How did we go about 0 for 20 on lottery tickets before him? That's almost impossible. Fede is a decent player but not great. However, if we had a guy like this on late Dixon or Stallings Year 2 or 3, we're probably making some NCAA Tournaments.
Lottery Ticket Fede
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
- Start date
I think we’ve had lottery tickets 2 years in a row now. Mo Gueye qualifies as well.
Fede is better than decent and has 2 more years left. Glad we have him.
Well, I was talking about Centers/post players and Gueye wasn't that. He was more of a SF or stretch 4. And, while I thought Gueye was good for us, his overall production was similar to the year before at Stony Brook. And yea, I know its a big step up from AEC to ACC but I expected him to be ok, but not as good as he was. So, I wouldn't call him a lottery ticket. He was expected to be a quality bench player and was more than that.
You could also argue that Fede isnt a lottery ticket either given he committed to Huggy and had good numbers at the JUCO but we've struck out so much at the 5, it feels good to finally have someone who can play.
Partially it's the fit. Not that he isn't improving but his role for a team that can surround him with three or four shooters is simple...we spread the floor and he gets rebounds and blocks on his tippy toes. He also sets good screens and hedges better all the time.
Not just the fit. He can catch, defend, and is active/bouncy. These guys were none of those things
Haughton
Kene
Nwankwo
Brown
Nix
Peace
Randall
Amudusn
Ochebo
An almost impossible list of consecutive misses.
I’m going to agree with you in this one. ‘He can catch, defend and is active/bouncy’ sums it up oretty good. Just add that he CAN CONVERT and as Marshall noted, is getting better every game at hedges and screens.
And your list of priors pretty much couldn’t do any of those.
Yeah those guys were mostly pretty bad by major conference standards and it's quite a streak. Brown I think could have fit well on a 4 out team for instance though, just asked to rim defend and catch alley oops.
Brown couldn't catch at all. He was a good a shot blocker but besides that, he was below average defensively.
Brown's total rebound percent in the WCC ended up being 4th in the conference once he transferred. Obviously not the same as ACC talent though. He generally improved though but overall his rebounding considering his length, and hands, were pretty bad here. I just think generally a lot of bigs who lack a lot of interior skills can find a spot in this sort of more spread out offense.
Lottery ticket based off what?
He was a junior college All American honorable mention and a former Bob Huggins commit.
JC recruits can very often be hit or miss, but Fede actually had a decent background history at least with a quality coach who offered him in Huggins.
I even said after the exhibition games he is significantly better than what people think. I dont think we got "lucky" here. I think Capel found a quality big man. I wish Capel would find more quality guards in the future.
I think his nickname should be "Rico", not "Fede".
"Rico Federico" just sounds so damn cool.
"Rico Federico" just sounds so damn cool.
Interesting that Fede and The Twins are all better than all of these guys. Peace and Max where particularly BAD. But actually, Nwankwo was a walk on who was like a genius straight A student, who had an academic scholarship and wasn't expected to be even as good as he was, he was supposed to go to med school, I think he actually ended up playing pro overseas,
The twins seem to fit a lot more with what the op was trying to say. They did not have much of a background history to go by including offers. They were rated as top 100 guys by 1 recruiting outlet and that's about it. They have not spent a whole lot of time in the US. They were fairly large unknowns outside 1 season at IMG. I think with a proper strength and conditioning program the 2 of them could make sizable jumps next year. We may have hit lottery tickets with those 2, which is more in line with what the op was looking for. But I still think we need to wait a little more with those 2 to see how things go. However, early signs have been encouraging.
Hopefully they stay happy, if they could be here a few years, gain some muscle, they could be awesome.
Isn't it funny we have two guys who can't gain wait and another who can't keep the weight off.
Kene played with energy like Fede /
Just had less talent
Kene was one of the best of them. Definitely played with energy but didnt have talent as you said. You could argue Fede wasnt a lottery ticket based on his JUCO numbers.
I was kind of thinking the same, though while Mo was more of a "stretch 4" he also was a hit.
But, this program has absolutely has a streak of next to worthless big men for far to long, and these two have been really nice breaths of fresh air.
But, this program has absolutely has a streak of next to worthless big men for far to long, and these two have been really nice breaths of fresh air.
He was committed to Oklahoma State and headed there until Covid let people get an extra year, hence how he ended up at an Oklahoma Juco. He then was committed to WVU until WVU decided to go older thru the portal since Huggs will retire either this year or the next.
He’s hardly a lotto ticket. Multiple staffs wanted him. Let’s hope he continues playing well and out of foul trouble as the schedule stiffens.
