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College basketball rankings: Houston lands Baylor transfer LJ Cryer, moves up in Top 25 And 1 – CBS Sports
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Houston lost a top-five transfer to the portal last week and replaced him on Sunday with an even better transfer, according to David Cobb’s transfer rankings. So that’s good news for Kelvin Sampson’s program.
Tramon Mark is out. LJ Cryer is in.
That means the Cougars are replacing their fourth-leading scorer with a 6-foot-1 guard who was Baylor’s third-leading scorer this past season, one who averaged 15.0 points while making 41.5% of the 6.2 3-pointers he attempted per game. It’s a weekend development that caused me to move Houston up to No. 12 in Version 3.0 of the 2023-24 CBS Sports Preseason Top 25 And 1 college basketball rankings.
Speaking of Mark, he also picked his next school this weekend — Arkansas. The 6-5 guard should help the Razorbacks offset the loss of Ricky Council IV, the latter of whom has entered the 2023 NBA Draft and given no indication that he plans to maintain his college eligibility. Mark averaged 10.1 points and 4.9 rebounds this past season for a Houston team that earned a No. 1 seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. His addition is why I’ve moved Arkansas up to No. 14 in the Top 25 And 1.
UConn remains No. 1 in the Top 25 And 1 based on the idea that the Huskies will return five of the top six scorers — everybody except Jordan Hawkins, who is a projected lottery pick in the 2023 NBA Draft — from a team that finished 31-8 and won the 2023 NCAA Tournament. Other players like Adama Sanago and Andre Jackson obviously have big decisions to make about their futures, but for now I’m projecting them both to return to UConn and give Danny Hurley a chance to become the first coach to win back-to-back national championships since Billy Donovan did it at Florida in 2006 and 2007.
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