#Hokies G Robert Brown has asked for a release from his scholarship and will transfer to a school closer to home, his father just confirmed.— Mark Giannotto (@HokiesJournal) March 26, 2013
Eric Avissar had tweeted the news out 4 hours prior to Gianatto and include this as well.
I think Robert Brown lands at one of the following three schools: Central Florida, South Florida or Florida Gulf Coast— Eric Avissar (@EricAV15SAR) March 26, 2013
Brown came to Tech as a 4-star prospect and averaged 27.3 minutes (3rd most on the team) this season even though he came off the bench for some of the year. He was Tech's 3rd leading scorer this year with 8.3 points per game and shot 33.1%.
What do you guys think, how big of a loss is Brown?
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
YES YES YES! THANK GOD PRAISE WHATEVER LORD YOU BELIEVE IN!
To whoever downvoted that, don't hate because I said what you were thinking.
Apparently not, since they down-voted you :P
Downvoted because Ty Garland is showing us that players that struggle early (and annoy the crap out of our fanbase) can be useful if their coach isn't awful.
Two years of regression is enough time to concede defeat. Maybe a change of scenery helped Garland, it wouldn't be the first time that happened to a player. But when a player is consistently getting worse, it's time to move on.
I have no ill-will towards the kid, and I think this has a lot to do with location. But if he thinks he will be in a better situation than playing off EG this year and JE/CR/AS(?) next year in a wide open system like JJ's, good luck.
I think this is another strike on James Johnson's ability to manage this program effectively. I am not sold one way or another on his ability yet and wont hold one season against him, but I would think keeping your third most active player in the program would not be that big a challenge. I have not been impressed the few times I have heard coach speak publicly, and hope that this is just a speedbump not a first of many. We cant seem to keep scholarship players around which is worrisome.
meh, it's pretty common in college hoops for kids to transfer. seth lost kids seemingly every year. he wants to be closer to home which i can understand, but dude was a turnover waiting to happen so i dont think it's a serious loss.
I agree. Player retention was a big focus on moving on past Seth. JJ was supposed to be:
1. A players coach (then you better not have high turnover)
2. Defensive minded (yet we were by far the worst defensive team in the ACC)
3. Familiar with the program (and he came nowhere near close to getting the most out of his first team.)
Is it really just to be closer to home? Or the new recruits/transfers coming in next year?
Hopefully he'll find success like some of our other recent transfers. But I will not miss his inconsistent play & his remarkable brick laying ability. Markus Sailes had a better jumper than ol Bobby Brown.
Man, what a disappointing prospect. When he peaked, he was a very good shooter... but the peak never lasted very long. He couldn't handle the ball, and his defense was nothing spectacular, so when he couldn't shoot, he was a very sub-par player. We will miss the minutes he provided, but other than that, I can't imagine we will miss him all that much. It is a shame things didn't work out for him, but I hope he can become a consistent shooter and find success wherever he lands. I wish he could have stuck around though... I think he can still be a decent player if he works hard.
I'm going to miss making jokes about "Bobby Brown" and his "bricks".
I guarantee you he will end up like Ty Garland and Hank Thorns... finding success as soon as they leave Blacksburg.
That said, the biggest loss here is just having that extra body, that extra experience. I'm hopeful that once JJ gets in a couple recruiting classes of his own, going after kids that can run the system he's trying to implement, we should be a bit better off.
But... until then, we might be in for another long year or two.
This sucks.
I know everyone's talking about his abysmal performance this season but let's look at the big picture:
What does JJ want to do when he gets a full arsenal of players next season? Run.
What is Brown's best attriubute right now? He's athletic, an above average defender and does very well taking the ball to the hoop, especially in transition.
It is a PERFECT fit. Yes, he got benched in favor of a walk-on later in the season. Yes, it seemed like he was taking shots with his eye closed, but when he performs well at a Florida school everyone will say "SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING."
