News coming out about Papi. Sounds like he has had some serious medical issues with his knee each of his 3 years at UVA, including surgery last year that kept him out.
Will be interesting to see how a presumably healthy Caffaro hits the floor next season.
The reason I think it’s a mistake we didn’t add another 4/5. Even if it was just a body. When Papi is out and Kadin picks up 2 first half fouls we will be hurting.
I’m cautiously optimistic about Papi. Hopefully he’s injury free this year and with more rope will be less in his head and just playing free.
I really like Papi but I am worried the game has passed him by a bit. I think he would have been a real asset ten years ago when there were a lot of bigs to bang with in the post. It’s why he seems to play well against UNC. But I’m skeptical of his ability to guard more mobile bigs and be efficient enough in the post to overcome his total lack of outside game
Starting lineup with current roster as Murphy is officially gone and minutes per game preference:
Beekman 30m, Clark 10m
Franklin 25m, McCorkle 10m, Clark 5m
Murray 20m, Stattmann 10m, Franklin 5m, McCorkle 5m
Gardner 27m, Milicic 8m, Stattmann 5m
Shedrick 25m, Caffaro 10m, Milicic 5m
Adjust a bit as needed for matchups and performance in each game.
Franklin can play some at the point too. This is a very switchy roster in positions 1-4. Even Shedrick can play both at the 4 and 5. Gardner can play at the 3, 4, 5. Franklin can play 1-3. Murray and Milicic can play 2, 3, 4.
If your preference is Clark getting 15mpg, prepare to be disappointed.
If Murray was ready that would be great. I suspect it will be more like:
Beekman, Clark, Franklin, Gardner, Shedrick. With Stattman getting some decent mins off the bench.
I have faith in Tony, but there are a lot of unknowns in the line-up!
And they still beat UNC in the tourney lol.
Oh well - 2022-23 here we come
To be honest, I feel for Kihei and how his role has fluctuated so much.
As a FR, he’s almost exclusively a facilitator who didn’t shoot unless unguarded.
As a SO he was basically forced into being our #2 option on offense, on a team that overachieved.
As a JR he was at best our #4 option on offense, but often tried to make too much happen and forced things at time.
Going into next year, he’s probably our #3 behind the 2 transfers. Will be interesting to see how he adjusts. Hopefully it’s closer to 2019-20 than 2020-21.
Best we can hope for is for Reece to be the primary facilitator when Reece and Kihei play together. It could work if Kihei’s 3 point shooting rebounds to his sophomore level.
I’ll be shocked if we see Igor at the 5 as a frosh
Obviously this is a bit of a propaganda piece but a few interesting quotes in there
Very revealing about CTB mindset going forward about roster construction and reaction to losing 3 transfers.
Honestly man, your distaste of the Kihei+Reece lineup is well known and shared by many, but you might as well accept the fact that we are going to see a lot of it. Let’s not spend the whole summer and fall pre-bitching about it or it’s going to become tiresome. Some of us are at least going to try to be optimistic about this season’s potential (I have yet to decide whether I will be included in that number, but I’m leaving it open for now).
I honestly feel like this is a knee jerk reaction to losing so many underclassman. It’s dangerous roster construction to not have playable depth at certain positions, especially when you’ve got 2-3 guys with significant injury history, plus a program injury history.
Last year - Kody, Papi, Covid
2020 - Braxton
2019 - Kiehi
2018 - Dre
On and on.
also let’s not discount that each of them COULD improve their shooting to the point where that lineup does not hamstring us in ways it did this past year. I know every program will talk about a guy getting in the gym and improving his shot in the summer, but we have at least seen it occur in our program (JA being the obvious example). If each of them improved by 5% points (okay, closer to 10% for Reece) and they can do it on a combined 6, 7 or 8 attempts per game, that would be enough to significantly change the way teams guard us. All it takes is a few 3-5 from deep games and they change their ballscreen coverage, off-ball rotations when either is on the weak side, etc.
So to @WFS_HOO point, might as well hope for that, or at least take a wait & see approach vs just assuming it is doomed to be an exact replica of the past year.