Hello friends. Don't post here as much as I used to but now feels like a good time for one of my novellas. Lots of thoughts on this team, per usual:
- I think all the talk about who should play/ who shouldn't play misses the larger issue with this roster: basically every player is offense, defense, or IQ, and you can only pick one. There is no magical combination that absolves any of the glaring flaws each of these guys has.
- Haynes can't defend and Gio isn't polished enough to dominate against size the way he did against miniature Stony Brook. KD is a crazy person who's never been a good shooter. Billups and Woody are what they are at this point in their careers - defense + intangibles and any points they give you are gravy. BOC looks nice in a lot of ways, easy to see why the staff loves him, but not sure his game is suited to carry a scoring load or even be second banana to Darius. Quigley is our IQ guy but he's my size and gets hunted on defense for iso buckets (Pritchard from CMU absolutely killed him). I don't think Zach Anderson knows the offense yet. Begg's minutes are clearly building toward the future, he takes more than he gives when he's on the floor at the moment. The fits are awkward no matter who's on the floor.
- One of my prevailing theories of basketball is that you've gotta have dynamic scoring guards who can manufacture buckets. In this regard, Darius looks much improved this year - way more comfortable driving and finishing and drawing contact. Need him to keep that up, but we also need a clear second option behind him. The hierarchy is a mess - it's Darius plus a bunch of fourth + fifth options. Would love for BOC or KD or ZA or whoever to seize that role.
- When I say ZA doesn't know the offense, did anyone else notice that two different guys made the exact same turnover passing to Anderson on the wing? Billups against CMU and KD against ECU, both expected Anderson to show but instead he cut, and they both threw the ball straight out of bounds. I don't think he was on campus until August so hopefully this gets fixed quickly. I think someone else mentioned this but I also don't love him in the middle of the zone - he's one of the best catch and shoot guys in the entire NCAA for Christ's sake. He should be the reason teams can't zone us - instead he's passing to Billups open in the corner to clank a 3. Fix it Tony!
- Woody Newton appreciation: pretty cool to be able to have a guy like that play the 5 in a situation like the last play against CMU and execute his assignment perfectly. Unfortunately KD was out of position and didn't get the rebound, otherwise we're celebrating him for the block.
- Last thing I'll say on KDJ, better to have any of this nonsense out now than to let it fester all season like it did with Hall last year. KDJ is equal parts electric playmaking and Ronnie Polite with brain damage - good KD can help unlock a lot of things on this team.
- I want to see Quigley run point more. You may have to hide him on defense but if he unlocks our very clunky offense, it'll be more than worth it. He's a legit ballhandler, seems savvy, and puts an extra shooting threat on the floor that we desperately need.
TLDR the sky is not falling but there are no easy answers either. This season is gonna tell us a lot about Tony's coaching chops - feels very volatile in that the potential to be very good is there, but there's also a non zero chance things completely fall apart.
