, my expectations will be tempered a bit for next year.

Except Spaights is an open gate on defense. 🤣She'll have to develop ALOT on defense to even get serious playing time with Vic, but I'm sure she knows that.

She won't have a better opportunity at a contender than here where she'd be set to start unless we get a star PG from the portal. Bri is still a year away from being a consistent contributor and leader on the team.

Well you're assuming that the players would share facts that potentially make them look bad and undesirable to schools. Like I said, I think both the school/coaches and players have probably decided or agreed to not talk about it and just move on. In the end, what's done is done and I'm more interested in who we're replacing them with. Lots of good choices out there.

That looks like a farewell post.

I'm thinking it's a better of 2 evils thing. I think if they talk about it openly, it doesn't reflect on well on the school because of the possible actions they did or did not do pertaining to those players during the season. So they'd just rather people speculate and think they are leaving because of playing time or NIL etc.

Ice Brady is another big we should look at as well. Tall, strong and physical.

Not sure Merkle is going to fit defensively but she'd be nice to have offensively. I like Carnegie and Vann though. They're athletic enough to be molded in Vic's defense but can really score too. Haven't really seen Dauda play much in a while but Cody would fill in what we're losing with Oldacre.

This is the one that hurts and is very telling. She IS the perfect fit for Vic's system and culture. And they threw a big offer to convince her to stay so there's a lot of bad feelings there. This might also mean Sarah Graves didn't get her extra year of eligibility given how close Lee and Graves were. I'm sure some more details will come out with what was going on in the locker room but feels like it's headed towards Preston and Cunningham next with a complete rebuild.

You offer them in HS for potential and Vic really wanted to address offense thus Crump and the Judd pickup in the off season. Both were also our worst defenders. Carlton is the bigger loss given her development of her 3pt shot but Crump wouldn't be playing much again next year behind Lee and Booker. She'd be in the same situation so I don't blame her for leaving. Both weren't ideal fits and I saw somewhere in Vic's season exit interview with Crump, he told her that she'd need to work more on full court defense and she immediately entered the portal. I'm confident both will be good somewhere else. I just don't think they fit Vic's system well enough to maximize their potential. Etute is pretty similar to Carlton (physical body and likes to use it on the inside) but with quicker feet so we might already have a good replacement between Crittenden and Etute. There are 1100+ players in the portal now so there's got to be a a handful that would be good fits for us. As long as we don't lose Lee and Preston too, we'll be ok.

A silver lining to losing Crump and Carlton (if those 2 are the only real losses) is both did not have the speed and quickness to play the 40 mins of hell defense I know Vic wants to ideally run. The defensive drop off from sitting Lee/Booker is huge and unless Crump was making a lot of baskets which she only did in a handful of games. Carlton was better because she had experience in the system so she knew where to be but her lack of quickness caused most of the fouls she committed. There were games where Sidberry's quickness was much more effective and at the same time Carlton's strength worked in other games. So it was nice we had 3 options at PF depending on the matchup but each had weaknesses. So if we can find SG/PFs in the portal that match Vic's system a little better, it could be an improvement. Crittenden and Bjorn will be good fits once they get some games under their belt and I think Etute is equally as physical as Carlton but with quicker feet.

Crooks is the epitome of what Vic doesn't want on defense. She has never hedged on the pick and roll (she barely leaves the paint on defense) and her feet are way too slow to recover on any play. She would get dominated by a lot of the athletic bigs in the SEC. She'll score her share though on offense. Word is she's going to OU which honestly is a perfect fit since they don't put much focus on defense there.

They better do everything they can to keep her. She's vital to our success next year. She was underappreciated this year because of a little slump offensively midseason but her defense is a cornerstone of our team. If Vic and the staff can help elevate her confidence, I think she can be a superstar on both sides of the ball. She's a coach's dream too culture wise.

I hope they can convince Lee to stay. The others hurt but Lee is a pillar of our team. She's on the verge of being a superstar as well. Everyone else is more replaceable than she is. It would have been interesting to see if winning a championship would have mended some of this ill will. We'll never know.

Another championship won by a team built completely in the portal. That's just the meta now. If you look at the Michigan players, they are physically bigger, quicker, and taller than every other team. The way they defend and challenge shots is another level compared to what we got. We got a center but we need more skilled and physically strong players at SG/SF/PF.

Oh interesting. None of those would describe Lee though. I wonder if Vic's "no heart" call out rubbed some of them the wrong way as well.

Oh really? Drama with who if everyone is leaving? Booker? Playing time is an issue for Crump but Lee, Preston, and Carlton will get tons of playing time.

I'm excited about Itute as well but it will take her a bit to get used to the physicality of the SEC. Justice has already adapted and is more physical than most PFs and can hit 3s, But Itute and Crittenden are more skilled offensively for sure. We need to see who we get out of the portal if we're losing all of our experience except Booker.

Disagree with a lot. All of them except maybe Crump is about money. It will take time for all the freshmen to really learn and integrate into our system. Carlton would have been absolutely the starter and a force on our team. Crump was in a tougher position if Lee was staying and Booker and Lee was in front of her. Preston is a much better defender than either of the freshman coming in. This is where NIL really sucks because the last 2 years of great recruiting just goes down the drain. That's 3 5* talent we've developed entering the portal. We can potentially match some offers and keep them so just wait and see what happens.

All of these players entering the portal is why not winning the chip with this roster is so painful. It's not easy building rosters good enough to win it all anymore. If Lee, Preston, and Carlton are leaving, it's pretty clear we're not allocating that much money for the women. Lee is a must keep in my eyes. Why even recruit 5* if they just leave after 1-2 years and another school will get them at their college prime? Note: Texas has a couple days to counter offer and possibly get them to leave the portal. This might be all postering with the agents to get their clients more money.

This is a bigger loss. Carlton was becoming a very important piece of our team.

Crump's offense is good but she doesn't have the quickness we need to play the type of defense Vic wants to play. It was ok this year off the bench but if she was a starter, teams would start focusing on attacking her. She made a lot of mistakes on defense this year that cost her playing time. Still would have liked her to stay but we can find better in the portal. Kymora Johnson from Virginia would be nice at PG.

I get that but I don't think UCLA forced Booker to have such a bad day. I think it was more self inflicted. Booker hadn't sped up like that mentally the entire year against equally tough defenses (even against the same defense) which is why it was so strange to see that happen to her. I don't think she realized the pressure of the moment had changed her perception of everything happening on the court. At times she wasn't even running our offensive plays and just forcing shots. Vic was baffled as well when Holly Rowe reported what was said during the early timeouts. It was weird. So I wouldn't say UCLA shut her down more so than it was Booker letting her focus get completely out of whack from where it needed to be. The rest of the team did their job and that's why this loss hurts so much. Today's whooping of SC is UCLA dominating another team top to bottom. I'm not mad UCLA won the chip given how well they executed their game plans, but just still very disappointed that we lost with what I think is the better team. This was the versatile roster to do it with.

If you remove Booker's stats, our offense stats from everyone else looked pretty similar to our averages or possibly better. It was just Booker that was uncharacteristically sped up mentally unfortunately. UCLA played well but they still committed 23 TOs against us and we put up 21 more shots than they did. We beat this UCLA team probably 8 times out of 10. It just wasn't meant to be for us. No question UCLA is a terrible matchup for South Carolina after watching this game. Joyce Edwards and Raven didn't show up once again in a finals 2 years in a row. They never really had a chance. The defensive intensity difference between us and South Carolina is night and day. UCLA got a lot of open shots and offensive rebounds today. It never was competitive.