Jones chooses to follow dream, declaring he’s available for NBA Draft
Mason Jones’ dream, he says, is to play in the NBA and he announced via Twitter on Friday morning he’s putting his name into the group for the draft … whenever that is held this summer.
Thank you Razorback nation ❤️
All God ???? pic.twitter.com/74FQdOajyT
— Mase (@masonjones2) March 27, 2020
The global health pandemic has put all of that in question, but Jones seemed pretty clear his decision has been made after winning Player of the Year honors in the SEC after leading the league in scoring.
“This has been a lifelong dream of mine to play in the NBA so I’m looking forward to the next chapter in my life,” Jones said in the Twitter post.
Declaring eligibility is one thing. Getting picked for one of just 60 spots in the two-round draft is another.
ESPN’s draft ranking has him at No. 80 and the chances will be limited to immediately improve his standing. The NBA’s season has been suspended over the health pandemic and that includes any meetings with prospects or workouts.
The deadline to pull out of the draft and go back to college is also up in the air.
His senior year had some pretty impressive stats, averaging 22 points a game and shared Player of the Year honors with Mississippi State’s Reggie Perry and was named an honorable mention All-American by The Associated Press.
Jones was unanimously picked for the All-SEC first team by the coaches and media.
If he’s not selected for the draft his options will be to play out of the country or go to the NBA’s G-league.
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NCAA’s reduced payout won’t affect Razorbacks or DII schools in state much
The global health pandemic has completely disrupted the sports world, but the NCAA’s announcement Thursday the check won’t be as big this time around probably won’t kill any of them.
For an organization that routinely makes insanely stupid decisions at times, this one is really out of their control so we’re not going to kick them over this so we’re not heading down that road.
While it won’t affect Arkansas significantly or the Division II schools in the state (which is the largest number of universities) is because that NCAA check isn’t that big of a deal in their overall athletic budgets.
SEC schools get about 90-plus percent of their revenue from television and bowl money in addition to donors.
The Division II schools have a completely different business model.
“Unlike D1, it’s not kicked to the schools to fund portions of the athletic operations,” Henderson athletics director Shawn Jones said Thursday night. “Division II has tried to keep their reserves at something like 70 percent of the budget for a while.”
That comes back to how it’s a different structure than Division I programs.
“Division II uses their percentage of the NCAA budget to fund championships and provide money to conferences, special projects and initiatives, etc.,” Jones said. “Division II should be able to operate championships and the other initiatives fairly close to a normal level in 20-21 based on solid budgeting practice in the past.”
However, if the crisis continues for a really extended period, well even careful budgets may be extended dramatically.
“That is a one year fix, so hopefully things get back to normal soon,” Jones said.
It won’t be as devastating as the doom-and-gloom scenario many in the media have said. That’s because it’s handled differently.
According to Mark Schlabach’s story at ESPN on Thursday:
According to the NCAA, Division II members will receive 4.37% of actual revenues, currently projected to be about $13.9 million, which is $30 million less than last year. Division III will receive 3.18% of actual revenues, about $10.7 million, which is about $22 million less than last year.
That means $30 million less for the Division II members as a group. That’s not each school. Those schools don’t have budgets a whole lot over that number if you combined every school in a conference.
The DII schools aren’t exactly waiting on a NCAA check that basically amounts to beer money. For schools like Arkansas State, UCA, Little Rock and Arkansas-Pine Bluff, though, it could be a significant hit. The money from the NCAA Tournament is why some of them went through an extended process to move up to Division I.
We don’t know how the cut will affect the SEC. In the Big 12 each school is expecting get about $1 million instead of the pre-corona estimate of roughly $2.4 million.
Again, that’s not that big of a number because it really isn’t a big part of their budgets.
The Big 12 members probably won’t even really notice it.
Big 12 commission Bob Bowlsby said Thursday he anticipated the Big 12 would still be able to “make members whole” in financial distributions this year by using its reserves.
Cutting out the spring sports that frustrated a lot of fans but from a financial standpoint for the schools it’s not that big of a deal because there are significant expenses that are eliminated, too.
What it DOES hurt, though, in Fayetteville is the economic impact cancelling baseball has on hotels and eating establishments in addition to fan shops. Those are the ones that will take a collective big hit.
Not the Razorbacks getting a check from the NCAA that really doesn’t have a giant impact on the overall financial picture.