Brown would have been a perfect small-ball, pressing 3 along side Adam Smith and the revolving rotation that will be the point guard position. This is a huge loss, especially considering that there will be even more reliance on yet another freshman (Donte Clark) who will inevitably hit the freshman wall.
Maybe I'm over reacting, but I don't think this is something to just scoff at.
But if Brown is gone, who will we rely on to miss floaters and shoot long on every three point attempt? I was never impressed by Brown's play. He always reminded me of the guy you'd see in the gym who looks like a good player but then just never makes shots.
I know he had a down year, but in my opinion it's a major concern to lose a quality guard when your star player is leaving and someone is needed to drive the team. Not to mention with DFS gone too, it's no good to recruit highly ranked players if you can't keep them or coach them up.
I'm disappointed about this.
Robert Brown's play was far from spectacular this year, but I think he showed potential. Never met him, don't know anything about his work ethic or personality, but (as a brianm11 pointed out) he was athletic, could defend and drive to the hoop. I honestly thought he could've be the centerpiece of our offense his senior year. Guess not. Hope he really is moving just to get closer to home.
To all the people that think this is a good thing, know this...Marquis Rankin is now the person who will be running this team. Not that I don't think he can do it, but think about that a little bit...
Rankin is much better than Brown. He's a better dribbler, a great defender, and it doesn't matter how his jumper looks because it's impossible to have a worse jumper than Brown.
People said the same about Garland and now he's taking his Southwest Philly Floater to the Sweet 16.
Yea, but Garland had no potential under Greenberg. He never showed signs of improving. It was all because of who our coach was, I'm not going to argue that. If you watch his shot, it has an awkward side spin to it. Maybe if a coach would work on him with that he would get better, but the worst part about watching him was that he never saw a shot he didn't like.
Well, Rankin has flawless mechanics on his jumper, is a great defender, passer.. There's a reason he played more than Brown towards the end of the season.
Brown has a bad handle, poor shot mechanics leading to extended shooting slumps. I did like his post up game and midrange game, but he needs to get his head straight and that was probably not happening here at VT. Just never seemed to smile or look like he was having fun.
Brown struggled mightily to find any sort of consistency. Brown's father eluded to Gianatto that Robert might have been homesick.
For me, worse than his shooting slumps were the brain farts, being careless with the ball, and turnovers. Maybe he was mentally absent, which no amount of talent can overcome.
With Donte Clark and Adam Smith coming in next season, this might not be a major blow from a talent perspective. However, I think it says something negative about the program, the fragile state it's in, and the revolving doors apparently now in Cassell.
Mental preparedness can be coached.
That basketball practice facility (or even Cassell) could probably be converted into an a ice rink, without too much effort...
Ugh just the sarcastic comment of dropping a basketball team for a hockey team makes me throw up in my mouth a little...
Not being sarcastic; I really prefer Hockey to roundball.
Are the ceilings high enough that we can we punt in the Greenberg Fieldhouse?
No, It's basically like a warehouse in there. I'm sure they could be easily raised though, it sounds awful in there when it rains.
YES PLEASE
I've been saying this since my freshman year. No way do I want to drive to the Civic Center for some hockey.
I went to a club hockey game and it was a great experience and surprisingly a big crowd. It is quite an inconvenience to go there unfortunately.
While there is a chance he may have gotten bypassed next year by Smith and Clark, it shows that he isn't committed to making himself better and not letting his spot get taken. They have already started doing individual workouts and if he put in the work, I'm sure he could have secured his starting spot.
Also a factor is that he dates former volleyball player Gabby Talley who was also from Florida and is transferring back down to that area as well.
He did community service with us from his freshmen year incident and was a decent enough kid, but if your head isn't in it, then a fresh start is what he may need and from what I hear that fresh start is at FGCU.
The kid clearly has talent.
Hopefully a change in scenery is all he needs to get it going. Wish him luck.
Best of luck to him. Does anyone else think he looks like Frozone from The Incredibles?
