The ball handling was horrible this season and the primary ball handler just decided he wants to take another date to the prom. I can see how if the writing is on the wall that Villa doesn’t want to be put on the back burner for 4 years by this staff that he wants out. But I think that has more to do with the staff not willing to give him an opportunity than it was his inability to play at this level or be impactful for UH.

He was a borderline D1 prospect out of high school. Perhaps he regressed or didn’t improve enough after not playing ball during his mission. I presume the coaches were evaluating him throughout the season during practices and saw that he won’t be a contributor in the near future. Villa’s quotes indicate that he wants to play (soon i assume). Perhaps he doesn’t want to wait until his senior year to develop into a contributor at this level of play. With the impacts made by true frosh Webster and Da Silva, I think Ganot feels he can get a much bigger immediate impact player now.

Even if Webster is taking over for Buggs as pg (which is puzzling because he’s more of a shooter and they just lost Stansberry to graduation), that would leave a depth chart of 3 pgs if you include Villa and Bayles. It seemed like the staff wanted his scholarship from the beginning which is also puzzling. Never heard of a staff telling a redshirt freshman he doesn’t project into their long-term plan when they were the ones that recruited him in the first place. Why didn’t you see this before offering the kid?

“Villa would not have likely been much of a contributer although he was a very good local hs player.”

We’ll never know because he wasn’t given a crack at it for next season which would have been his RS freshman year. Villa also could have eventually taken over the role that Brocke Stepteau left after his departure. A coaching staff can make or break you and unfortunately it seems that Ganot and Co. did the latter for Villa by not sticking with him and giving him at least the opportunity.

I don’t know what will happen, but hopefully the program will be able to find a way to resolve this situation.

With the women’s basketball, of course, replacing Tago will be hard, and with the loss of Johnson and Edwards could be a little daunting for coach B. Maybe something good can come out of this, and hopefully we’ll rise from the ashes to the NCAA spot for next season with the WBB program. We had a chance, and maybe this winning season will provide hope for the team to grow and improve.