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Post by Sons of Vaval on Jan 22, 2020 13:29:07 GMT -5
I guess what I'm asking, in a convoluted (sp?) way, is: am I the only one out there who is still reasonably optimistic about the future, and not overly worked up over these rankings? For me, if the team is not winning, I don't care if they are ranked 343, 278, 353 or whatever. I wasn't too worried about this years rankings when CBN was hired, and when JG and CG left they became even less important to me. And, I know it's hard to make a case for improvement when the wins have been almost non existent, but I still maintain the guys are making progress from when I saw them at the open practices in pre-season (offensively speaking). I will concede it's meaningless if something isn't done about the defense, whether it's scheme or targeting it in recruiting. I laugh as I type this, because this is literally the only facet of my life where I take the glass half full approach. Pro sports? A Red Sox pitcher gets to a 3-0 count on hitter, I'm swearing and switching the channel. Pats D gives up a first down? I'm going out to kitchen. And don't ask me about being a gnat in corporate America. A lot hinges on the incoming freshmen class and how good they are / how quickly they can help. If we have a few Pridgens on our hands, then we could have something cooking for the 2021-2022 season. As of now, with the departure of Lowder, Pridgen is really the only guy on this roster who can be considered a difference maker. There are too many role players and fringe D1 players to be optimistic of what the future holds. Unfortunately, guys like Faw and Niego are in a tough spot in the offense and defense Nelson is seeking to implement. They were perfect guys for what Carmody sought to do (stand around the perimeter, shoot threes -- "finesse basketball" I'd call it), but these two -- in particular -- really just get bullied by bigger guys when they have to go inside. That's no fault of their own, it's just who they are and who Carmody wanted them to be. Verbeek also fits this description, too. I think Butler could be pretty good given the right situation, but he's being asked to do too much. Hell, he's playing point guard now. He's more of a secondary scoring option and someone who should be getting 20 minutes as the first guy off the bench, not one of our "go to" guys. He reminds me a little bit of Colin Cunningham. Will drive you crazy on the floor, is out of control at times, but also does a lot of little things to make a team go. Colin, for his career, was never a primary scoring option, nor did he need to be. All that said, I think most of us realize that the success moving forward really relies on the incoming recruits. We could be in pretty big trouble if this class ends up being a flop. Also, who's the PG for the 2020-21 season?
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Post by Sons of Vaval on Jan 22, 2020 13:33:14 GMT -5
Hopefully not diverting from the subject here, but I also find most interesting the way CBN is coaching the very end of these "no longer in doubt" games, meaning, his steadfast refusal to empty what's left of the bench (even after the other team does so). Not saying it's wrong, but I don't recall another coach so consistently coaching it that way. I also wonder if it will be his normal SOP, or if it is some chapter of "Camp Nelson" (you either earn minutes or not, no such thing as garbage time(?)). Dave, I imagine Nelson has such a short bench because he simply doesn't have enough options at his disposal -- based on the last few games, he is operating with about six or seven guys. However, I wonder if he would subscribe to the Eric Musselman philosophy. I don't think this is possible in the PL with no redshirts, however, I think it's worth using what Matt Langel has accomplished at Colgate as a case study. It seems like he realized he was not going to be able to get difference makers out of high school, and decided the transfer route was the way to go. I wonder if Nelson would consider that as an option. Anyways, here's Musselman's philosophy on roster management -- “When I was an assistant in college at LSU and Arizona State, I felt like we had 13 players that were eligible to play every night and I kept saying to myself, ‘Why?’ Because after every game, even when we won, there’s like four guys unhappy because they weren’t playing. Or their parents were unhappy, or their AAU coach. So, it was great to sit back as an assistant and observe,” Musselman said. “I’m used to a 48-minute game, 82 games, travel, getting into the hotel at 2:30 in the morning, waking up, playing a game, playing another game, playing another game, playing four games in six nights. You need depth in the NBA. You play 82 games. In college, you play 30 games. We don’t have any 35-year-old players who have played 12 or 13 years in the NBA that are icing their knees night after night after night. So I thought depth was way overrated in college. And I didn’t like walking into a locker room and having guys not be happy with their minutes, so I came up with the formula: I wanted four guys sitting out or I wanted four scholarships who were guys either redshirting, sitting out due to transfers or open scholarships. That way I felt like you could control your team chemistry in the locker room. That’s above the conditioning standpoint.
“Then, you get to your conditioning standpoint and now you’ve got to get with your staff and say, ‘Hey, we got four dudes sitting out, now we’ve got to be the best-conditioned team.’ I think our limited roster size over the five years that I’ve been in college has worked to our benefit so much. I watch these teams play night after night after night and they play us and they start playing more people. I saw it in non-conference and I’m starting to see it in conference. They start playing more people because they think they’re going to wear us down. You’re not going to wear us down. We’ve worked too hard in the summer and the other thing is, too, our guys can play through mistakes because I’m handcuffed. I don’t have a bunch of guys to throw in the game. So if one of our guys misses a defensive assignment or misses a jump shot, he stays in the game. So you play with a little more mental freedom, I guess.”
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Post by cfrivals on Jan 22, 2020 16:11:36 GMT -5
No, probably just a misspelled word or typographical error. I wouldn’t nitpick for any deeper meaning. Knowing cfrivals as I do, you are absolutely correct - he's referring to the "reinforcements" coming next year. Cavalry /Reinforcements. I hate typing on these tiny gadgets, Thanks Dave
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Post by Tom on Jan 22, 2020 16:37:01 GMT -5
I knew where Cfrivals was going. However, in all fairness, this is one of the few sports messageboards where dismal performances could potentially be compared to crucifixion,
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Post by WorcesterGray on Jan 22, 2020 17:28:26 GMT -5
A lot hinges on the incoming freshmen class and how good they are / how quickly they can help. If we have a few Pridgens on our hands, then we could have something cooking for the 2021-2022 season. . . . Also, who's the PG for the 2020-21 season?There are at least two 2020s still in play, both Canadiens - Sebastien Lamaute, 6-2, from Montreal; and Shemar Rathan-Mayes, 5-11, from Mono, Ontario. There may be others. How one would fit under the scholarship cap is anybody's guess.
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