The All-Eamonn Team, the biggest coaching changes and life in a post-portal world: The Buzzer Mailbag returns

Plus: Virginia worries, Mike Woodson's offense, NIL anxiety and the NET

Photo credit: Marca, which is amazing

Hi folks! Happy Friday! As promised, your massive mailbag is here. Subscribe, send to a friend, enjoy. Let’s get right in.

I asked a similar question before the season started, but now that the season is wrapped up, who made the All-Eamonn Team for the 2023-2024 season? — Nick

Why, thank you for asking, Nick. I just set up a yearly calendar reminder to publish some version of the All-Eamonn Team every spring — a great idea of yours that we should absolutely turn into an annual celebration of the college basketballers I most enjoyed watching (not necessarily the best, though that doesn’t hurt!) in any given year.

Here are 2023-24's inductees:

First Team

Robbie Avila
Pelle Larsson
Jamal Shead
Reed Sheppard
Keisei Tominaga

Second Team

Boo Buie
Dalton Knecht
Tyler Kolek
Johnell Davis
Zach Edey

Robbie Avila is the clear captain of this squad. It would be one thing if he just rocked the specs and looked the way he did while being a plodding around-the-rim mid-major random; he would be like one of those guys with a great name you don’t think about all that much until his team is in the later rounds of its conference tournament. The fact that Avila has one of the smoothest, most intuitive games in college hoops is what really puts him over the top. Throw in the true mid-major Horizon League status, and the fact that Indiana State was a fascinating bubble team we watched a ton of throughout the year and, yeah, Avila is the guy.

There are some other obvious picks. Beyond being extremely, almost mind-blowingly effective — and despite not playing as many minutes as he probably should have, lest D.J. Wagner get offended, or whatever — Reed Sheppard was an absolute blast. It’s been a long time since I felt so confident the ball was going in every time a player touched it (Sheppard shot 75-of-144 from 3!) which is a hell of a thing to say about a kid who also flew around and generated so many steals. Keisei Tominaga was likewise an absolute joy. Even after his brilliant season ended in tears, Tominaga stole the show at the college 3-point shooting contest; he couldn’t help but be a star.

The other first team guys are maybe a bit less obvious. For Pelle Larsson, well, chalk it up to the soul-restoring value of a player who always makes the right decision. Oumar Ballo and Caleb Love were that Arizona team’s stars, but Larsson was the best glue guy in the country, unselfish and impossible to speed up. As for Jamal Shead, well, regular readers will remember this publication dismissing Houston early in the year, decrying the team’s lack of NBA-level perimeter talent, guys that could go get a shot in the big moment in March. Shead turned himself into that, and he did a lot of that work throughout the season, morphing into an alpha dog that pushed Houston’s offense ever forward. It was one of the grittiest, most admirable transformations you’ll ever see, and it was thrilling to watch.

The second team is pretty self-explanatory, and two of those guys (Kolek and Davis) are legacy selections — still like watching both dudes play!

I should probably explain Zach Edey, though. I, personally, don’t mind watching Edey play. I can understand why it’s a grind for some. But the sheer vitriol Edey got throughout the latter part of his senior season and especially in the NCAA Tournament — the way complaints about the refs and fouls and the challenges of guarding him turned into actual widespread aesthetic loathing of the best player this sport has seen in years, a legend we were all privileged to watch — made me like the big fella even more.

Indeed, one idea for a postseason post centered on just how good Edey was, how everyone took him for granted, but Ken Pomeroy wrote exactly that post in April. People didn’t appreciate Edey enough. We won’t have anything close to him next season, or for years to come. For pure unbridled production Edey was completely, mind-blowingly incredible, and this inclusion in the highly aesthetically oriented All-Eamonn Team is a protest vote against anybody who got mad at the best player in the country for being so disproportionately good in a way they didn’t visually prefer. Haters.

