McNair, Chaney, Pettigrew.. best news ever.. these guys can play.. with GRIT, high IQ, and great teammates, excited to watch this group next year… any others? let’s go!
There will be others, stay tuned!
We enter a luxury Valpo hasn't had in the portal era. The ability to be extra selective with your portal additions. With Powell's resume for portal pounding....exciting things are in the future for Union Street Ball
McNair, Chaney, Pettigrew.. best news ever.. these guys can play.. with GRIT, high IQ, and great teammates, excited to watch this group next year… any others? let’s go!
Stay tuned is right! What a great day for the program. These kids deserve our support and hopefully there is more good news soon.
What Rez said is so important here. The last few years at this time, this staff was literally scrambling to add at least 8-10 players with limited resources. Regardless of how much money is left, the staff can be selective as I believe they will only need to add a few guys (perhaps as few as 2). More fun to come this week and in the coming few weeks.
It's so great that Powell has seemed to be able to get his star freshman to believe in his 2 year development program. I wonder how much seeing how Cooper and All have fared has helped them to see how valuable an extra year at Valpo might be in terms of how much they might get to play at the next level when they go for a big pay cheque (which no one can blame them for!). I also wonder in JT's case whether money isn't quite the same motivation it would be for some others as I think I remember reading somewhere that his dad played in the NFL? Anyway really excited and happy for Roger that he doesn't have to do a full rebuild this year and I'm already excited for next season!
So we have four guys out of eligibility in Barnes, Deese, Brody and Thomas. Because we are getting Walker in the rotation I would think we could afford to lose one of the bigs. We presumably will get something out of Watson who is a Deese like player, size wise at least. We are adding two freshman. So the questions remaining are do we lose Tucker, Sader or Shon and do we keep Brown? Might be only looking for two or maybe as many as five. Expect to know more soon--I would think!
We have already added 3 freshmen. I expect Brown is gone. Walker will be a definite plus to the the rotation not sure about Watson. Webster seems to have good shooting range when watching him in warmups. Maybe we add 2 or 3 more to the roster.
Why was Mark Brown Jr not at arch madness?
Now that Powell has had three years at Valpo and he has had talented players (All and Cooper) transfer only to be role players at Power 5 conferences, he has growing credibility for developing a player like Alec Peters and others in Professional Basketball Players. I think Cooper's chances to play professionally really took a hit this year. This story line with the ability to pay some amount of NIL money will improve his success at retention.
I do think that as time goes on people will be more open to hearing counter arguments for staying outside of just "we can give you money more". It seems that there was buy in both to the team culture and the campus and community as well. That's a great foundation. If someone's thinking about leaving you want them to at least feel a little sad about it to give you a foot in the door. Also, as this era goes on smart people are probably realizing that that these dollar amounts are going to come back down to earth. There are probably schools paying more than they can afford and other schools getting sick of the rising pay rates. A lot of money is hard to say no too, but it gets easier if you realize that it could lead you to getting buried if you don't perform or only getting that money for a year. There's also something to be said for the narrative around sticking with a team and making news in that way. It might not resonate with everyone but a team that stayed put, at a smaller school that can put something together would get a lot of press, and the players that chose to stay would get that as well. Everything is a risk: you could decide to stay and get injured, you could decide to leave and get injured. You could stay and go dancing, you could leave and end up 8th man on a team that has a lot of money but doesn't make it out of conference. You could make or break your future career, you could make your money now and rest a little easier that if you don't make it big you still got some financial reward for the sport. I don't envy these young men trying to make this decision but I do despise what all this money is doing to the waters they are forced to swim in.
