Tag: south carolina basketball

Explaining why GG Jackson could fall out of the first round in the 2023 NBA Draft

Gregory “GG” Jackson II was considered the best collegiate prospect in the 2023 recruiting class.

Gregory “GG” Jackson II was considered the best collegiate prospect in the 2023 recruiting class. But his draft outlook doesn’t look great.

Jackson, who helped team Team USA to win a gold medal at the FIBA Americas Under-18 Championships in 2022, opted to reclassify and forego his senior year of high school, becoming the highest-rated recruit in program history for South Carolina.

He averaged 15.4 points and 5.9 rebounds per game, earning SEC All-Freshman honors, before declaring early entry for the 2023 NBA Draft. He is the youngest player eligible to hear his name called in this draft class.

By all accounts, an 18-year-old who performed at such a high level in the SEC would typically project as a potential lottery pick. But there are also valid reasons why Jackson may slide on the night of the draft.

Here is what one college coach told NBA reporter David Aldridge (via The Athletic):

“He’s got to have self-awareness as to what the next phase of his career is, because he did speed up the process. … mentally, was young, immature.”

NBA draft expert Jonathan Givony has more (via ESPN):

“He gives very little effort, looking very upright in his stance, not covering ground well, struggling to get over screens and looking lethargic with his reaction time, providing next to nothing as a rim-protector due to his poor 6-11 wingspan … South Carolina’s coaching staff hasn’t been able to coax much effort or physicality out of him, with his body language looking very concerning at times.”

South Carolina was outscored by a whopping 18.4 points per 100 possessions when Jackson was on the court, per CBB Analytics, but outscored opponents by 8.7 points per 100 when he was not. That swing (27.2) was the largest of any Division I men’s college basketball player to log at least 500 minutes last season.

Unfortunately, there were major concerns for Jackson on both offense and defense.

Jackson is a decent shooter for his size but offers very little efficiency. He averaged 0.70 points per offensive chance, per Stats Perform, which was the worst among all NBA prospects included in the latest aggregate mock draft provided by HoopsHype.

He can create his own shot but he shot just 31-for-119 (26.1 percent) on his jumpers off the dribble, per StatsPerform, also the worst among high-volume top prospects.

His defense wasn’t great, either. Opponents were 16-for-26 (61.5 percent) when defended by Jackson in the paint, per Stats Perform, and 18-for-28 (64.2 percent) when he was credited as the nearest defender in the restricted area. Both were near the worst among top prospects.

The pre-draft process also wasn’t kind to Jackson. Adam Finkelstein wrote about what he saw during Jackson’s Pro Day (via 247 Sports):

“GG Jackson’s workout led to some questions. Jackson looked noticeably winded less than 10 minutes in and, while the progression of his face-up skill-set was evident, the overall pace of the workout ended up being slower than most others. Given some of the questions that emerged at South Carolina this year with regard to his efficiency, body language, and overall maturity, this showing didn’t do anything to reassure NBA decision-makers.”

According to NBA Big Board director of scouting Raphael Barlowe, however, Jackson was dealing with bronchitis during the workout.

That was an unfortunate time for his illness, which provides helpful context to his performance, and the reality is that Jackson still has a ton of upside.

But the numbers don’t paint a positive picture of his outlook on draft night. Put it all together with the catch-all metric box plus-minus and Jackson (-0.5) had the lowest mark among all top prospects.

In fact, per Bart Torvik, there are only five players on record since 2008 to hear their name called on draft night after posting a negative box-plus minus during their collegiate careers. Only one was selected in the first round and only two were selected in the top 40.

We projected Jackson at No. 36 overall in our latest NBA mock draft.

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Where in the world is Marcus Freeman: Fishing with QB1 edition

Your clues: Visiting a national champion basketball coach, seeing an ND grad/prominent ACC AD, and seeing his QB1.