I am incredibly disappointed that I never realized this in the past two years. Spot on.
You are INCREDIBLY disappointed that you never realized he looked like a character from the INCREDIBLES
/mind=blown
Maybe he was just fed up with the weather here and wanted to get back to Florida.
but i thought we had #beachflow
Haha well when I look outside on March 27th and see the ground is covered in snow... Florida sounds pretty nice
Why are people celebrating this? He was a promising recruit when we are severely deprived of talent. Some people just don't seem to realize that some of these guys take a while to develop *coughErickGreencough*. Just look what Ty Garland is doing for La Salle, he's absolute beast mode right now. Our basketball programs future looks pretty damn bleak right now.
In before Brown leads USF/UCF/FGC to an improbable elite 8 run in two years.
I do not buy Brown's being homesick as an excuse to make up for his performance. His biggest problem was his technique more than anything. He does not have a soft touch that is normally seen in shooter (think J.J. Redick) and as Joe alluded to above, he is not a terrific ball handler. What I liked about Brown was his ability to do the extra pass and he isn't afraid of contact. Brown isn't afraid to drive, but when it's against ACC competition, he was more content to throw up prayers than trying to draw contact.
Edit: I have to also agree that it doesn't make the basketball program look good when there's an annul pilgrimage of talent from Blacksburg.
It's a combination of having a good shooting coach and having the work ethnic to work on his jumper. Didn't he say that he learned work ethnic from Erick Green? I honestly thought he finally turned things around when the season was closing.
I am very disappointed because I thought with Johnson's hiring, it may finally put an end to the annual loss of available bodies, and because I thought Brown would be one of the players to watch next fall/winter.
You can say you learned all you want, but you actually have to show it. I was always rooting for him to become that guy but he really isn't. He is more like a typical college student who just happens to play basketball.
It's the Blacksburg weather. He missed the warm.
I think Brown will be missed, just like any program no one likes to see a player leave or transfer regardless of his down season he still had untapped potential that he never got to tap into here and become successful. I'm still uncertain as to why JJ gets the bad comments for players leaving technically these aren't JJ's players these are still Greenberg's recruitment class when he was here. I think and still think JJ its going to be a great coach for us. He didn't have a great season this year, but what coach do you know who have a great season the first year they're a head coach.......Can't name one. I can't figure out why sometimes I feel like we are the only fan base that has wish-washy fans that complains when we aren't doing well instead of standing by our school no matter what. I know as fans we have that right, but what was so great about Greenberg? I won't even waste time putting up his stats as a coach. When I was in high school I wasn't impressed with him. He wasn't a X's or O's kind of coach and he want a players coach. This is just my opinion. Greenberg had his time to be successful and he still didn't get it done so let's give JJ a chance to prove himself.
I disagree with you about Greenberg. He is a X and O coach, have to remember that Greenberg is a tactical coach, not a coach with a strategy like Coach K of Duke. One of Greenberg glaring weaknesses was end-of-game strategy, and that is the same problem with coach Johnson. Johnson had a chance to call a timeout and draw up a play for the Hokies to execute against UNC, and he never did so as he was content to let Erick Green play the hero and dribble out the clock. The result were predictable.
How many time did Greenberg coach the Hokies to beat Duke and UNC when nobody gave them the chance? Greenberg legitimately missed out on two NCAA invite because of how stupid the selection committee were.
I like JJ, but I'll be honest with you. JJ is in over his head. He has ZERO head coaching experience and was job hopping for a while. He left for Clemson to be an assistant with a slightly better pay, and that was it. Weaver claim that Johnson told him Greenberg was the cause for his firing, and to this day, I will call bullshit on that. Weaver never truly committed to Greenberg the way Weaver commits to Beamer. Think about it, when Weaver had the press conference where he publicly fired Greenberg without telling Greenberg first, what was one of the questions Weaver was asked? I'll save you the time of Googling it. He was asked if he wanted a Beamer in sneakers, and he said, "Yes."