What do you think has been the biggest coaching upgrade of the last 10 to 15, hell 20 if you want, years? Pat Kelsey for Kenny Payne seems truly gigantic and I wasn't particularly sold on Kelsey that much before he took the job. — Scott

LOL. Poor Kenny Payne. The man is gone but the slander goes on.

The Louisville hire is fascinating. Having gone through the process of reaching out to several high-profile coaches at bigtime programs, hunting around for the next obvious Rick Pitino, and maybe not garnering as much interest as they expected, you can feel the administration there defaulting to high-floor competence — to a guy who has, at minimum, successfully overseen a college basketball program.

Pat Kelsey is not Pitino, a force of nature and one of the greatest pure coaches of all time. But, like, Kelsey knows where the players should stand. He knows how to recruit to a style of play, how to acquire pieces that work within a unified whole. He knows how to communicate to the media without sounding dour and detached. He understands the value of enthusiasm and momentum. In short, he is a college basketball coach. Kenny Payne wasn't, not in any traditional sense, and his teams played like it. Louisville took a massive leap of faith on his hire. It was more of a disaster than even the most pessimistic forecast.

The big question is whether "is a college basketball coach" will be enough for Louisville fans to get excited again, for them to pack out that all-important arena once more. Kelsey might also be more than that, by the way — plenty of very good mid-major coaches truly excel with this level of resources newly at their disposal. (Nate Oats is a great example.) But even if Kelsey is merely average at Louisville, merely par, he should have the Cardinals in NCAA Tournament contention again. After two years of Payne, that will feel like a revelation.

Does 2024 have the wildest coaching carousel sequence of all time? (Andy Enfield to SMU, Eric Musselman to USC, John Calipari to Arkansas, Mark Pope to Kentucky, Kevin Young to BYU.) Or would you say that 2003 was bigger? (Roy Williams to UNC, Bill Self to Kansas, Bruce Weber to Illinois, Matt Painter to Southern Illinois.) — Brian Hare

The answer to the biggest coaching upgrade prompt from the previous question resides in this one. Has there ever been a more obvious immediate coaching upgrade than when Roy Williams replaced Matt Doherty? Yes, John Calipari was already a huge deal (and a perfect fit) when he landed at Kentucky, but at least Billy Clyde had been a hard-charging winner at UTEP and Texas A&M.

Doherty went 22-15 and tied for sixth in the Big East in his only season as a head coach at Notre Dame before he was given the UNC job. Forget Doherty's subsequent career: It was clear to everyone at the time — even a 14-year-old high school sophomore in Iowa — that he was out of his depth. Williams, on the other hand, had a long track record of success at another elite blueblood. He was obviously going to restore UNC to the Dean Smith standard, and he very quickly did.

Anyway, that coaching carousel would rank above this year's for me. It helped define the next 25 years (and counting) of the men's game at the highest level. Most college basketball players have been alive for less time than Bill Self has been dominating the Big 12 at Kansas. It's not remotely clear this year's carousel will have that sort of extended legacy, though the idea of Andy Enfield taking big booster money to go to SMU ending up with Mark Pope coaching Kentucky will always be a very funny sequence of dominoes.

Seriously, Virginia? Not a single add? I wasn't happy but wasn't surprised to see Leon Bond leave but we have missed on every single target in the portal. What does this say about the perception of Virginia as a program nationally? — Grimjon

I am a UVa fan and had the same questions as Grimjon. But I also wanted to ask should we really be concerned? Do we really know who the program's targets are, or whether it's too late in the game to make a meaningful addition? — Jon DeNunzio

Echoing the Virginia whine of others but with a hopeful twist: maybe Coach Bennett will hear the portal silence as a strong message and adapt and let his athletes perform athletic plays even if they happen "too early" in the shot clock. I believe he's at a turning point. He either adapts or quits. Mad respect for him either way. — Deacon Brad

With so many players entering the portal, does it serve a program to use redshirts anymore? — Matthew Stollak

(Asking for a friend, since in my mind I am friends with Tony Bennett. — Grimjon)

Ah — and so we have reached the Worried Virginia Fans’ section of the mailbag.