Northside’s Williams named Gatorade Player of Year for Arkansas
While trying to find a place to work out during the nationwide health crisis, Razorbacks’ center commitment Jaylin Williams was named the Arkansas Gatorade Player of the Year on Thursday.
Williams, who can fill in a spot lacking warm bodies for the Hogs, had a solid senior season at Fort Smith Northside, but now is having to work outdoors a lot with gyms closed, according to his father Thursday.
That is due to the current social distancing recommendations and involves a lot of solo individual work.
He scored 19.6 points a game while pulling down 12.6 rebounds, getting 2.5 blocks, 2.7 assists and 1.1 steaks in a 20-10 season before falling to Little Rock Central in the semifinal.
Williams had 17 of the Grizzlies’ points in the 40-37 loss.
He completes a sweep of the player of the year honors for Northside as Jersey Wolfenbarger women the girls’ title and remains one of the Razorbacks’ top targets for the 2021 class.
Williams is the only one of four top commits for the highly-ranked 2020 class. Moses Moody, K.K. Robinson and Davote Davis have also committed, but only Davis has signed.
The regular signing date is April 15 and it’s not clear whether that will remain fixed or be moved due to the uncertainty over health concerns while campus visits and normal recruiting has been delayed.
Gaulden joins Doumbia in Hogs entering NCAA’s transfer portal
While the world of college sports has ground to a halt with the national health emergency, the mysterious NCAA transfer portal is still spinning and Arkansas’ A’Tyanna Gaulden has put her name into it.
This has been previously reported at multiple media outlets, including HawgBeat.com on Thursday.
It will be the third school for Gaulden, who transferred from Florida State, sat a year and has been a key role player for Mike Neighbors coming off the bench behind Malika Monk last year, then Makayla Daniels this past season.
The Razorbacks’ Rokia Doumbia had previously entered the portal, which Neighbors confirmed earlier in the month.
Gaulden led the Hogs this past season with 100 assists despite never starting and averaging 16.8 minutes per game, 6.9 points, with a 17-point effort at Florida.
Doumbia was an ESPN four-star prospect coming out of the IMG Academy in Florida in 2018, but didn’t play much as a freshman. From Mali in West Africa, the 5-foot-9 guard averaged 3.2 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.2 assists in 16.3 minutes as a sophomore this season.
Neighbors has already signed Elauna Eaton, Rylee Langerman and Destinee McGhee in this year’s signing class and now four spots are open on the roster with seniors Alexis Tolefree and Kiara Williams leaving.
That is, of course, pending official NCAA notification of granting extra eligibility due to the coronavirus situation knocking out NCAA tournaments and other events affecting college basketball.
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Odom, Davis get raises to keep them from leaving Hogs before coaching
Arkansas will be spending more money on assistants with defensive coordinator Barry Odom and offensive line coach Brad Davis getting a hike to keep them in Fayetteville.
The story was first reported at WholeHogSports.com on Wednesday.
New coach Sam Pittman mentioned in his teleconference with the media Friday that Davis had been offered some “pretty good” jobs since coming here and apparently that was in the SEC.
“If you go by jobs that he has been offered, he is as good an O-line coach as there is in the country because he has been offered a bunch,” Pittman said. “He has been offered some since he has been here.”
WholeHogSports said said in a speech at Cross Church in Pinnacle Hills a couple of weeks ago that Texas A&M tried to hire Davis and Odom was offered the defensive coordinator spot at a league shool, but he wasn’t say who it was.
We can all speculate, but the bottom line is both will be staying with the Razorbacks and Pittman should get credit for landing both of them soon after landing the job.
That’s what coaches who have been around awhile know to do quickly.
Each will get a $100,000 bump to stay, taking Odom to $1.3 million a year (which is still below what John Chavis was making) and Davis goes to $650,000 a year.
This comes at the same time Arkansas was No. 17 in football revenues in the country as reported by PennLive on Wednesday morning.
This is for the reporting year that ended in the summer of 2019.
According to the story, Arkansas football generated $76.5 million with a profit of $33.3 million and getting just two wins for that in that year made it hard to disagree with the view that may be the most profitable pair of wins in the history of college football.
In the SEC, though, that was good enough for the middle of the road (seventh) and fourth in the SEC West, $3 million ahead of Texas A&M.
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