Newkirk to transfer according to Paul Zeise
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He was injured, and had microfracture surgery. He did not play a big role last year, and all he had going for him was his quickness. I imagine that quickness wouldnt be there this year.
Wilson is not "ineligible" per se. It's more that he's not eligible yet, until the NCAA investigates his classes at our Savior.
Before the season starts, I do think he'll be eligible.
Too bad he didn't leave earlier tho so Dixon could add another player (even another grad transfer I guess lol).
Newkirk was going to be out for the whole season anyway so this isn't a big loss. Plus, hopefully Jamie can get a better replacement for him in next year's class.
Go Pitt...
Newkirk was going to be out for the whole season anyway so this isn't a big loss. Plus, hopefully Jamie can get a better replacement for him in next year's class.
Go Pitt...
What this means... taking reject guards from North Carolina that the other NC schools won't take... is NOT a good idea.
Learned the hard way on this one.
Learned the hard way on this one.
He tore the knee in practice/pick up games in the Spring, not during the season. No relationship to his performance whatsoever. The injury was at a bad time for Josh and Pitt. It does give him time to rehab while redshirting and a fresh start, but unfortunately will probably detract from his main asset, his speed and athleticism.
We can only wish him well.
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I wonder if this means Uchebo will stay on the team this year. I saw some stuff where he visited Charlotte and East Tennessee State but haven't heard that he signed anywhere else. He's still listed on the Pitt website as a registered student. If we have an extra scholarship, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have him as what would essentially be a "scholarship walk-on" practice player. However, having an extra scholarship that can be used for a mid-year transfer is a good idea sometimes but we never get those kinds of players anyway.
This is not good news, regardless of how you feel about Newk. We were perilously short on ballhandlers before this news.
Harve--I thought he had a more chronic problem with his knee cartilage that resulted in a meniscus tear and required the microfracture surgery, as opposed to a one-time traumatic injury like an ACL tear. Sounded like the kind of injury a lot of athletes, especially NBA players, develop just from wear and stress.
No matter what, losing him hurts the program.
Lets not give Newkirk too much credit. I'll give you that his buzzer beaters against Clemson and BC were both season-saving (BC was, at the time at least) but the full body of work, over 2 years, showed me that he was more of a mid-major or minor D1 PG. If we never knew Newkirk and he rode in with that Samford team, for example, last year and had 16 points against us, believe me, nobody would have thought he was ACC material.
Newkirk isnt even a "point guard," as much as he is a guy who dribbles the ball up the court. This is why I think that even if Wilson is ineligible, it would make very little difference if we have Sterling Smith dribbling the ball up the court instead of Newkirk while Robinson takes a breather. In fact, I think I would have preferred that anyway without ever seeing Smith play.
I think the writing on the wall is that Wilson is going to be eligible eventually. Pitt has been down this road before with Darnell Dodson and made the mistake of enrolling him without being cleared which led to the bizarre penalty of never being able to play at Pitt again. The same would happen for Wilson if he has to go finish up at some prep school and I dont think Pitt would have been willing to chance that again.
If Wilson is eligible, Newkirk would have likely been a deep reserve, 12th man kind of a player. I just dont think he was very good. Now those guys are valuable if there are injuries but barring that, I didnt see a role for him.
It does, doesn't it. I remember years ago Zimmerdumma posting about all of us "whistling past the grave yard." Maybe he was wiser than we thought.
I don't know if it is derailing or not, but this is something we have not seen in a long time.
That's possible but injury-wise that is not what I had heard. I'm not a believer in micro-fracture surgery. It is all too often a career -ending situation.
Regarding hurting the program, I know people had great hopes for Josh at one time and he was a VERY nice kid, but all things considered, as it has developed, not having him available this season hurts us, but the transfer per se, not so much.
If he were redshirting for rehab this season, it is hard to say his transfer hurts the program much. He couldn't play this season anyway.
He was ineffective last season and Damon Wilson was very likely to have passed him before he was physically capable of playing next season. In fact, given we are actively recruitng about 6 different 2016 PG's, it looks from here like he was no longer in the staff's plans, which probably contributed greatly to motivation for the transfer.
Why do you like him then? To be polite? To support "our guy"? Seriously.
It's been a trend the last 4-5 years, constantly guys leaving, so what is it? Why so many?
It's been a constant all along, not just 4-5 years. We don't recruit a lot of guys who leave early for the NBA, but the roster management has always been a litte different from most programs.
Dixon almost always uses all 13 of his scholarships. He takes a kid or two who are known projects or "reaches" and redshirts them as developmental projects. Those kids are obviously less likely to succeed than higher rated prospects.
When they don't work out, they are encouraged to move on to a destination more suited for their talent level. Pitt almost always helps them find a soft landing spot so the departures are rarely acrimonious.
John Johnson, Gilbert, Epps, Haughton, Dwight Miller, JJ Richardson and Uchebo fit this pretty well.
Durand had injury and suspension ruin a promising career. It's mostly on him.
JJ Moore and Trey Zeigler were sort of this situation. Neither was a reach but neither kid achieved his potential either. There were some extenuating circumstances in each case. Moore had a child on the way and Zeigler was going to have to redshirt to rehab a knee. Both took the opportunity for a fresh start to hopefully build up some stats to kick-start a career overseas. Newkirk is also combining rehab and his transfer year in hopes of a new beginning.
Adams, Blair and Birch were high profile guys who left for different reasons. Certainly, most programs mostly strive to recruit players good enough to go early-entry to the NBA, even if it disrupts the roster.
Overall, NCAA D-1 hoops averages about 1.5 to 1.7 transfers or departures per year per team. We're actually pretty close to the average. We have 14 guys in the last 8 classes. Given that we always have the scholarships filled, that's fairly normal.
Sorry, I just started a thread asking a question that Harve was pretty much answering while I was typing.
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