I haven't listened to this show for at least 5-6 years (I now know why...bunch of non-basketball gibberish between Jay Jacobs, Tony, and Huggs). However, they did just finish a segment that touched on the transfer portal and it did not give me good feelings that Huggs is ready to prioritize it to re-tool this team. A few things he said:
*. Argued with Tony on how successful the portal has been for other teams. Tony brought up Texas, Arkansas, and a few other examples of teams that have hit the portal hard. Huggs says "yea, Texas did, but they're not going to win our league this year"
* says he prefers JUCO players to guys out of the portal (because you get two years of play from them)
* says not worried about fielding a team of mainly freshmen...says we had to do that many years before (essentially stating it's not a big deal or a problem)
* And the most troublesome comment: says don't need to really work the portal that hard because kids are going to call us..."they'll see us on TV and call us, we don't have to find them, they will find us"
I'm sorry, but his comments on this particular show don't give me much confidence that he "gets it" yet when it comes to the importance of viewing the portal as a resource to quickly retool a team and, maybe more importantly, how hard a staff has to work the portal to compete for top-tier players. I don't know guys, he sounded like a stubborn old guy that pretty much doesn't see a need for much change and thinks he can keep doing what he's always done to "fix" what ails this program. Disappointing....
*. Argued with Tony on how successful the portal has been for other teams. Tony brought up Texas, Arkansas, and a few other examples of teams that have hit the portal hard. Huggs says "yea, Texas did, but they're not going to win our league this year"
* says he prefers JUCO players to guys out of the portal (because you get two years of play from them)
* says not worried about fielding a team of mainly freshmen...says we had to do that many years before (essentially stating it's not a big deal or a problem)
* And the most troublesome comment: says don't need to really work the portal that hard because kids are going to call us..."they'll see us on TV and call us, we don't have to find them, they will find us"
I'm sorry, but his comments on this particular show don't give me much confidence that he "gets it" yet when it comes to the importance of viewing the portal as a resource to quickly retool a team and, maybe more importantly, how hard a staff has to work the portal to compete for top-tier players. I don't know guys, he sounded like a stubborn old guy that pretty much doesn't see a need for much change and thinks he can keep doing what he's always done to "fix" what ails this program. Disappointing....
