Nojel Eastern in transfer portal
- Thread starter jimmygoiu
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I get his passing is revered, I do. But tell me the last guard that thrived in Painter’s system who wasn’t a good 3 pt shooter? He’s not overly athletic, he’s not going to be a dominant scorer at this level, and I think his handles and basketball creativity gets lost in a style of offense that doesn’t feature a dynamic PG.
Where are you getting the 33% from in that link? He shot 27.8% on all FG (22 of 79), 78.8% on FT (26 of 33 attempts, is this your 33?), and 6.5% on 3s (2 of 31). I'm not sure where that paper got their numbers from, either, as there is no four game stretch in which he shot 40% from 3.
Stats for 4 games is enough to predict stardom? What was he, 2/5 or 4/10?
AAU teams aren't playground teams that just show up and play. They run an offense and do play defense. Struggling against competition in AAU doesn't bode well for the speed and physical play from 18-22 year old young men. It is precisely why freshmen, including highly ranked freshmen often struggle. It won't help that summer workouts will be cut back or eliminated.
Grady Eifert comes to mind as someone who could hit the open three when there, but wasn't actively looking for it while also playing a huge role in the success of a Painter coaches team.
Grady Eifert wasn’t a guard and averaged 2.8 ppg for his career. If that’s the upside of Ethan Morton why are we even talking about him?
Lol at this saying Morton was a 40% shooter in AAU. He shot 7% from 3 last year in AAU.
Nojel Eastern shot 33% as a freshman at Purdue. How many 3s did Morton take in high school? What were his number of attempts?
Quick, we need to email all those coaches that offered Ethan, and tell them they have no clue about basketball talent! Some smole on the internet says so! I wonder how so many top coaches in the country could be so wrong! Ethan is a winner, that's what most coaches want!
Morton could be a highly successful college basketball player in the right offense. He is at his best when he has the ball in his hands going off screens and making the right play. He will be a horrible fit in Painter’s motion offense. He won’t have the ball in his hands 90% of the time. Guards/Wings that have been successful under Painter are good catch and shoot players. His offense is designed to get a shot for a big on the post or get a 3 (great offense btw). Morton just simply doesn’t fit it like Nojel Eastern didn’t fit it. At Purdue Morton will be Dakota Mathias without a knock down jumpshot imo. High IQ and will make the right pass, but won’t score hardly at all. I’m going to guess he scores less than 3 ppg next year.
No, but he played as a 6'7 forward, which is Morton. Only reason I compare. Also not really fair to use Eifert's career stats to prove your point considering he only played a role for 1 year. And I'm only looking at that 1 year.
I really, sincerely hope that you are right that EMorton is another Grady Eifert for the broilees.
I don't have any real interest in a conversation about a PUke recruit, but I feel compelled to correct this part. AAU teams are indeed playground teams that just show up and play. They might run skeleton offenses, but they do not play defense. They are typically coached by "managers" or some player's relative and they win by assembling the best talent and nothing more. In short, AAU ball is a showcase for individual talent - that's the nature of the beast. Most rarely practice, and throughout the season many of the players on elite teams that assemble regional talent only see each other during the weekend tournaments.
College coaches pay attention to AAU for two reasons. First, they are too busy with their own teams during the season to attend high school games and watch film of recruits. Second, it's efficient. They can watch multiple kids in one setting. I encourage you to attend a high-level AAU tournament sometime and watch the college coaches. The head coaches are sitting together shooting the shit and enjoying the company of other coaches while grad-assistant flunkies are watching and taking notes.
AAU settings can reveal individual strengths and weaknesses but they aren't much good for anything else. Once a coach develops serious interest in a kid they put a lot of effort into communicating with the high school coach and collecting film of high school games. They know where the real coaches are found and film of high school games gives them a true idea of how a kid plays against a team that has invested time and effort figuring out how to stop him. They also find out things like physical and mental toughness and how well a kid competes when he isn't playing 6 games over the course of two day.
