Left Coast Pirates: Big East Start / UConn on Deck

[Left Coast Pirates]

Happy New Year’s to everyone.

lots of basketball over the holiday break since our last episode prior to the start of BE play.

Tom required at least a 4-1 record before the UConn match up to record another episode. I’m not sure if he was kidding or not, but the Pirate obliged.

but it wasn’t without a few ups and downs, and close calls from the cardiac kids.
- we break it all down as the Pirates have opened up the start of Big East play.

Hope you enjoy as always.

https://on.soundcloud.com/GtwCiW8UQcxRen6utq

 

[MBryantFan88]

4-2 over next 6 should be the goal.

 

[Halldan]

4-2 over next 6 should be the goal.

Tue Jan 13		9	Connecticut			Home
Sat Jan 17		58	Butler			Home
Tue Jan 20		18	St. John's			Away
Sat Jan 24		108	DePaul			Away
Wed Jan 28		104	Xavier			Home
Sat Jan 31		114	Marquette			Home

 

[MBryantFan88]

Tue Jan 13		9	Connecticut			Home
Sat Jan 17		58	Butler			Home
Tue Jan 20		18	St. John's			Away
Sat Jan 24		108	DePaul			Away
Wed Jan 28		104	Xavier			Home
Sat Jan 31		114	Marquette			Home

That number is???? KenPom? Something else???

 

[Halldan]

Kenpom. The number is their national ranking.

SHU BTW is #43. We don't get much love from their metric analysis.

 

[MBryantFan88]

Roger. Lets see if we get more love from the voters this week.

 

[Piratz]

Great show. And I agree gotta let the starters see if they can come out of the slump for a little while longer.

Budd’s height does create turnover issues too which is why that number (TO ratio) is higher than you’d like IMO.

 

[SHUsez]

It's really funny yesterday I was like ugh have to wait until February for a Left Coast Pirates episode...

Would love to know what Harvey would have done under a different system. He really was (and still is) under appreciated because of when he played.

 

[BobbieSolo]

4-2 over next 6 should be the goal.

We need more Q1's as they are few & far between in the league this year. You could argue 5-1 is what is really needed unless one of the 4-2 wins is UConn.

 

[Hall84]

Excellent listen as always guys!

 

[Left Coast Pirates]

It's really funny yesterday I was like ugh have to wait until February for a Left Coast Pirates episode...

Would love to know what Harvey would have done under a different system. He really was (and still is) under appreciated because of when he played.

Eugene had an interesting career arc at Seton Hall he and Brian Laing (one of my favorite Pirates BTW) were asked to do a lot of the scoring in Harvey’s first year.

Very guard oriented team with the running joke that we once went with a 5 guard lineup featuring Larry Davis at the center.

Very fun up and down team that pressed a lot but didn’t have the horses to compete with other Big East teams in the front court.

Eugene averaged 16.5 ppg that year and you thought the sky was the limit. However his ppg trended downward as other pieces were brought in to the the scoring. (Hazell, Mitchell, Pope, Lawrence, and Robinson)

He finished with 1560 points, 576 assists, and 203 steals. 31st, 3rd, and 7th respectively in the all time Seton Hall record books. Talk about underrated with those statistical totals.

If Eugene could have hit the 3 ball he would have been all world. He did improve his senior season and got it up to 34.5%. But at that point they were daring him to take it.

 

[SHUsez]

Eugene had an interesting career arc at Seton Hall and he Brian Laing (one of my favorite Pirates BTW) were asked to do a lot of the scoring in Harvey’s first year.

Very guard oriented team with the running joke that we once went with a 5 guard lineup featuring Larry Davis at the center.

Very fun up and down team that pressed a lot but didn’t have the horses to compete with other Big East teams in the front court.

Eugene averaged 16.5 ppg that year and you thought the sky was the limit. However his ppg trended downward as other pieces were brought in to the the scoring. (Hazell, Mitchell, Pope, Lawrence, and Robinson)

He finished with 1560 points, 576 assists, and 203 steals. 31st, 3rd, and 7th respectively in the all time Seton Hall record books. Talk about underrated with those statistical totals.

If Eugene could have hit the 3 ball he would have been all world. He did improve his senior season and got it up to 34.5%. But at that point they were daring him to take it.

I love Brian too I think he still holds the record for consecutive made 3's in a game. Can't remember the game or year, wasn't freshman because we were at the Rock. Going into halftime Harvey throws up a half court shot and makes it and he walked to the locker room like no big deal. He was just a different breed. I've heard he does attend games now and then still.

 

[papacheesy2]

Great listen and I hadn't thought about the insight about how playing Parker and Clark together helps Budd stay back on defense and avoid that pesky early foul trouble trap he tends to fall into.

Also on the Clark point, one small correction. One of you mentioned that Budd makes the most in NIL. There was a previous thread where Halldan clarified that Payne technically makes the most NIL on the team (though him, Hines, and Clark are all close in payment)

 

[Left Coast Pirates]

Great listen and I hadn't thought about the insight about how playing Parker and Clark together helps Budd stay back on defense and avoid that pesky early foul trouble trap he tends to fall into.

