1. The addition of former Georgetown and North Carolina senior forward Dontrez Styles has helped put a few things into focus.
First, the addition of Styles nails down the starting small forward spot, and he has the versatility to play small ball power forward if the Wolfpack want to go with that alignment next winter. There has been no question that NC State coach Kevin Keatts prefers a smaller lineup, but the run to the Final Four doesn’t happen without having two post players on the court at the same time. The trio of Louisville center senior transfer Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, senior post player Ben Middlebrooks and senior power forward Mohamed Diarra guarantees that NC State can always play two posts together.
Styles gives NC State some flexibility if another team basically has a small forward playing power forward, and it could really diminish the role sophomore Dennis Parker would have had, since they overlap in many ways.
Styles also will likely mean that incoming freshman Paul McNeil will come off the bench rather than start now. McNeil can be a microwave sixth man where he can score in bunches, and if his jumper happens to be off that night, it won’t be as big a deal in a bench role. McNeil can get the minutes behind senior shooting guard Jayden Taylor, besides the small forward minutes behind Styles.
I do think NC State is eyeing some point guards who could push senior Michael O’Connell into a reserve role, but they haven’t entered the transfer portal yet. One name will be somewhat familiar to NC State fans and ties into the second and third parts of this The Run Down.
What would be a good projection for Styles? Probably to have similar numbers as he did at Georgetown, and get around 12-13 points and 5-6 rebounds per game. If he makes three-pointers, he’ll be a key contributor, it’s that’s simple. It was the biggest concern at Kinston (N.C.) High and he simply didn’t get to play enough in his two years to show if he could make them. He made 36.8 percent for the Hoyas and that is a good percentage for a small forward.
What Styles will need to improve upon is consistency. He had a steady patter of good game and then he struggled. The team went 9-23 overall and 2-18 in the Big East, with both wins against 3-29 DePaul. Styles played good in 21 of the 32 games. He was a minutes eater, meaning he played at least 34 minutes in 17 games, including at least 40 in four of them. To put that in perspective, he played 89 minutes his entire sophomore year at North Carolina.
Picking Georgetown over NC State meant guaranteed minutes but a lot of losing, and that proved true. Styles needed to play though. It’s hard to bounce back after not getting on the court his first two years with the Tar Heels. Styles deserves a lot of credit for finding his game again.
NC State rising senior power forward Ernest Ross, who announced he was transferring this week for sure, will have a similar situation at his next school. After not playing much at NC State, going somewhere he’s guaranteed to get 30-plus minutes could be his No. 1 motivator.
The one concern about the additions of Styles and Huntley-Hatfield is that they got solid stats on lousy teams. Georgetown was really poor this season. They were fine until about late December. Losing 81-51 at Marquette on Dec. 22 reeked of Christmas vacation is coming up and we don’t want to be in cold Milwaukee, Wis. That was the start of losing 11 games by at least 13 points.
On the one hand, it’s great that Styles scored a Big-East high of 23 points against eventual national champion Connecticut on Feb. 10. He scored 17 in the first half, but the Hoyas were losing 52-28 at halftime. It was that kind of year for them.
Playing Jayden Epps at point guard was messy as he had wild shot selection and wasn’t a winner at the position, and that trickled down through the lineup. The Hoyas were more organized when sophomore Rowan Brumbaugh was running the show, who also has entered the transfer portal. They struggled in the post with a rotation of bigs.
2. Styles and Huntley-Hatfield are also examples of what NC State’s philosophy has been the last three weeks in portal season — the Wolfpack are going after players they already know from the past.
NC State assistant coach Levi Watkins recruited Huntley-Hatfield since his sophomore year of high school, while coaching at Ole Miss. Watkins and Keatts recruited Styles since he was a freshman or sophomore in high school.
Other names NC State has been linked to like Tennessee guard transfer Freddie Dilione, Indiana State wing Ryan Conwell and Louisville wing Michael James, were either coached by someone on the staff (Conwell), or recruited by the Wolfpack in high school. Another former target, if he enters the transfer portal, fits that pattern as a one-time target, plus the other key part that is about to be discussed.
Cold calls is the alternative way of recruiting and now those cold calls involve player agents. Usually, what happens these days, a school checks in with player or agent, and find out what kind of NIL money is needed for the conversation to take place. If too pricey, no point in anyone wasting time.
You look at the recent NC State transfers:
Prior connection:
D.J. Horne
D.J. Burns
MJ Rice
Kam Woods
Mohamed Diarra
Jarkel Joiner
Greg Gantt
No real prior connection:
Ben Middlebrooks
Casey Morsell
Michael O’Connell
Jayden Taylor
Jack Clark
Dusan Mahorcic
Jack Clark
What helped with Taylor, Middlebrooks and Morsell was that they had played NC State, and knew the style of play.