AAU stats are as worthless as a dick on a neutered dog.
The experience when my daughter played was not what you described. She played with 2 AAU programs over several years and they both ran and practiced both an offense and a lot on defense. The AAU teams were more disciplined in the grade school and middle school ages than their school teams. One of these ran an effective motion offense made possible because every girl was a smart player and were all on the same page. The girls were taught how to run an offense against different zones. Crean could have learned something from them.
There were teams put together by dads that looked like playground teams. They were almost always beaten badly.
The teams we played in the AAU state tournaments did not just run down the court and jack up shots. The successful teams taught offense and defensive systems common to all their age groups
So they were redshirted behind who? The amazing talent that was there last year???
Anderson was indeed a flop but I'm still not connecting what that has to do with what I said?
Either way, PU fans are calling both Haarms and Eastern a flop. Lol. The program is in a rough spot but keep your head up.
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I won't argue with you about that, I shouldn't have generalized. Yes, at the elementary and middle school level (and especially so for girls) AAU coaches are more committed than school coaches. There is value at that age. For girls, there is even some value at the high school level as it's often difficult to find enough girls locally committed and skilled enough to offer quality competition.
Once boys get to high school, however, its really of very little value. Players and their parents get sold on being "seen" when in reality they would be better off at their school gym or in the local park working on improving their game. We used to remind our players that being "seen" by college coaches also meant that they saw what you couldn't do as well as what you could. The high-level boys AAU circuit is a moneymaking racket for hosts and a meat market for shoe companies and sleazy handlers.
My other gripe with AAU is the format. If you are playing more than 2 games in a single day, you aren't playing at maximum effort and you're wasting time that would better be spent doing an Alford workout. Unfortunately, when the IHSAA sold out and swapped real preseason practice for summer play, high school coaches and ADs saw dollar signs and turned the summer into glorified AAU for school teams. It's a significant part of the reason Indiana high school basketball has lost its place as superior in developing players compared to other states.
The primary point of my post is that any stats these players post in AAU play are of no value and not reflective of what kind of player the kid might be - either in college or while still in high school. The stats posted in this format of play should be ignored.
I heard Rick Mount speak at a clinic several years ago, ripping the concept of AAU and summer tournament play. I took away two very valuable lessons from his talk. First, that even the best kid on his AAU team gets maybe 20-25 shots during the course of a game. Most players are lucky to get 10. In that span of time, a kid at his driveway goal, using his little brother to rebound, could get in more than one hundred. Over the course of a two-day tournament a kid is taking 100 shots compared to a thousand if he's putting in the same time working on his game. My take on this is simple, playing a game is like taking a test in the classroom, while practice is like daily learning. The test will tell you what you can and cannot do, only the practice makes you better. If all a student did was take tests, that student would learn very little and likely not improve.
The other point Mount made was that in the heat of competition - at any level - players resort to doing what they do best and what they are most comfortable doing. There is pressure not to make mistakes, because mistakes mean losing. Consequently, players do not become better at what they do not do well. I don't know if Nojel Eastern played high-level AAU ball or not. But if he wanted a professional career he would have been better off working on his shooting in his driveway.
Nojel was a good fit at Purdue. He had plenty of opportunities to score, even in the Painter's motion offense. The problem with Nojel was between his ears. His confidence was jacked up. He was afraid to take shots. He passed up so many shots it was unreal. He could not get the ball out of his hands fast enough at times. A swole 6'7" 225 palyer should have been driving at will. He passed up several of those opportunities. Luckily in the motion offense, the pg does have to be the scorer, but would have been to have gotten at least 8 to 10 points per game out of him.
As far as Morton, he will be fine. From what I've seen, his shooting form pretty good and has some home athleticism. You don't win a Mr. Basketball award if you can't shoot the ball. However, he may not score much this season, not because he can't but because Hunter will have the point guard locked up for two more years. Morton is going to have to beat out Isaiah Thompson for point guard minutes.
