Initial Thoughts: WKU Basketball Offseason
Good morning everyone, and welcome to the first day of the WKU basketball offseason.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to the first day of the WKU basketball offseason.
It’s a weird spot to be in for WKU fans: On one hand, two or three months ago, the Tops ending the year in the seminfinals of the NIT in New York sounded maybe like a dream. Yet, here we are, with the Tops losing in the semifinals of the NIT in New York, and it feels like a disappointment.
Is it the way the Tops lost? A couple of questionable offensive foul calls in the closing minutes of a game WKU should have had?
Or is it just that this season is over, and with it, we’ll never see Justin Johnson, Dwight Coleby and Darius Thompson in a Hilltoppers uniform again?
Regardless, the 2017/18 WKU basketball season is officially over, and it’s a bummer, and it’s the most upset I’ve been about a WKU season ending in some time.
I’m not the first to say it, and I’ll be shocked if I’m the last, but this was a special WKU team, and if Rick Stansbury can keep things on course, we’ll look back on this team as the team that truly brought WKU back. I know there’s still a long way to go, but this was a hell of a first step.
So, as we head into the offseason, here are my initial thoughts (remember that in football season?) about the summer and fall and…well, I don’t have these planned out so lets see how this flows out!
What kind of movement in the program are we going to see? Will Stans retain his entire coaching staff? Is anyone going to transfer? Will any grad transfers come in from a high profile program?
I wonder if having to sit out for half of the year doomed Josh Anderson and Moustapha Diagne from the start, because even when they were eligible, they didn’t quite light the world on fire in the way we all thought they would. Will they come out firing early next season? Basically, I want to see how they open next year now that they know their standing.
What type of professional shot will JJ, Dwight and Darius get? Surely at least one of them will get one, and with European leagues and the like all three could land somewhere, but will one of them get a shot with a D-League squad or something similar? We shall see.
CROOTIN CROOTIN CROOTIN CROOTIN CROOTIN CROOTIN. The Tops already have commitments from Jeremiah Gambrell, Galen Smith III, Dalano Branton, Matthew Horton, Cameron Fini and Trevelin Queen for 2018/19, but will anyone else come into the fold? And, what bout 2019/20 and beyond? I trust Stans with anything when it comes to recruiting, so I’m basically just excited to see what talent comes through the pipe in the next handful of years.
I’ll leave with this — a quiet offseason for WKU will mean a good offseason for WKU; coming off the Mitchell Robinson saga and basically an entire coaching staff turnover, if we don’t hear anything outside of “Joe West is showing interest in the Tops,” and future game announcements, it’ll be a good thing.
Mini-site update
The basketball season might be over, but our coverage is far from it. We (okay, I) have a ton of stuff planned for the coming days and we’ll try to do better about having the conversation around WKU basketball a more consistent thing as opposed to focusing on it from just November to March. That all comes with growing as writers and, for me personally an editor, but fear not — there’s plenty of shop to still talk about the Tops on the hardwood.