Nope, I’m saying that the only way to play a reasonable defense this year will involve having Dunn on the court (do you see another rim protector on the roster?). That wasn’t true at all for any of the guys you mentioned. Additionally, Ryan is the most experienced forward in TB’s system on the team this year.
Just to clarify though, I also don’t necessarily expect RD or Imac average 32/game all year but to play those kind of minutes in the biggest games of the season. It’s a little apples-to-oranges to compare season averages from those guys. I think I’m way more interested in the roles that guys earn by February and March than how minutes shake out in the non conference.
You also failed to mention that those bigs largely overlapped with each other and a pretty good player named DeAndre Hunter (also Jack Salt started most games in that period). It’d have been pretty dang hard for any one of Key, Diakite, or Huff to play huge minutes when sharing the front court. Same is true for Wilkins with Gill, Salt, and Hunter around or Gill with Wilkins and Tobey around. If upperclassmen versions of any of those players were on this roster, I wouldn’t predict huge minutes for RD.
One final point, our starting 4 has averaged at least 32 minutes four out of the past five years.
Expecting IMac to play close to 30 minutes next year isn’t unreasonable.
I looked it up last night, both Kyle and Ty jumped from playing 18 and 13 minutes their first year to playing 32 and 30 per game respectively in year two. If Isaac is that type of player (and I think he is), then he’s going to be on the court a lot next season.
In addtion- I think that the both Bond and Gertrude *have to be playing some this year, otherwise I could see them being VERY discontent, as would any of us, if we hadn’t played in 2 years. Ironically the people whom I think may suffer *if they don’t improve are both iMAC and Dunn (Dunn especially), if their games haven’t improved offensively.
I will say that I haven’t seen enough of iMAC to confirm whether he is a reliable secondary ball handler. I distinctly remember him getting stripped a few times during the season, and really, when not shooting from three he may have pump faked to hit a closer 2 pointer, or very seldomly drove the lane to finish in our offense last year.
Since we’re talking about ball handling and guys we that we have seen at the college level or have the pedigree of ball handling coming in it goes like this:
Reece
Harris
Rohde
Gertrude
iMAC and Bond come in afterwards. Taine appeared to be able to handle well in his pro videos, but we haven’t seen it or he hasn’t been asked to demonstrate it much in our offense as of yet.
I agree with you mostly about this, but I will say that sometimes when people say we play small I think it’s combined with not playing with athleticism, which Bond has. I believe even if he’s 6’5 he has a wingspan of a 6’8/6’9 player? Secondly, when people said we’re playing small they also were talking about one person in particular who I won’t disparage with this post.
The issue with Casey is that we didn’t have any other option as Kyle was gone and we needed offense somehow. But the fact that Casey got minutes to show us what he could do vs. not knowing what a player can is night and day.
Reece 32 minutes Dunn 26 minutes IMac 26 minutes Minor: 25 minutes Rohde 20 minutes Groves 18 minutes Harris 14 minutes Buchanan 10 minutes Elijah 10 minutes Bond 10 minutes Taine 10 minutes
Arob- Redshirt
How- Green Team
A total of 201 minutes (Perhaps an overtime), but I definitely like that distribution with some minor changes in minutes based on foul trouble, and maybe a couple of guys at the bottom surprising and surpassing the guys at the top.
Even though I would like alot of the new pieces to get time, this is ALSO true. To be honest unless they both unleash some *massive talent that we didn’t see last year, I think that this number distribution could be the case.
iMAC- Offensively definitely was used as a distraction alot of the time and stayed in the corner awaiting shots. For him to take the next step he would need to command the ball, slash, drive, and hit at the rim like we saw him do in highschool. If not then I think that guys like Bond and Elijah would take some of those minutes
Dunn- He needs to show that he can hit a 3 and/or drive the lane and finish as a slasher. If he can’t do either of those then he again could be limited in our offensive sets and if Bond plays the same type of defense but can drive and slash or Groves can hit from three and play *ok defense then those guys would get some of those minutes.
Imac didn’t drive a lot last year but when he did he finished. He was actually very good at it and i hope to see him driving a lot more. I think most of his ball handling mistakes were not being accustomed to the speed and quickness on this level. I believe he will do a lot better this year. I hope he puts some solid weight on this summer. That will help him more than anything
I think I remember him driving 3-4 times and he was probably about 50% on those drives…I recall him missing a dunk, I recall a couple of times he was challenged at the rim and may have missed one or two of those…but it was definitely under 10 times for the whole season.
So when I state he needs to command the ball, slash, drive and hit at the rim like we saw him do in highschool he just needs to do more…I recall him having a big time dunk on someone after driving the lane in his senior season. Yeah more of that.
That sounds right and would make sense that it would get updated closer to the season starting. Looking at Reece through the years, he started at 174 and was listed last year at 190.