Evening with the Basketball Caches 10/26/2017

Who's underestimating Benzan?  It seems to me that consensus on this board is that he, Charles, and Floyd will be the cornerstones of this year's squad





Maybe we're underestimating because he's going to be more awesome than we could have hoped for

we may play 2 smaller guards together at times, but I doubt it will resemble last season..
Cg will get time, with PB and time backing him up.
the freshmen will get the bigs'(4-5) minutes with JF

Agreed - as discussed elsewhere, believe this situation is very similar to the one created when Jave Meade came in and Ryan Serravalle was the point guard in place - and I think it will work out well now, as it did then.

Just a minor note . . . despite the suggestion by the usual suspect (with his usual agenda), Benzan and Green are not 5-10 and 5-9.  Listed as 5-11 and 5-10, respectively, and having observed both first-hand, that may be short-changing CG by an inch.  Most definitely NOT the size problem we dealt with chronically last year - that said, don't believe either PB or CG is big enough to effectively run the baseline in the 1-3-1.  Interesting to see who that will be.

the good news is that we're talking about a basketball team here, not a track and field squad.

pb was perfectly capable of running the point last year and there is no reason to think that another year of experience for him and the addition of another fine point guard in cg would mean that our "handle will be tested". this doesn't make any sense.

carmody's humility is refreshing in that he admits he overlooked pb at times. pb's play by literally any statistical measure and "eye test" of leadership warranted more minutes as the lead point guard last year (my biggest criticism of carmody's leadership), and i feel very confident in his ability to lead the team this year. in fact, with the addition of cg (who along with ab, are my co-"most anticipated freshmen"), i am as confident in our point guard play this year as i have been since pat doherty was running the point.

ziggy, while wildly inconsistent and invisible at times, has the tools and i look forward to seeing if and how he has developed. we should have a nice backcourt. kc is the man and i expect a very big season from him (15 ppg or so), perhaps a 2nd team all pl type of season this year setting the stage for pl player of the year in 2018-2019

the big question this year, in my view, is the bigs. if floyd can stay out of foul trouble (the biggest x factor on the entire team) and if faw or niego can contribute out of the gate, we will be better than anticipated. 

Niego is a project much like Stevens imho. Grandison may be the big surprise. PB worked on the 3? He will need it to replace AT as the late clock shooter. In my handle comment I am thinking vs full court pressure, not dribbling outside the arc.

once again, these claims are completely baseless.

1.) given the nature of the motion and positional rotation in the princeton offense, it is a fallacy that at was "the late clock shooter". while possessions resulting in a rushed shot at the end of the shot clock were more common than any of us would have liked to have seen, these rushed shots were fairly equally spread out among players on the floor (ma, rc, pb, even mh). this was analyzed by a few posters in several games in response to your bullheaded position that you posted (ad nauseum) to justify at's poor shooting percentage and to disparage carmody's offense. most of us were more upset with at's 3 pt shots EARLY in the shot clock that occurred far too often. all of us want to see fewer rushed shots and none of us expect them to fall squarely on pb because they've never fallen squarely on one player.

2.) more importantly for this season, which is the focus of this thread, there are no data of any sort to suggest that pb could not handle full court pressure last year or any reason to expect he will not be able to handle it this year. first of all, we did not face full court pressure all that often. other than rehashing your tired agenda, there is no basis to believe that pb could not or cannot handle full court pressure. the addition of another talented point guard in cg, who by all accounts is a floor general with great court awareness, will only help. it is another total fallacy to believe that at was a savior against the press (see the disaster of the monmouth loss) and that pb was incapable. this is simply not true in any way whatsoever.

there are many legitimate concerns for this year, but 1.) losing at's shooting and 2.) this ill-informed belief you keep forcing on us that we are now going to be so vulnerable against the press would not be anywhere near the top of any objective observer's list.

We know that Coach Carmody's offense operates differently from other offenses, e.g. you don't see a point guard dominating the team's assists stats.  KC was, by far, the leader in assists with 117. Comparing PB with AT we see that PB last year had 78 assists to 42 turnovers. AT's numbers were 70 & 45.  

fair enough. the good news is that i believe you will be pleasantly surprised with the point guard play this year.

14 lbs since his freshman team picture 212->226

By the way, my number one concern with the team early on is the lack of bulk close to the basket. I mean, there's JF, JS, and the 3 headed frosh trio of CN/MF/JG. Remember that big hulk from UMass (Holloway, probably 6-10 300 or so)? If I recall, for a while at least we had some success running some guys at him when he got the ball down low. I can just see a scenario where JF picks up 2 quickies trying to deal with him. Then what happens?

I think we've got some nice versatility/flexibility to cover a lot of space on the floor; I just worry some about getting banged around in the paint.

Just a hunch
At least 3, more likely 4, of those 7 are freshmen

I'm not sure you should use the phrases "bulk" and "Niego" in the same sentence.  From a brief first glimpse, I don't think he's quite the wide body of a Vander Baan mold.  Sure there's four good growing years ahead, but right now this kid is a real string bean