He’s hardly a lotto ticket. Multiple staffs wanted him. Let’s hope he continues playing well and out of foul trouble as the schedule stiffens.
That's news on Huggs. You feel confident he'll be done soon?
I would say 3 years tops. Lot of these older guys don’t like NIL, portal, etc
Our big guy recruiting was so bad for so long, I still considered him a lotto since he wasn't a guarantee type dude. But why do you think we struggled so badly for so long at that position. This goes all the way back to Dixon
That’s easy isn’t it. Dixon’s recruiting pretty much sucked at the end of his tenure, some of the reaches he had to settle for were inexplicable.
And of course, decent to good big men are the scarcest commodity so the reaches we’re the worst in that area.
Yeah remember how terrible it was he took a couple of local reaches -
Cam Johnson and Ryan Luther - and we went to the NCAAT 3 out of 4 years !
Fans here always and continue to focus on the wrong things
Ok, so what. Doesn’t change the fact his recruiting was in the dumpster and trending further down at the end.
It’s not too much different than offensive tackle recruiting in football. Not a lot of guys with that body type. Even fewer of them have the functional athleticism. And unlike football where you’re basically only competing with the 60 schools in the P5 for those types of kids, in basketball you’re recruiting against 100+ schools for a similarly limited talent pool, plus the professional options.
You don’t make the ncaa tournament because your recruiting stinks .
It’s an idiotic thing to say
There a short answer and a long answer. I’ll give you the short:
Dixon didn’t adjust to the rapidly changing game in the post, missed on his top targets and scrambled late for “lottery tickets”.
Dixon's recruiting was indefensible at the end. He literally fanned on every big man target as well as every shooting guard. The roster was basically made up of 3s and 4s playing out of position. You can defend him to the death but he made the tournament because he could coach and he was great at gaming the RPI. His teams defended and rebounded just enough to get in the tournament, plus he had a long string of success that bought him some equity with the tournament committee as the team was starting to decline. The last class of Kithcart and Manigault and I can't even remember the other guy, was far below the line. This has been covered ad nauseum, but just thought I would remind you of the direction the program was headed.
Dixon’s floor at Pitt is what we are hoping to reach right now. There is a 0% chance that we would have gone 6 straight years without making a tournament if Dixon had stayed. It was a stupid move lowering the buyout for TCU.
Absolutely. He was a good coach....but it was because he was a good coach that he had bubble teams the last 5 years. Those teams sucked but he coached his ass off. This year's team and the team 2 years ago which started Johnson, Horton, Toney, and Champagnie is more talented than many of his late teams.....and he was still able to sell 1 seeds. There was no excuse for his recruiting slipping so bad.
A few others who were good in their roles, Jared Wilson-Frame, Sidy Ndir and Ryan Murphy!
I never argued or lobbied for getting rid of Dixon. I was simply stating facts that show recruiting was slipping as well as team performance. As far as your statement that there is zero percent chance we would have gone 0 for 6 on NCCA's, that is highly debatable. What is not debatable, is if he stayed and continued to recruit Kithcart, Manigualt, and the like to compete in the ACC, despite his coaching abilities, we most certainly would have went 0 for 6. Some will argue otherwise, but he was not getting ACC level players at the end. Capel may not be much of a coach, but, the players he has brought here, especially this year, are much better than anyone Jamie had the last couple years except for Artis and Young. That said, Jamie wasn't getting Artis and Young caliber players at the end, nor could he get a center or shooting guard.
Give me Capel's recruiting and Jamie coaching them and we might have something. Unfortunately, we can't have that. It is a shame what happened to this program and how it went down so quickly, however, I think a decline in performance was coming regardless of who the coach was. It is Pitt's own fault that we decended to unfathomable levels and are still digging our way out.
Credit to him for that but that's a once in a lifetime recruit. Very few lower D1 recruits become lottery picks. He didn’t beat Rider for him. Jamie's last 5 years, he got:
Adams: once in a lifetime, relationship with his handler
Johnson: once in a lifetime NEC level recruit turned lottery
Artis/Young: good recruits, needed more of these
The rest were Chris Jones and Rozelle Nix. Did an unbelievable coaching those misfits though.
Fair to call me out on that one. However, he was a under recruited local who had ties to the program. So I wouldn't consider it a recruiting win. Nonetheless he obviously was a good player that I left out.
Every recruiting win is a recruiting win. Capel got two players to reclass when he got here. That’s a recruiting win. Get a guy in your backyard and it’s a recruiting win. Get a guy from Europe, it’s a recruiting win. And the only actual wins that matter at all are wins on the court. If you get lots of wins on the court, you are a good recruiter. It’s that simple.
