Love seeing Stokes back!

Great news! Stokes has so much potential to become a elite player.

Cooper to UC Irvine

I hope the 3rd time is the charm for him.

I sure wish we’d see some news of signees for us. I know they don’t like to announce anyone until compliance gives the full a-ok, but it’s starting to get late even by last seasons standards.

I've been trying to get some hints as to who might sign by seeing who Coach's Vogt and Nosek are following. A couple of possibilities, but no really solid leads. I saw one player who said he was "supposed" to walk on at UCD but couldn't due to "NCAA rules" so he's opening up his recruitment.

According to Verbal Commits and 247 Sports we offered the following players but they committed elsewhere:

Sean Felts 6'11 Center from Snow College- Utah State
Ryan Hunt 7'0 Center from Eastern Arizona College - TCU
Kingston Whitty 6'2 PG from Arden, NC - NC State
Mason Magee 6'0 PG from Chandler, AZ - USF
Elias Obenyah 6'4 SG from Richmond, CA - Stanford
Rider Portela 6'6 SG from Phoenix, AZ - Colorado
Jaden Balies 6'2 Combo G from San Juan Capistrano, CA - Seattle

let's hope there is some news coming soon. I was looking at the portal tracker google document, and some schools who lost a bunch (SJSU, UTEP) seem to be grabbing anybody they can. Unless I've missed the emergence of William&Mary, John Logan and Stetson as basketball breeding grounds.

Nils to Irvine and Wilson to sac state is tough given that’s essentially equal level of competition. You’d like to think that the choice make sense if these players move up, otherwise they should stay. Especially if they are already starters…

Nils to Irvine and Wilson to sac state is tough given that’s essentially equal level of competition. — SoCalAggie

It hard to know why they chose to make these moves. It's a lateral move at best in terms of competition and I doubt that either school could offer them big NIL money.

I would think Sac offered more money, and I believe UCI’s revenue stream is larger than ours. In some ways, it feels like they expected big paydays and/or jump up in competition……and had to settle for less when that didn’t materialize.

I'm not sure that UCI's overall revenue stream is larger than ours. For 2024, UCD had $50 million in revenue vs. $55 million in expenditures supporting 25 sports;
UCI had $28.5 million in revenue vs. $31 million in expenditures supporting 18 sports.

Source: KNIGHT-NEWHOUSE College Athletics Database; 2024 is the most recent year currently available. The figures above obviously don't include soft money from boosters that isn't part of the budgetary process.

The differences to me are:
1 - UCD has football expenditures (@13% of total expenditures) which UCI doesn't have.
2 - UCD supports more sports than UCI, so the pot is divided more ways at UCD.
3 - MBB and WBB are UCI's flagship sports (IMHO), which means they are treated more preferentially than is the case for those teams at UCD.
Not that those teams are treated badly at UCD, but football is obviously the Aggies' flagship sport. As such, it consumes not only financial resources, but other departmental resources, like the time and energy that staff put into supporting football. At UCI, those resources are freed up for basketball.
The flagship sport, whatever it is, also drives the institutional decision-making. Rocko has talked about how the conference decision-making never accounted for football, since only Davis and Cal Poly supported football, and how that was a problem.

AP?

"AP?" ???

Oh I was just asking what AP references in your message

Davis and AP supported football, and how that was a problem.

typo. Intended CP for Cal Poly.

I was thinking more along the lines of NIL, which i had heard that they were at the top of the conference along with UCSD and UCSB. How that translates to the new revenue sharing model, i'm not sure.

This is correct. Irvine’s hoops budget is significantly larger. Same with SD.

Looks like a solid addition. Shot well in limited time last year for the Dons. Lots of international experience.

Sounds like a good addition; we need a solid defender

Impressive highlights for Veniamin Abosi at USF last season:

looks like he can get to the hoop, which hasn’t been a strong point for us.

40.2% from 3 is pretty darn good as well. He was draining some NBA 3's in that video. I'm hoping to see a rim protector pretty soon and it would be nice if we landed a big man that could score inside as well.