Friday, April 13, 2012

Surging San Francisco Transfers Out of Fast Lane

Dons' head coach Rex Walters has done a magnificent job turning around the San Francisco basketball program. A mid-twentieth century powerhouse with two national championships that fell into serious disrepair over the past 25 years. Walters took over in 2008 with the Dons coming off a ten win season. He's improved on that every year since, including hitting 20 wins last season and making a second straight post season appearance.

There were some questions about next season, as starters Angelo Caloiaro and Rashad Green would be lost to graduation. Rarely seen reserve Jay Wey will also be graduating. Caloiaro lead the team in points with 14.2 per game and was second in assists and rebounds. Green ranked third in points with 11.8 per game. San Francisco sat in a similar position at the end of last season, with two seniors graduating, yet managed to improve despite the loss.

For the same to be said in 2012-2013, Rex Walters will need to do the best coaching job of his career. He will need to pull a national coach of the year worthy performance out of his hat. While no mid major coach will get the award for putting together a team that wins 20+ games, Walters will be more deserving than any major conference team that overcomes whatever personnel losses they suffer. Why do I say this? Well...


The Dons scored 2563 points last season. During the off-season they will be losing the players responsible for 1787 of those points. It's not just the loss to graduation of the two starters and one reserve costing them 70% of their points. It's that SIX other players, including two starters, are transferring out of the program. Only one Starter, junior-to-be point guard Cody Doolin, will be returning next season.

Starters Michael Williams and Perris Blackwell will be transferring, along with reserves Justin Raffington, Charles Standifer, Khalil Murphy and Avery Johnson. The players who are graduating or transferring clocked 4451 of the 6851 minutes played by Dons last season. Of the remaining 2400 minutes, Doolin accounts for nearly half of them with 1049.

In typical coach speak Walters addressed the issue, albeit without getting into specifics, to the Contra Costa Times, saying, "You hate to see guys leave but they all have very good reasons"

The Dons will return none of last season's upperclassmen. Leaving next season with no seniors, three juniors and three sophomores. Now of course there is a freshman class coming in, and a transfer from UCLA, De'End Parker.

San Francisco was set to make a leap next year. The way they battled the WCC's big three of Gonzaga, Saint Mary's and BYU down the stretch showed just how much potential this team had going forward. The Dons beat the Zags, lost to the Cougars by 1 and gave the Gaels all they could handle in the last game of the regular season as well as the WCC Tournament Semis. With the strong play of San Francisco, as well as Loyola Marymount, looking to continue into next season the WCC was in position to have a 5 team race for the first time since the league gained prominence behind Gonzaga's cinderella elite eight run in 1999.

LMU's Max Good is reigning WCC Coach of the Year for his turnaround of a Lions team which nobody expected to leave the league cellar. Now it's Rex Walters' turn to chase that award by continuing his team's escape from that cellar.

I've painted a pretty bleak picture of the Dons in this article, all while calling for coach Walters to pull off some miracle next season. Well, what's a two part series if I explain in this article how Walters might not actually need a miracle to do so? Tomorrow I'll have my take on the 2012-13 Dons, which will focus on that freshman class I spent all of half a sentence mentioning a couple paragraphs ago.

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