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Post by UICJohn on May 12, 2021 8:48:49 GMT -6
Patrick Baldwin, the son of Milwaukee basketball Head Coach Pat Baldwin, has committed to the Milwaukee Panthers. He is rated by most as a top-3 recruit in the nation. He becomes the highest ranked player to ever commit to a Horizon League school.
He chose to play for his father and Milwaukee over offers from a plethora of major programs but most analysts had his decision coming down to Milwaukee or Duke.
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Post by goveybaseball on May 12, 2021 9:09:17 GMT -6
God forbid UIC ever gets a big time recruit!
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Post by uicc79 on May 12, 2021 9:26:05 GMT -6
This is an extremely unique situation. The majority of opinions are that he will play 1 year for his dad, then declare for the NBA. If nothing else, it will probably bring some good publicity to the Horizon League.
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Post by UICJohn on May 12, 2021 9:54:49 GMT -6
I am wondering how this will play out. I do firmly believe that good players will be good anywhere. However, if he has any struggles, will those be looked at in a much greater way than if he struggled playing for Duke? Even great players have bad games. In current NBA Mock Drafts, he is going in the top-10. I'm incredibly eager to see how the season plays out but also very eager to see what happens with his career moving forward.
If he has success at Milwaukee, will that prove to other recruits that you can go to a mid-major and succeed? That you can possibly stay closer to home and go to a smaller school but still live out that dream of playing professionally? Or that you can go to a school where you possibly feel more comfortable and help build up a program?
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm leaning more so not. I know that there is a recent push with some higher recruits attending HBCU in the past year or two. Even that hasn't had the kind of change that I thought it might (although the trend of that happening is still pretty new).
Short term - this definitely should give more publicity to the league which COULD be a good thing. Maybe it also gives more life to the Milwaukee program which would be great. The fact is that the only way that this league gets out of the funk they're in the for the past several years is for multiple teams to improve - UIC included.
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Post by uicc79 on May 12, 2021 10:41:28 GMT -6
I heard about his selection this morning, while listening to the Kap & J. Hood show. While they were talking about it, someone asked where the Horizon League is (seriously, not joking), and Kap said that UIC is a part of the Horizon League and that J. Hood does their play-by-play and UWM will play in Chicago. So except for the question about the location of the Horizon League, some good pub.
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Post by Big D on May 12, 2021 20:56:10 GMT -6
Awesome for Milwaukee.
Good for UIC and the Horizon from an exposure/publicity standpoint.
Bad for UIC because we’ll be finishing behind Milwaukee.
Bad for the Horizon since there will be countless articles questioning why PBJ chose an unknown league over the likes of Duke etc.
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