Watkins coaching Joiner and former assistant coach Joel Justus coaching Horne, is like current fourth assistant coach Larry Dixon coaching Conwell at South Florida. NC State flirted with Burns and Diarra in the past recruitments. Woods had former NCSU player Sam Hunt as an assistant coach at North Carolina A&T, and that helped. NC State actively recruited Rice and Gantt in high school.
3. NC State’s philosophy also shows they aren’t really messing around with low- and- mid-major recruits.
Narrowing the pool might not be the right move long-term as some really good players are playing at smaller schools, but it takes the guess work out of the equation of can they translate up a level.
Usually what happens is that a player coming out of high school is too light or not the perfect height and end up at a mid-major. After a few years, they get stronger and put on weight, and the skill is matched with the body, and you get someone like Brice Williams, who NC State did like last year and went from Charlotte to Nebraska.
History has shown that it isn’t all high major or bust in the portal for Keatts.
Clark arrived from La Salle and Woods came from Troy and North Carolina A&T, but the rest of the Wolfpack transfers played at a high major school at least for a year.
Burns shows it can happen from both worlds. He went to Tennessee out of high school and was a high-major recruit. However, he found himself playing three years at Winthrop, so he’s more mid-major player than high-major. The same with Mahorcic. He went to junior college and Illinois State, before an abbreviated stint at Utah, before getting dismissed from the team. Joiner went to Cal-State Bakersfield for two years before he went to Ole Miss.
Doing the national rankings for Rivals.com’s transfers, I have low/mid-major transfers up and down the rankings, and the overwhelming majority of them have gone on to pick a high-major college.
When the next rankings get updated coming up in the next few days, and another 30-40 players get added, that will push some players down, but Huntley-Hatfield will probably be in the 20-30 range, and Styles will get inserted in the 110-130 range in all likelihood.
Conwell would be the outlier this cycle, but Styles, Huntley-Hatfield, James, Dilione and a few others that NC State reached out to were all high-major guys.
Will that trend continue? My guess it will this spring. So, the key is to see if any high major players who NC State recruited in the past or maybe played against that enter the portal the next month. Supposedly, many football and basketball players get paid for the last time this upcoming week and are waiting for that last check before entering the portal.
First, the addition of Styles nails down the starting small forward spot, and he has the versatility to play small ball power forward if the Wolfpack want to go with that alignment next winter. There has been no question that NC State coach Kevin Keatts prefers a smaller lineup, but the run to the Final Four doesn’t happen without having two post players on the court at the same time. The trio of Louisville center senior transfer Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, senior post player Ben Middlebrooks and senior power forward Mohamed Diarra guarantees that NC State can always play two posts together.
Styles gives NC State some flexibility if another team basically has a small forward playing power forward, and it could really diminish the role sophomore Dennis Parker would have had, since they overlap in many ways.
Styles also will likely mean that incoming freshman Paul McNeil will come off the bench rather than start now. McNeil can be a microwave sixth man where he can score in bunches, and if his jumper happens to be off that night, it won’t be as big a deal in a bench role. McNeil can get the minutes behind senior shooting guard Jayden Taylor, besides the small forward minutes behind Styles.
I do think NC State is eyeing some point guards who could push senior Michael O’Connell into a reserve role, but they haven’t entered the transfer portal yet. One name will be somewhat familiar to NC State fans and ties into the second and third parts of this The Run Down.
What would be a good projection for Styles? Probably to have similar numbers as he did at Georgetown, and get around 12-13 points and 5-6 rebounds per game. If he makes three-pointers, he’ll be a key contributor, it’s that’s simple. It was the biggest concern at Kinston (N.C.) High and he simply didn’t get to play enough in his two years to show if he could make them. He made 36.8 percent for the Hoyas and that is a good percentage for a small forward.
What Styles will need to improve upon is consistency. He had a steady patter of good game and then he struggled. The team went 9-23 overall and 2-18 in the Big East, with both wins against 3-29 DePaul. Styles played good in 21 of the 32 games. He was a minutes eater, meaning he played at least 34 minutes in 17 games, including at least 40 in four of them. To put that in perspective, he played 89 minutes his entire sophomore year at North Carolina.
Picking Georgetown over NC State meant guaranteed minutes but a lot of losing, and that proved true. Styles needed to play though. It’s hard to bounce back after not getting on the court his first two years with the Tar Heels. Styles deserves a lot of credit for finding his game again.
NC State rising senior power forward Ernest Ross, who announced he was transferring this week for sure, will have a similar situation at his next school. After not playing much at NC State, going somewhere he’s guaranteed to get 30-plus minutes could be his No. 1 motivator.
The one concern about the additions of Styles and Huntley-Hatfield is that they got solid stats on lousy teams. Georgetown was really poor this season. They were fine until about late December. Losing 81-51 at Marquette on Dec. 22 reeked of Christmas vacation is coming up and we don’t want to be in cold Milwaukee, Wis. That was the start of losing 11 games by at least 13 points.
On the one hand, it’s great that Styles scored a Big-East high of 23 points against eventual national champion Connecticut on Feb. 10. He scored 17 in the first half, but the Hoyas were losing 52-28 at halftime. It was that kind of year for them.
Playing Jayden Epps at point guard was messy as he had wild shot selection and wasn’t a winner at the position, and that trickled down through the lineup. The Hoyas were more organized when sophomore Rowan Brumbaugh was running the show, who also has entered the transfer portal. They struggled in the post with a rotation of bigs.
2. Styles and Huntley-Hatfield are also examples of what NC State’s philosophy has been the last three weeks in portal season — the Wolfpack are going after players they already know from the past.
NC State assistant coach Levi Watkins recruited Huntley-Hatfield since his sophomore year of high school, while coaching at Ole Miss. Watkins and Keatts recruited Styles since he was a freshman or sophomore in high school.
Other names NC State has been linked to like Tennessee guard transfer Freddie Dilione, Indiana State wing Ryan Conwell and Louisville wing Michael James, were either coached by someone on the staff (Conwell), or recruited by the Wolfpack in high school. Another former target, if he enters the transfer portal, fits that pattern as a one-time target, plus the other key part that is about to be discussed.
Cold calls is the alternative way of recruiting and now those cold calls involve player agents. Usually, what happens these days, a school checks in with player or agent, and find out what kind of NIL money is needed for the conversation to take place. If too pricey, no point in anyone wasting time.
You look at the recent NC State transfers:
Prior connection:
D.J. Horne
D.J. Burns
MJ Rice
Kam Woods
Mohamed Diarra
Jarkel Joiner
Greg Gantt
No real prior connection:
Ben Middlebrooks
Casey Morsell
Michael O’Connell
Jayden Taylor
Jack Clark
Dusan Mahorcic
Jack Clark
What helped with Taylor, Middlebrooks and Morsell was that they had played NC State, and knew the style of play.
Watkins coaching Joiner and former assistant coach Joel Justus coaching Horne, is like current fourth assistant coach Larry Dixon coaching Conwell at South Florida. NC State flirted with Burns and Diarra in the past recruitments. Woods had former NCSU player Sam Hunt as an assistant coach at North Carolina A&T, and that helped. NC State actively recruited Rice and Gantt in high school.
3. NC State’s philosophy also shows they aren’t really messing around with low- and- mid-major recruits.
Narrowing the pool might not be the right move long-term as some really good players are playing at smaller schools, but it takes the guess work out of the equation of can they translate up a level.
Usually what happens is that a player coming out of high school is too light or not the perfect height and end up at a mid-major. After a few years, they get stronger and put on weight, and the skill is matched with the body, and you get someone like Brice Williams, who NC State did like last year and went from Charlotte to Nebraska.
History has shown that it isn’t all high major or bust in the portal for Keatts.
Clark arrived from La Salle and Woods came from Troy and North Carolina A&T, but the rest of the Wolfpack transfers played at a high major school at least for a year.
Burns shows it can happen from both worlds. He went to Tennessee out of high school and was a high-major recruit. However, he found himself playing three years at Winthrop, so he’s more mid-major player than high-major. The same with Mahorcic. He went to junior college and Illinois State, before an abbreviated stint at Utah, before getting dismissed from the team. Joiner went to Cal-State Bakersfield for two years before he went to Ole Miss.
Doing the national rankings for Rivals.com’s transfers, I have low/mid-major transfers up and down the rankings, and the overwhelming majority of them have gone on to pick a high-major college.
When the next rankings get updated coming up in the next few days, and another 30-40 players get added, that will push some players down, but Huntley-Hatfield will probably be in the 20-30 range, and Styles will get inserted in the 110-130 range in all likelihood.
Conwell would be the outlier this cycle, but Styles, Huntley-Hatfield, James, Dilione and a few others that NC State reached out to were all high-major guys.
Will that trend continue? My guess it will this spring. So, the key is to see if any high major players who NC State recruited in the past or maybe played against that enter the portal the next month. Supposedly, many football and basketball players get paid for the last time this upcoming week and are waiting for that last check before entering the portal.