I'm sorry, but that is as filmsy as Wang blocking on a run play. Greenberg may be an a-hole, but the man know how to coach, and how to get his players to play defense, something that JJ seem to fail to grasp or to get his players to understand that concept.
It sucks that Brown left because of the notion that he was homesick, but that doesn't pass my smell test. There's plenty of young men his age who are away from home and doing just dandy. No, Brown's biggest problem was his technique and he finally figured that out near the end of the season.
Unfortunately, with Weaver's boneheaded HR handling and shortsightedness, the basketball program have been set back a decade and it will be a while before the damage is undone. I just hope that JJ can surround himself with quality assistants to execute what JJ wants from his players.
If JJ wants to play up-tempo basketball the same way UNC does, he is going to have to face the fact that it mean defense won't always be desirable (take a look at how quickly UNC exited the tournament, proving me right) because the up-tempo masks that weakness.
Greenberg had how many years until he beat Duke or UNC? And if Greenberg was as good as advertised why didn't he rise to the occasion like a Shaka Smart for an example????? Yes, JJ wants to run a more uptempo game of basketball to utilize the athleticism on the team, we don't have a true big man or consistent scorers for that matter I can't blame him for that my argument was for the fans giving him a chance. Its funny to me when VT was going undefeated at the beginning of the season everyone was on the JJ bandwagon. Greenberg had his chance and nothing came from it. I don't care about how many times we got overlooked for the tourney selection it never happened teams get in that don't deserve to get in and teams get the raw deal as well every year so that to me isn't a good explanation. I'm a fan of the game not just a Hokie fan that's being bias. When I look at coaches how many players has Greenberg sent to the NBA as long as he's been here???? So he's not developing his top players. And if were going to talk about recruiting a well let's talk about Greenberg's misses on Stephon Curry and his brother......???? Almost mind boggling that we didn't even offer a legacy recruit of one of the all-time scorers in VT basketball history???? My point is if Beamer got a chance to turn his program around why can't JJ? If all we have is wins against Duke and UNC than let's live in the past forever!
You make good points, but if you don't mind me suggesting, maybe just use one question mark at a time moving forward.
Also Trevor please don't take this personal i enjoy a good debate. But we can't compare ourselves to UNC there's huge talent gap and even though they exited this year early they are always in the talks of Natonal championship and they will be back next year better they just reload talent, because they have the ability to go out and get the best in the country. When UNC offers players in our own state we can't keep them here for basketball.
Greenburg's problem was his personality. Did you see the tweets of approval from Jeff Allen, JT, and other former players when he was fired? Things like "Man I wish I was at tech 4 this news don't want to get my hopes up but if it's wat I this it is shuda happen a long time ago." How can anyone be surprised the program failed when half of the recently graduated players are celebrating the head coach's firing?
As for JJ, Weaver offered to match Clemson's offer. JJ said it wasn't about the money. Clemson isn't Duke, UNC, UCLA; it's essentially a lateral move. If it's not a career move, and it's not a money move, what else could it be about? Weaver never committed to Greenburg because Seth was rude and condescending to every in the athletic department. I've had friends work as student interns for marketing and video in the athletic department - every one of them complained about the way Seth treated/talked down to them.
JJ is definitely in over his head, but it was because of the way the program was handed over to him (this is Weaver's fault). I'm confident in JJ's knowledge of the game and coaching abilities, I hope he gets the players he needs and can turn the team around in the next few years.
Often times we missed on the tourney because of who we lost to rather than who we beat. Same thing happened to loluva thus year, beat duke but lose to teams like bc and Clemson late in the season. That gets you left out of the dance.
As far as personality, many former players are finally starting to come back into town because Greenberg is finally gone if that says anything. Greenberg consustantly had great staffs that bailed on him because he is such an ass to them.
JJ is left because of Seth but is back because he is who we could get and he helped recruit a lot if these guys on the roster. He was handed a situation similar to womens coach, Dennis Wolfe, and hopefully has the same progress. Land the players you want, coach your style and be successful, that is all the fanbase ask for.
