I hate that Norfolk State Longwood and Richmond all play this afternoon. Non-Hokie VA hopes could be dashed before most people get home and tuned in.
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Your sounding like Dave with the stats lol. There is a lot to it than just having comparable stats. Flow of the 3s, where the 3s are coming from, even as a 3pt threat teams still go under screens and sag on kihei. Not a knock on kihei, he was our best 3pt shooter. Just a different dynamic Caleb Houston would bring.
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Old takes exposed lol
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I did not think Michigan had a run in them.
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Yes for sure. Houston is better overall. Kihei turns it over too much. But I guess what Iâm saying is that I donât see someone coming in here and playing the 2 for Kihei (like McNeely) and it dynamically changing the offense. The problem with the offense was Franklin pretty much. We need someone to come in and put up significantly better numbers from that spot.
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Made my GFâs bracket yesterday; of course I was super confident in Colorado state after looking at stats and knowing about Michiganâs injuriesâŚ
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I respectfully disagree. A player who is a true shooter could play that spot and be very dangerous. Yes, Kihei shot good percentages overall, but as said above, he had to be super open to shoot and couldnât put up contested jumpers. He was taking comparatively easy shots. That makes an offense much easier to guard than if a guy is even putting up a slightly worse percentage but is actually a threat to create his own shot from behind the arc and has to be guarded tight. Kihei is a great player, but he doesnât have the gravity that a truly dangerous volume shooter/scorer does. Opposing teams can live with Kihei getting a large number of shots off if theyâre shutting down Gardner, for example.
Logic and knowledge are your greatest enemies in making a bracket, haha.
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My wife (who worked for ESPN for a while in her 20s) as usual filled out her bracket assuming the top seed always wins (Gonzaga winning it all). She doesnât usually win the family pool but she always does disconcertingly well.
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I donât remember people sagging all that much off of him this year. Last year when he was shooting poorly maybe. I would say Reece is the one that causes more of the gravity problems. He is the one that only shot super wide open 3s and only 61 of them. And he only hit 33% of those.
And I donât know that this concept of gravity is going to change things. Gravity creates open shots, I guess? Well, that wasnât the problem this year. We had a shit ton of open shots, just nobody that could make them other than Kihei.
Either way, weâll see next year!
I decided to test the âguard play wins in marchâ hypothesis and meticulously aggregated statistics for each teamâs starting backcourt. Lots of good so farâŚ
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Agree to disagree. I mean, until you posted it, I didnât realize that Reeceâs 3 point percentage on the year ended up just two percentage points below Kiheiâs. Thatâs pretty crazy in itself given how things started.
Look, I love Kihei, but nobody in our league was particularly scared of him on the offensive end. Heâs tough and a competitor and hit massive shots for us, but he was also containable and would have a bad game like every third game. He shot sub-40% from the field overall, and couldnât give us much of anything close to the rim consistently. Heâs a baller, and a gamer, and one of my all-time favorite Hoos, I just disagree with the notion that we canât get better with somebody else in that spot next year.
And youâre definitely right that Reece has drawbacks too. But Reece is also much taller, more able to get to the rim, and a much better defender. I think our offense and defense can certainly look better next year if we have a legitimate shooting threat at the 2 and arenât giving up all that size in the backcourt. I mean, I guess Iâd be surprised if it didnât. Look at our adjusted efficiency rankings this year - theyâre close to the most mediocre of the Tony Bennett era.
Thatâs a fine position to take. But youâll need someone to shoot/play/score at least as well as Kihei, and get significantly better production from the 3 and 5 and better scoring from the 1. Gardner can be better of course but he pretty much is what he is.
I agree with you that what we got from the 3 from Franklin was just not enough and that needs to improve. Totally agree.
But I mean, the improvements you list have to happen. If you think they wonât happen and weâll be worse next year without Kihei, then weâre going to be a mediocre team that will miss the tournament again. I certainly hope that doesnât happen.
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That is definitely my fear. McNeely comes in and plays similar or a little better than Kihei did this year. I think if he put up Kihei numbers next year that would be pretty good for a freshman. 53% TS% would be pretty good for a non Kyle Guy type freshman, though I know we are hoping he is a Guy type. That leaves us with the big Franklin problem.
So weâd need a replacement or much better play for Franklin, Reece to step up scoring the ball, and to get more production from the 5. A lot of asks.
Can someone move the Kiehei/lineup discussion to a different thread. I donât know how to.
But letâs get this one back and focused on the NCAATâŚ
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Curious what you consider a bad game ⌠when you take into account Clarkâs inability to defend in half court sets for long stretches too?
Hereâs the game logs for him for all 4 years and you can see this year vs the rest.
Dave, I always appreciate you coming in and making my hot takes look reasonable by comparison.
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Good call. Apologies!
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To put things back on track, the Mountain West isnât covering itself in glory so far. Am curious whether weâll see the same with the WCC or not.
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