A quick search of “Marcus Freeman is everywhere” on Twitter shows that the Notre Dame head football coach certainly isn’t scared to get up and go.  One minute he’s in South Bend and the next he’s at the White House.  Whether its recruiting, doing public speaking, or something in-between, Freeman is certainly active.

During the first week of May, Notre Dame’s athletic webpage started a blog to track Freeman’s whereabouts as he is booked with events nationwide this month that aren’t directly related to on-the-field activities.

So what was the Notre Dame head coach up to in the last few days?  Throwing some lines with his starting quarterback was just one of the things he was up to.

Aliyah Boston found a savvy way to get instant photos on the WNBA Draft orange carpet

Aliyah Boston found a savvy way to make sure she got as many photos as she could on the WNBA Draft orange carpet.

WNBA Draft prospect and former South Carolina standout Aliyah Boston didn’t want her orange carpet moment to go without a few good snapshots.

Rather than rely on official photos to get shots out quickly, Boston asked reporters on the red carpet if they’d be able to take some photos of her and some of her fellow athletes.

She also had interest in acquiring some of the photos that someone took of somebody taking the photos with her phone.

It’s a really savvy way of making sure you’ve got all the photos you need on such a major night for your career.

It’d be a special night for Boston, as she went first overall in the 2023 WNBA Draft to the Indiana Fever.

She’ll soon transition to her professional career, and she’ll have plenty of snapshots to remember this important night for the rest of her life. We call that a picture-perfect situation.

The reaction to Angel Reese taunting Caitlin Clark is a sickening case of double standards

The reaction to Angel Reese taunting Caitlin Clark proved Dawn Staley’s point about double standards.

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Prince Grimes.

After South Carolina’s bid for a perfect season came up short Friday, head coach Dawn Staley had a message for the media in her postgame press conference.

“Watch what you say.”

Staley had been hearing the ways her predominantly-Black team was being talked about in certain circles, and she planned to address it regardless of the game’s result.

Before the subject could get lost in the moment, a reporter asked Staley for the truth about her team, which was often described as a bully.

“The truth about our team … We’re not bar fighters. We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball on the court and off the court. And I do think that [is] sometimes brought into the game, and it hurts.

“Some of the people in the media, when you’re gathering in public, you’re saying things about our team and you’re being heard. And it’s being brought back to me.”

What Staley described is racism, at worst. At minimum, it’s an implicit bias common in sports: Black women are the aggressors in proximity to their non-Black counterparts. In basketball, that type of bias influences how athletes are covered, coached, officiated, and ultimately perceived by the public.

Less than 48 hours later, we saw those exact biases and double standards go to work when LSU’s Angel Reese was ridiculed for taunting Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who was widely celebrated for doing the same thing to another player a week earlier.

The great ambassador for women’s basketball that she is, Staley should have been applauded for bringing this issue to the forefront. As the sport continues to grow in popularity, it’s something better addressed earlier than left to fester and become normal.

There was no better person to speak about it than a Black woman who has experienced these biases first-hand, as both a player and coach. Already a Hall of Famer, Olympic gold medalist and two-time champion, Staley doesn’t have anything left to prove. She’s simply someone who has seen and heard everything there is to be seen and heard about basketball. If she says something is happening, we should listen.

Instead, Staley was doubted by people like columnist Peter Vecsey and called a sore loser or a victim who was playing the race card – sentiments that did nothing but prove the exact point she was making.

People would rather live with their unchecked biases than look themselves in the mirror and admit they harbor harmful thoughts, which is sad and the type of behavior that allows racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and so forth and so on to exist.

Seeing it play out the way it did — just in the same way Staley pointed out how her team was talked about — put a real damper on what was otherwise an incredible Final Four.

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Quick Hits: LSU-Iowa officiating gets slammed … Wrestlemania madness! … The “ghost fork” makes its regular-season debut … and more.

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

— The officiating for the women’s title game got ripped

— Wrestlemania 39 featured Snoop Dogg hitting The Miz with a people’s elbow and Johnny Knoxville heckling. Also, Logan Paul put his business partner KSI through a table.

