Washington State Cougar Roster Preview - Take 2

FWIW, NBA sources tell me they see Flowers as a PG. He played on a mediocre team which had few players who would score reliably enough. Otherwise, his A/TO ratio would've been a lot better.

These are people who've seen him play.

IMO, Williams is more successful as an on-the-ball player and this became apparent because he seemed to really shine when he become the primary ball-handler when Bonton was out. I think he had a game with 7 assists and 7 turnovers... ugh... but then that was pretty close to Bonton. He had a game with 40 points, but was just 12-35 from the field. It was his 8-19 from 3 and his 8-10 from FTs combined with 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and 0 turnovers that helped WSU beat Stanford.

In a game they lost in OT at ASU, he had 15 points, 6 assists and 0 TOs.

The starting lineup in these games was:

Williams
Bamba
Jakimovski
Kunc
Abogidi

Rodman was also out and Jackson was then coming off the bench.

He was on the ball against UDub even when Bonton was in the game and seemed be take it personally that Hopkins hadn't recruited a player from Seattle Garfield. He got ejected from the game, effectively, as he was called for 2 T's and that gave him 5 fouls.

The NBA sees him as player growing into a high end on the ball lead guard. He was rated so low in high school because he was regarded as a 6-4 hyper-athlete with no apparent skills.

Now he's learning how to shoot, pass, etc.

Kawhi Leonard was, I think, rated 218.

My guess is, that's a bigger miss than Williams at 300 will ever be.

Williams could very well be a first round pick and a high end starter after either next year or the year after and, as far as the NBA goes, maybe 5 years into his career if he avoids injuries and has the work ethic.

That he has improved so much would indicate a hard work ethic and that's one thing Kyle Smith has always emphasized in his recruiting.

I remember when he was starting out as an assistant at USD, he decided to hang out with two then younger coaches in the same conference named Mark Few and Randy Bennett. I don't recall them inviting him along, but neither objected. He was all ears with plenty of questions and they were happy to answer.

Players from overseas tend to be more coachable as a rule than players who grow up here. Over there, they think college coaches know how to make them into NBA players. Here, a lot of middle school players and their parents wonder how badly the coaches will mess up their prospects' guaranteed lottery pick.

There are a lot of middle school players and their parents who don't think that way at all. But it's true that the coaches who went the "let me recruit a whole new roster every year" route have had some trouble in maintaining stability in their programs at a high level of achievement and we're seeing certain people retire.

There's a lot going on behind the scenes. NIKE's role in AAU ball and college basketball is evolving and NIKE-sponsored schools are losing a huge built-in advantage they've held for a long time as a result.

The NCAA has publicly announced that if a shoe company sponsors a school, they are a booster of that school. If they provide improper benefits to high school players, that makes them ineligible for college unless the money's paid back and it could lead to teams forfeiting games if it turns out improper benefits were provided.

Of course, if someone at the school knew what was going on, that would lead to more prohibitive sanctions.

Everyone knows this rule is really directed at NIKE and not at the other shoe companies.

There is a great deal of money in college basketball and the NCAA is trying to grab as much of it as they can. NIKE is now making deals like they did with UCLA, where they aren't a sponsor of UCLA and UCLA doesn't have to worry about getting caught unawares.

And the rumor is NIKE will be shutting down the EYBL, possibly by next year. It will be replaced by an expanded set of camps by USA Basketball, which NIKE sponsors.

The NCAA controls the access of coaches to events and soon that will mean that college coaches can only go to USA Basketball Camps (and many players now seen only in AAU events will have no venue for exposure except to local college coaches). And the NCAA has been jacking up the fees it now charges to Frank Burlison and others so they can be NCAA-sanctioned scouts and they're taking steps to drive shut down AAU basketball entirely so they can then charge even more money to scouts and scouting services.

If they have their way, my guess is the NCAA would like to charge companies like ESPN and anyone else who can afford to pay it $100 million or more to be exclusively sanctioned by the NCAA as scouts.

IMO, they're committing a blatant violation of the Antitrust laws and when enough people get mad at them they're going to get sued and lose.

The NCAA keeps asking Congress for a waiver from the Antitrust laws, like MLB, but Congress remains highly-skeptical.

These financial machinations by the NCAA has created a huge headache for college coaches because the NCAA has severely cut back on their ability to observe and interact with recruits and their families in a variety of settings. This happened before the pandemic and it led to so many transfers as coaches and players found themselves in more "bad fit" situations that the NCAA has been forced to relax their transfer rules more and more every year.

This may seem to be a pandemic issue, but it started before the pandemic and it's not clear that we'll see a big drop of transfers once the pandemic recedes.

So, because of greed and not at all because they are trying to "clean up the sport" or look after the best interests of student-athletes, the NCAA has done far more damage to those student-athletes and to its member institutions and their employees.

They might be destroying their own product.