ROUNDTABLE: How badly does Haarms to BYU hurt Kentucky?
Purdue big man Matt Haarms announced a transfer BYU instead of Kentucky or Texas Tech on Thursday.
Here's what Cats Illustrated writers think of the development.
Jeff Drummond: Due to the mass exodus that occurred earlier this month and the current roster construct, losing Haarms is a fairly large setback. Kentucky is now looking at the prospect of entering next season without a single traditional big man on the roster. They have a couple of guys with height, but nobody in the 7-foot range and no one with any kind of bulk. The good news is, this is college basketball in the 2000s. You don’t have to play with one of those guys. I think John Calipari could take a page from Bruce Pearl’s book and play really small and fast this season. He may have to now. It will be a unique situation for him. All of his best teams at UK have had the classic big man and rim protector back there. Can he win at the level UK fans expect without one?
Travis Graf: It’s a huge blow in terms of rounding out the roster with a position of need. You can’t teach 7-3 and the added rim protection that Kentucky currently doesn’t have. Kentucky now has to go in a different direction despite being confident throughout the Haarms sweepstakes. It’s not that losing Haarms in particular is a huge deal, it’s that many bigs have avoided Kentucky like the plague in recent years. I think that Keion Brooks will take a sophomore leap and be the third best player on next year’s team. Isaiah Jackson and Lance Ware bring different things to the table for the ‘Cats next season, but as it stands right now without an experienced five man, they’ll shoulder more of the load than they should early on. Haarms would have been a great addition, but not due to putting up huge numbers. He would’ve checked some boxes that Kentucky still has left blank at this time, giving Jackson and Ware more time to adjust.
David Sisk: It stings, no doubt about that. Adding a experienced 7-3 rim protector was certainly appealing. On the floor I think he would have been a good fit on both ends. Rim protection and rebounding on one end; rim running spreading the floor with ball screens on the other. That kind of big man would have went along well with Boston and Clarke. But I still contend that off the floor would have been a challenge. It’s weird now that I think about it, but Brian Neubert told me last week that he needed to go to Boston College or BYU to get off the beaten path. He did just that. He’s moved on and we must do the same. I will stick with my belief that Isaiah Jackson and Lance Ware are getting short changed in all of this. They are five-star bigs. I especially think Jackson can give some of what Haarms did. I’m also not sure that a reclass post outside of Paolo Banchero or maybe Moussa Cisse is an upgrade. As always, it will be a trial by fire for the freshman, but in the end they are usually better in March than they are November.
Justin Rowland: It's a big loss as it stands right now but if Kentucky can find a really good player who can reclassify or land another transfer of comparable worth then it won't be nearly as bad as it seems now. It's just hard to see UK finding someone who will be as impactful as Haarms would have been. Next year's team is BJ Boston, Terrance Clarke, and the supporting cast. Haarms might have only given them 20-25 minutes a game, but he would have filled a lot of the need areas that are showing up on paper. His experience would have been a big bonus, he would have made Kentucky an excellent shot blocking team, and he'd have been the only true "big" on the team. We'll see what happens, so I don't want to go overboard, but there's a reason fans would be feeling very differently right now had Haarms picked UK.