IMO the biggest loss is on the defensive side of the ball. Painter has often made hay with a lock down defender as a part of the program's identity and that just moved to Ann Arbor. Other than being thin at the 5, the rest of the offensive room looks ok to me, but that is assuming a couple of newcomers contribute early and often.
Purdue is going to be reliant on freshman next year, which I absolutely hate having to do. I'd prefer to have your team and let the freshman surprise you.
While he isn't on easterns level, I believe Hunter is a really good defender. The only think I'm worried about is defense at the 5 position. Hopefully that can be slightly diminished with excellent rebounding.
Defensively, I’m not concerned. Purdue as a team buys into defense. As far as the newcomers, Purdue’s newcomers in recent history have contributed with a lot of minutes. The sophomores and juniors have played a lot of minutes. Ivey and Morton will see a lot of minutes. Ivey is a star in the making, perhaps would have challenged for Mr. Basketball if he had played at an IHSAA school. I predict Ivey is going to take away minutes from Newman. I have an eerie feeling that Newman may transfer after this season. I hope he stays for depth. If he is ahead of Ivey defensively, he will get his minutes. I have a feeling the lack of defense is what got him redshirted.
As a former AAU coach, I can tell you this is generally accurate.
I think you are right on the mark. Freshmen players in the BIG have to get used to the speed and size of the players around them. Some pick it up quickly. Others take a while. It’s been my experience to never look to some in coming high school senior as the savior of any program. It rarely happens that way. Next year Purdue will struggle early. Toward the end of the year they may start showing more potential.
Of any year, next season is the best chance IU will have for a victory over Purdue. The majority of IU Players will be older and more experienced than the majority of the Purdue players. Without seeing who comes in and how the kids on both teams develop, I can’t predict beyond next year.
So IU better get that W next season because that is their best chance to ever beat PU...
Awesome...thanks.
Thanks, Nostradumbass. Now do a card trick.
Glad I could help. I don’t come over as often as I used to, but when I do, I try to help.
Is Nojel going to UMichigan? There has been some confusion.....Glad I could help. I don’t come over as often as I used to, but when I do, I try to help.
Best chance at beating PUKE? IU fans don't look at this yearly match up as the national title....GL to you and your goals though.
Yes, there is some confusion. Rumor has it that unless he plays this next year At UM, he is going pro. Obviously, his momma thinks there are pro teams waiting in-line to Sign him up for millions. Who knows? I wish the kid the best. He seems like a really nice kid who is getting some bad advice.
I think it was someone on this board that said Something like: he was one semester away from a Purdue degree and he chose bankruptcy instead.
WoW. Treed is not doing NE any favors in life. Almost feel sorry for the kid.
No. The best chance is when we beat them by total of 75 points in the two games a few years ago with Cody and the boys.
That was then, this is now.
Their little run is coming to an end but hey they can hold onto these 4 years for a lifetime of self esteem.
It is always a mistake to place your self esteem in anyplace but yourself. I sure wouldn’t let the success or failure of a sports team dictate how I felt about myself, and I would hope that few on this board would either.
That said, you guys whipped us good with the Zeller/Victor O. Teams. It wasn’t even close. I don’t think you will see that level of disparity happen again, either way. I like it when both teams are good, and the game is competitive.
Rivalries do strange things to people, particularly when one side feels the other looks down their nose at them. Some even pull the rivalry into every game or event regardless of who they are playing or the reason for the event.
There is no evidence that points to their little run coming to an end. They finished 10th last season and IU still couldn’t beat them, even with home court advantage and the return of Coach Knight. IU fans, and yourself especially being a subway fan, may want to temper expectations until AFTER Miller beats Purdue.
Unfortunately we have an entire generation of IU fans who weren’t even alive the last time we were good. They don’t even know what success looks like. And for some unknown reason they’re the most arrogant fans we have.
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