Exactly A Week Ago Patrick Ewing Said Mac McClung Is Coming Back To Georgetown ... Today Mac McClung Officially Announced He's Transferring
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Just a week ago we had this story:
Mac McClung had his name testing the NBA Draft when Patrick Ewing hopped on a podcast and announced that Mac was coming back to Georgetown. That was exactly 7 days ago. Today Mac McClung sat down with DraftExpress and said yeah about that I'm outta here. He's not even testing the waters anymore. He's just straight up transferring and trying to apply for a waiver right away.
That's MASSIVE news. McClung is an interesting player. A lot of people give him a bad reputation as a chucker because he had to be that when Georgetown lost pretty much everyone last year due to transfer and legal issues off the court. He helped save Georgetown and at least made them respectable and competitive. From an analytical standpoint he actually had a better year than most would give him credit for. He was top-500 nationally in assist percentage and top-250 nationally in turnover percentage. Not bad for a high-usage guy with not a ton of talent around him.
What is interesting is this quote from Mac:
"The podcast with Andy Katz was not the deciding factor to my decision to transfer," McClung said. "I think it affected my pre-draft process, and seemed to confuse a lot of teams."
He's making it clear that Ewing just saying he's coming back wasn't the deciding factor but you can tell it didn't necessarily sit right nor should it. Coaches need to just bite their tongue when talking about a guy testing out the NBA Draft waters. Let them decide what they want to do with their careers publicly.
Speaking of Ewing. Yikes. I actually thought he's done okay in terms of in-game coaching, but he's entering year 4 at Georgetown without an NCAA Tournament and a kind of shitty roster. He's losing the backcourt that he thought he'd have for four years in James Akinjo and Mac McClung with both guys transferring. He doesn't have a great recruiting class coming in - they rank just 39th nationally. That's fine if you have some building blocks in the program already, but not going to save you in year 4.
As for McClung - never forget that he's Riff Raff's cousin - and where he goes that fits? There are a ton of places. He can play at any level, the question is who loses what to the draft. You could make a case that Virginia Tech or Tennessee makes sense. He'll likely transfer to another power conference school. Somewhere in that east/mid-atlantic type region makes sense with Mac being from Virginia.
Again, remember the roster he played with last year and what he was asked to do. He can play and he'll be a bit undervalued because his game rubs people the wrong way. Until then I'm going to watch his dunks, because the dude is so good at dunking.