— Have you seen the ghost fork pitch from Mets hurler Kodai Senga? You should see what it did to Yuli Gurriel.

4 absurd Caitlin Clark shots that helped Iowa beat South Carolina in the Final Four

Caitlin Clark had an absolutely incredible game as Iowa upset undefeated South Carolina on Friday.

Iowa women’s basketball powerhouse Caitlin Clark and her team pulled off the unthinkable on Friday night.

The team topped undefeated South Carolina in the 2023 women’s NCAA tournament Final Four, 77-73, to advance to Sunday’s finale.

Clark scored an incredible 41 points in the contest, underscoring why she was named AP’s National Player of the Year this week.

As Iowa celebrates taking down one of the best women’s college basketball teams of the last decade, they’ll have to look back on the astounding game that Clark had to help them get to the national championship game.

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She really had one of the tournament’s best-ever performances on Friday night.

As the game’s broadcast put it, “the mythical mastery of Caitlin Clark” will continue as the team faces LSU in Sunday’s 2023 women’s NCAA tournament championship game.

With this game in the books, let’s all look back on four absolutely absurd shots that Clark banked during Friday night’s true stunner of an upset.

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Caitlin Clark literally waved off a South Carolina player and left her unguarded during the Final Four

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark quite literally waved off a South Carolina player during the Final Four.

Iowa women’s basketball superstar Caitlin Clark notched yet another moment of absolutely hilarious disrespect during her team’s Final Four bout with undefeated South Carolina on Friday night.

As the Hawkeyes squared off with the Gamecocks, Clark decided to quite literally wave off freshman guard Raven Johnson and leave her unguarded during a South Carolina offensive possession.

The move worked, as Johnson didn’t attempt the 3-pointer as she stood open beyond the arc and decided to pass the ball off to a teammate.

Clark’s move was so cold that she didn’t even look Johnson’s way as she waved off the freshman standout.

Like, that is just absolutely brutal trolling from Clark in the midst of what is the biggest college game of her career thus far.

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To add insult to injury, Clark also got a bucket over Johnson during the Final Four contest.

Clark is the AP National Player of the Year for a reason. She’s also one of the most savage basketball players on the planet.

Feature image courtesy of ESPN.

6 awesome facts about Caitlin Clark ahead of Iowa’s Final Four meeting with South Carolina

Get to know the Naismith Player of the Year a little better.

Iowa’s Sweet 16 game against Louisville drew 2.5 million viewers on Sunday, more than any NBA game on ESPN this season.

A big part of that draw was the incredible Caitlin Clark, the Naismith Player of the Year and two-time Big Ten Player of the Year who absolutely didn’t disappoint with a 41-point triple-double to push Iowa to the Final Four.

With a meeting against the reigning national champion South Carolina awaiting the Hawkeyes Friday, that viewership could soar even higher, meaning more people will be introduced to Clark for the first time.

For those looking to learn more about the Iowa star before the big game, here are a few fun facts about Clark in her basketball journey.

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Women’s Final Four ticket prices over 3X as much as Men’s Final Four

Why mention ticket prices at the #FinalFour and #WFinalFour? Women’s #MarchMadness can grow revenue for the #Pac12

File this next item under “stories you probably didn’t expect to see, but carry considerable significance for the Pac-12 and other stakeholders in college sports.”

Sportico and other outlets noticed that on Tuesday morning (March 28), the get-in ticket prices for the Women’s Final Four in Dallas this Friday considerably eclipsed the get-in prices for the Men’s Final Four in Houston on Saturday.

By how much did Women’s Final Four ticket prices exceed the men at Ticketmaster? Over three times as much.

The Men’s Final Four has rarely been this affordable and accessible for a middle-class consumer. If you’re a Houstonian or a Texan or a Louisiana or Arkansas resident, you could drive to Houston and watch a pair of national semifinals for at or near $100, one of the more improbable but considerable sports bargains for a high-end event.