Also on the Clark point, one small correction. One of you mentioned that Budd makes the most in NIL. There was a previous thread where Halldan clarified that Payne technically makes the most NIL on the team (though him, Hines, and Clark are all close in payment)

Thanks, appreciate the compliment.

Halldan referenced that Payne is making significantly more than what most people realized and that’s because the going rate for big men is just that high.

Hines making close to Budd’s rumored $700k makes sense, because I know top freshmen big men like Thomas Sorbert from Gtown were getting aggressive offers last year out of high school.

However, until they open the books and show us, I find it hard to believe that a player that averaged 8.4 points and 6.3 rebounds at Jacksonville out of the Atlantic Sun could command that type of NIL money. No disrespect to the Atlantic Sun but they are typically somewhere between the 10th-15th ranked conference in the country.

No disrespect to Halldan, but no one else has even mentioned that Payne was in this range. No one else set a high expectation over the summer that Payne would be relied upon as a big contributor since he was our highest paid portal acquisition. Until we knew about Godswill’s foot injury, we were expecting him to be the starting center as one of only two returning players

Now let’s say that this is true, all the credit to Sha and his staff for identifying that Payne could make the leap and be an impactful big for this team.

But if you roll the dice on a Stephon Payne for that cost and he doesn’t make the leap, that’s how you end up with a 7-25 season.

To be fair, we once again rolled the dice on a lot of guys in the portal. They may have different attributes than last year’s crop, but we did roll the dice. And at this point almost everyone is exceeding their expectations making for a special season.

 

[Halldan]

No one said our NIL was close to $6M either. I noted it was early this past year and even said if needed it could bump a little higher. That proved true and I have the same source on the payment for Payne, Clark and Hines.

 

[Left Coast Pirates]

No one said our NIL was close to $6M either. I noted it was early this past year and even said if needed it could bump a little higher. That proved true and I have the same source on the payment for Payne, Clark and Hines.

Well that’s not accurate. Both Carino and Zags put out tweets that reported our spending was that exact amount. People take those posts as factual since they are reporters.

I never expect for anyone from Seton Hall to claim the true numbers. The schools definitely don’t want that information out there. It could create animosity in house amongst players and create challenges for negotiations with the next player’s agent.

If we truly are at a $6m NIL Budget this year that would mean that all 12 scholarship roster spots are averaging $500,000 a year.

Assuming that Payne, Hines, Clark are averaging say $700,000 each. That would mean that the remaining players are averaging now $433,333.

There is definitely a hierarchy as to who is getting paid what. So I wouldn’t expect roster slots 9-12 to be getting paid anywhere close to that average of $433,333.
For argument sake let’s say those 4 players (doesn’t matter who they are) are making around an average of $200,000.
That would leave $3.1M left for roster slots 4-8. Or an average of $620,000 per player.

At that point why wouldn’t Seton Hall just make a comment along the lines of the following. “The strategy for this year’s NIL funds was to equally distribute it amongst our top targets in the portal.”

So based on this analysis you can draw one of two conclusions.

1. The top 8 players on the roster are all getting similar money (within reason) bringing Seton Hall’d budget to around $6M.

or

2. The total number really isn’t $6m. Maybe somewhere between $4.5-$5.0m. But from an optics perspective $6m sounds better because it’s 4 times greater than the reported $1.5m from last year.

 

[Left Coast Pirates]

 

[Halldan]

Well that’s not accurate. Both Carino and Zags put out tweets that reported our spending was that exact amount. People take those posts as factual since they are reporters.

They put the figure out about 6-7 months after I posted it. You're beating a dead horse. Believe what you will. The readers here know who and when the figure was reported.

And this same source gave me the figures of the three players in question.

 

[Left Coast Pirates]

They put the figure out about 6-7 months after I posted it. You're beating a dead horse. Believe what you will. The readers here know who and when the figure was reported.

And this same source gave me the figures of the three players in question.

Geez…someone said I was wrong in stating that Budd is the highest paid player because YOU made reference that Payne is that guy based on your sources.

You are correct, no one has said our NIL is at $6-7M other than yourself, and then later by Zags and Carino.

Neither of the two reporters has directly sourced someone within the program relative to that number. Not Shaheen, not Felt, no one.

I posted a comprehensive analysis based on a $6M NIL budget, how I believe that players 4-8 on our roster are making somewhere in the neighborhood of $620,000+.

That would be players like Simpkins, AJSM, Fischer.

Since you have more inside knowledge than me, do you dispute that they are earning that high a figure?

If you do dispute that they are, then there is no way the math is mathing correctly to get to a total of $6m spent.

If they are then we have several players all pretty much making the same amount of money, which in that case, I could care less who is the highest paid player, if we are talking about a marginal difference.

 

[Halldan]

Neither of the two reporters has directly sourced someone within the program relative to that number. Not Shaheen, not Felt, no one.

I know who both Jerry and Zags spoke to. You can't go much higher than that person. I spoke to a different person directly involved. That's the same person who told me what I posted on Payne, Clark and Hines. I did not ask him about any other players.