Miller Kopp is in the portal
- Thread starter Secho99
- Start date
Graduated? Heck, he couldn’t even find the cylinder this year.
Curious to see where he will be in all those ranks of “best available in the portal”. I’m guessing pretty high.
If you are right, then judgement day on Collins may be coming a lot sooner than we all thought.
While not really true from a basketball perspective, this actually made me LOL. Then again, I'm a nerd.
I mean seriously ... what the hell? On one hand, Collins probably needs to go. On the other hand, Porter Moser isn't walking through that door.
I was against firing Collins now because we would have several key players returning as seniors and I wanted to see what they can do. If these key players transfer instead, then there's not much reason to see what he can do next season.
(Although I'm not sure we want to fire coaches when we don't have an AD lined up yet.)
Unless you have a really good team, a couple of transfers seems like the norm these days, right?
Patrick Baldwin is signing soon. Kopp saw writing on the wall!
Because this program is a mess, there’s no AD, the coach is on thin ice, and one of the top two upperclassmen on the team is leaving.
I want to see the program succeed as much as anyone, and the fastest route to that right now is for Collins to have success. But even the optimists have to look at things that aren’t there and pretend that all of the little pieces are just going to come together and break our way exactly as planned, and the realist in me says there’s no real way to believe that will actually happen.
Like, are we going to fill that spot with a better transfer? Maybe, but we’ve never had a true star come out of the modern transfer portal. (Audige contributed and won us a game this year, but on the whole he had a fine year.)
Are we going to fill that spot with Baldwin? Maybe, but there’s no information to believe that we’re on the precipice of landing him. And why would he walk into this situation now?
Are the freshmen going to be real difference makers? Maybe, hopefully in time. But Berry was gonna be the freshman difference maker, and Beran before him, and Nance before him, and Falzon before him, and on and on. Some have contributed as freshmen, but the last real impact freshman we had was...McIntosh? Pardon, pushed into duty for half a year ahead of schedule? We’re just not usually landing the guy who comes in at 18 and strikes gold in the Big Ten. Our guys take time to develop, which is no discredit to them. It’s just not a recipe for a quick fix.
So if you’re Gaines right now, you’ve just graduated, and you can play your last year (or two) somewhere where you can actually win, or you can do what Drew Crawford did and try to be part of the build. If you’re Nance, Beran, whoever else, same question, but giving up the degree. And the real difference is that any player who has more than one year of eligibility left can’t be confident that the current staff will be here when they exhaust their eligibility.
And the administration as it is right now might just decide this is the time to make the move, with the hottest coach in the nation 10 miles south. (I think it’s a lot to ask him to take the job with no AD and an as-yet-unknown new president, leaving us with both a rebuild and uncertainty among the superiors).
tl;dr we’ve got issues.
When was the last time a player this relevant in the team transferred?
It did not happen to CC.
Maybe Lepore?
It did not happen to CC.
Maybe Lepore?
I’m disappointed whenever anyone transfers from such a great school as NU. And I can’t imagine Collins would want a kid like Kopp to leave. So, hard not to scratch your head on this one. But, is this one transfer (thus far) an indictment of Collins? I can’t yet be convinced of that unless Nance leaves as well, as I get the sense they are close, and losing Nance would be a huge blow. I’m not close enough to know, but my sense is that Collins is always pushing the envelope with players as to telling them what is / not in store for them. If he was frank with Kopp about his deficiencies (poor defense, poor passing, poor quickness, and unexpectedly, mostly poor shooting; not sure about his leadership/attitude), that reality may just have set in. With COVID, Kopp still has two years to play. Maybe he just wants to try something new; maybe he wants to find a team that will focus the offense on setting picks for him, rather than sharing the ball and finding the best open shot. That will be tough, but I wish him the best.
He didn't transfer; he quit. But Kevin Coble is the last significant departure that comes to mind.
Lepore transferred to Wake Forest. I think you're thinking of Sean Wink, who quit playing.
That’s also what Coble did. He left the program but not the school. Transfers of players who have not graduated from NU are rare:
Going back the last 20 years:
-Rapolas Ivanauskas
-Isaiah Brown
-Nick Segura
-Kale Abrahamson
-Chier Ajou
-Aaron Liberman
-Kyle Rowley
-Nikola Baran
-Brandon Lee
-Gary Lee
-Jimmy Maley
-Ben Johnson.
Thomas Soltau and TJ Parker left to go pro but did not transfer.
So much nonsense. He left because the coach was hard on him? He wants a team that sets screens for him?
He left because it’s his chance to actually have a meaningful season.
He left because he’s tired of being hounded every second. He is super attractive as a complement player in a high major program.
You really think Kopp wouldn't have been one of the most important players on this team next year? To the extent that Collins would "be frank" with him to the extent that he'd want to leave?
I don't know that there's really too much to read into all of this. The portal is a popular option these days. We haven't won very many games during Kopp's 3 years, and he's probably good enough to get minutes as a complementary player on a tourney-level high major team or be a star at a mid-major.
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Ignoring context is an eloquent attempt at spreading ignorance. Never mind your lack of a substantive reply. What’s your deal?
My bad, I read that wrong. I thought you were referring to Lepore because I saw his name in the post you quoted.
Of course he would have been important. I didn’t say otherwise. But does that excuse Collins from providing a frank assessment?
Truly astonishing you want to make a case that CC made him feel he was not living up to expectations. While playing him a team high 31.5 minutes a game.
The story from our Mike Fitz....
northwestern.rivals.com
WildcatReport - Miller Kopp enters the transfer portal
After starting 74 games in three seasons, Miller Kopp has decided to leave Northwestern.
northwestern.rivals.com
Yes, because if you're a college coach so frank with a core player on your team that he decides to leave, you're bad at your job.
I don't think that's what happened here. I think it's as simple as losing sucks, players don't want to lose, and Kopp thinks it's likelier he can win somewhere else than he can here.
"But one of the main arguments for retaining Collins after a fifth-straight bottom-five Big Ten finish was the theory that Kopp and Nance were returning seniors who would lead the Wildcats back to the tournament after Collins "reset" the program two seasons ago. "The story from our Mike Fitz....
WildcatReport - Miller Kopp enters the transfer portal
After starting 74 games in three seasons, Miller Kopp has decided to leave Northwestern.
It's actually only the 4th straight bottom five finish, just seems like more.......2016-17 was the Unicorn year.
Yep. I can't blame him, he seemed to be a kid who gave it his all and the losing had to weigh on him. Kids only get one shot at college ball, hope he has a great last year wherever he ends up.