Just how good is the incoming recruiting class? The 30 seconds i took to look at ESPN rankings makes me think the new guys are average, and below average for ACC. I know rankings are a wash so does anyone have good insight?
From what I can tell, they are all guys who didn't get offered by big schools which leads me to believe that they are all guys JJ knew he could sign and fit his system. Not very many top 100 recruits will come here until we start winning or JJ establishes himself as a recruiter. However, it is nice to finally see us recruiting a center who is over 6' 9" though as well as some quick guards. Donte Clark will probably start at some point next year or at least be a major contributor. My predicted starting five is (and this is completely speculation): Adam Smith, Marquis Rankin, CJ Barksdale, Cadarian Raines and Marshall Wood, but that's just me. Thoughts?
I think Eddie would start over Barksdale or Wood. Just how I see it, seemed to me that JJ gave him every opportunity to turn it around last year so I wouldn't be surprised to see him out there again.
I actually agree with you, I just think Eddie would be more effective coming off the bench when there's no pressure on him to lead the team in points.
Clark is a borderline top 100 kid offered by numerous Big 10/12 schools, Emelogu offered by Washington and Marquette, Thompson offered by Ariz State, Miss St, Tennessee. Sooo...
Not sure where you're getting the Big 10/12 schools for Clark. The only power conference schools ESPN has offers listed for him are from Auburn, Georgia, Providence and Tennessee. Not really the powerhouse programs you would expect to go after a borderline top 100 recruit. Rivals says he got offers from (in addition to the others) Ole Miss, Missouri, Miami and OK State.That's 0 Big 10 schools and 1 Big 12 school. Not really the cream of the crop as far as basketball schools go.
People were very high on Clarke until they saw him play this season and interest seems to have waned because of concerns about his ability to fill a role as a 1 or 2 guard (from what I've read on Rivals and ESPN, he doesn't shoot well enough to be a 2 guard but he doesn't pass well enough to be a 1). He actually may fit more of the slasher type role that Robert Brown is leaving open with his departure.
Emelogu is in a similar situation to Clarke, people saw how raw he was and backed off. Same goes for Thompson. Kirby is just a tall guy who got a lot of exposure from playing on the same team as a top point guard recruit. All the guys we signed are, as I said, guys who JJ feels fit his system and he knew he could sign with the promise of playing time in a power conference.
Ok- there are some really good programs among the offers so I'm more optimistic. And I really like what I see on film from Clark and Emelogu. Emelogu has a really pure stroke and plays in a bigtime league. Not sure where the raw thoughts come from. Clark has a good stroke with great elevation on his jumpers.
I assume the raw thoughts come from lack of consistency in game, but I'm not a scout and I haven't been to see these guys play. Highlight films never tend to show me the bad plays a player makes. Highlight films do show me that when they're playing with confidence and making good decisions, these guys are probably as good as anybody we have on the team. If either Clark or Emelogu (or both) can be key contributors this year, this team will be set up well for the future. Here's hoping next season is better than this past one.
Not very. Mueller is a slow European PG. Clarke was highly rated early and everyone dropped off him the more they saw him play. Emelogu is the best player we have, but he's very raw....rawer than Robert Brown. Both post players are poor-man's versions of Cadarian Raines, at least 2 years from contributing. And, by then, they'll either have a new coach or transfer.
Hold on to your hats folks!
the rumor mill is still churning, brown might not be the only one to leave. . .
It's official: http://www.hokiesports.com/mbasketball/recaps/20130327aaa.html.
Let's be honest, Brown was terrible in ALL facets of the game. No help in any way, shape, or form. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last. Don't think JJ is the guy, but losing Brown can only help. Fire Weaver, get a real AD that has only an inkling of intelligence, and we might finish above last in the conference.
As tough as a season Brown had, we still need him and this will hurt. We need more of this: