To the dismay of Tulsa fans, the Golden Hurricane made the biggest headlines of the day. Sensational guard PJ Haggerty, recently named the AAC’s Freshman of the Year, announced his departure at around 1 PM.
In what has been a nightmarish offseason for AAC roster retention, Haggerty goes the way of Jordan Ivy-Curry, Jason Edwards, Colby Rogers, and Charlotte’s entire frontcourt.
The blows kept coming — starting forward Carlous Williams entered the portal an hour later.
Both losses are devastating for a Tulsa team that has struggled mightily to find continuity in recent years. Eric Konkol went 5-25 in his first season, replaced essentially the entire roster, and improved by 11 wins. Now two critical contributors to that turnaround are gone.
In yesterday’s AAC portal breakdown, I wrote that Tulsa ranked fourth in the conference in retention rate but stipulated that all rankings were “subject to rapid change.” I didn’t predict just how rapid. In just 18 hours, the Golden Hurricane have plummeted to the conference’s bottom third in the statistic.
New FAU head coach John Jakus hosted his introductory press conference this afternoon, flanked by Alijah Martin, Vlad Goldin, Nick Boyd, and several other current players. Notably, Johnell Davis was not in attendance.
Jakus spoke for roughly 20 minutes, spending most of his time thanking his family, friends, and coaching peers. A Baylor assistant for most of the last decade, Jakus notably shouted out current Wichita State head coach Paul Mills, who spent 14 years with the BU program.
At around the 21:30 mark of the presser, Jakus begins to address what’s on everyone’s mind: the fate of FAU’s players.
“[In 1999], Mark Few was kind of in the situation I’m in today,” said Jakus, Gonzaga’s director of basketball operations from 2014 to 2017. “Gonzaga went to the Elite Eight — you guys went to the Final Four, which is better — and their coach left for a Big 10 job. And Mark decided to stay. And you know what happened? The players stayed with him. Because they loved Gonzaga more than anything else.”
“I’m just telling you this. If I can learn anything from Mark, not only are you as only as good as your players, when you got good ones, you don’t want to lose them. I think we can build what Baylor and Gonzaga have done, but I think we can build it in a better way, because outside this door is the beach.”
“When I walked into the locker room a couple days ago — I think a day and a half, it’s been a blur — [the players] were sitting there. They didn’t know who I was. And I turned the corner and I got 20 minutes with them. And I just asked them one thing — give me a chance. Give me a chance. And the reality of the situation is that if you leave maybe you’ll find something better, but I doubt it. What you’ve built here, what you’ve built as friends is fantastic. My hope is that they would give me until Monday. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, none of them are in the portal.”
“I know that I don’t carry the full weight of that decision. I don’t know if we’re going to keep them all, but I’ll tell you this. The reason I think that they didn’t go in is because they wanted to see if they could keep this place great, because they did something that no one has ever done before and they wanted to see if they could stay together.”
TL;DR: Jakus doesn’t “know if we’re going to keep them all,” but is optimistic about FAU’s chances.
Rice guard Anthony Selden entered the transfer portal this morning, VerbalCommits confirmed. Selden, a transfer from Gardner-Webb, averaged 5.5 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 0.5 assists per game in his lone season with the Owls.
Seven of Rice’s top eight contributors from last season have now departed. The Owls have retained less than 20% of their production, by far the worst mark in the AAC.
In UAB news, Will Shaver’s return was confirmed in Steve Irvine’s recent interview with Andy Kennedy. The Blazers are now waiting on just three players to announce their plans — Eric Gaines, Tony Toney, and KJ Satterfield.