With Florida Atlantic, San Diego State, and Miami joining blue-blood UConn at the Final Four, the heavyweight presence at the event is minimal. Large national fan bases are in short supply. Moreover, because the event is now regularly held in domes with seating configurations which can accommodate near 70,000 people, those upper-deck seats are going to come very cheaply.

Meanwhile, the Women’s Final Four clearly has the biggest blockbuster game of any of the four national semifinals, men or women, this weekend: Iowa and superstar Caitlin Clark against unbeaten defending national champion South Carolina.

This is why the Women’s Final Four get-in price was over $300 at Ticketmaster on Tuesday morning:

Why does this matter? Why bother to mention it? It’s simple: As we have noted (with help from Jon Wilner of the Wilner Hotline) over the past two years, the Women’s NCAA Tournament is currently bundled with other NCAA sports championships. It is not a standalone media rights property. If it could be un-tethered from those other non-revenue sports, and if a “win unit” structre akin to what exists for the men’s tournament was created, women’s basketball could generate extra millions of dollars for sports programs in the Pac-12 and other conferences.

Sure, the money wouldn’t be nearly as huge as what the men take in, but more millions of dollars is a whole lot better than zero dollars. It’s long past time for the women’s tournament to become a significant revenue vehicle for college sports programs big and small.

George Kliavkoff and Pac-12 presidents and chancellors can certainly use the money.

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South Carolina has history on its side to win the 2023 women’s NCAA tournament

South Carolina has history on its side in the 2023 women’s NCAA tournament.

The South Carolina women’s basketball team has history on its side as it prepares to defend its title.

The top-ranked team’s 86-75 victory over No. 2 Maryland on Monday will set it up for a marquee matchup with No. 2 Iowa in the 2023 women’s NCAA tournament’s Final Four.

At 36-0, South Carolina has proven to be unstoppable this season. Perfection can work in your favor in the women’s NCAA tournament, as nine of the previous 13 teams to go undefeated and reach the Final Four have won the entire bracket, per ESPN.

You never know what happens in the tournament’s last weekend, but South Carolina has all the momentum it needs to win another championship.

South Carolina hasn’t lost a game since March 6, 2022, to Kentucky in the SEC Championship. Since then, the team won the 2022 women’s NCAA tournament and hasn’t looked back.

This is the team’s third-straight Final Four appearance since 2021, and head coach Dawn Staley is poised to lead her team to another national title. At least that’s what history is telling us.

UCLA loses to South Carolina, Pac-12 fully eliminated from NCAA Tournament

The UCLA women were the last Pac-12 team in the NCAA Tournament. Now they’re gone, courtesy of the defending champions.

Unlike men’s basketball, the Pac-12 put a lot of teams in the Women’s NCAA Tournament. The Pac-12 actually put a majority of its 12 teams (seven) in the women’s NCAA field. Yet, none of them reached the Final Four or even the Elite Eight.

UCLA was the last Pac-12 team standing, but the Bruins ran into No. 1 and undefeated South Carolina on Saturday afternoon in Greenville, S.C. Playing an unbeaten juggernaut is a tough-enough assignment as it is. The Bruins had to go into the state of South Carolina, making the task even tougher.

It ended as everyone expected it would.

South Carolina smothered UCLA’s offense, limiting the Bruins to 34 points in the game’s first 36 minutes before the Bruins got a few very late and inconsequential 3-pointers to make the score seem slightly closer than it was. The final was 59-43 for South Carolina, but it felt a lot more like a 25-point game than 16.

UCLA scored just 15 points in the first half against the Gamecocks’ elite defense and could never get into a real rhythm for more than a few minutes at a time. The Bruins had a good NCAA Tournament by becoming one of three Pac-12 teams to make the Sweet 16, but they had a bad draw in this round and realized why their losses late in the season — which caused them to fall on the seed list — were so important. Fewer losses would have meant a No. 3 seed for the Bruins, who might still be playing had they not met the defending national champions this early in the tournament.

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