Oh brother… surprise a kid by sticking him in the middle of a game against the best 3 guard lineup in the league and expect what exactly??? After he hasn’t played for 6 weeks?
I will have to rewatch that; not sure what you’re referencing. At Miami? Or at JPJ?
Sounds great, but those weren’t on the roster, so then it becomes a question of tradeoffs:
- Could we have sacrificed ball handling to get more shooting out there? (maybe - more Taine/Carson to break up the Rihei duopoly)
- Could we have tried to get bigger? (maybe - more Igor lineups)
- Etc.
Our roster forced Tony to make tradeoffs. And he mostly avoided a fairly obvious tradeoff - get more shooting. I just dont’ think those guys transferring for more PT to weaker schools / lower conferences proves that Tony picked the right tradeoffs. It’s an unanswerable question. Tony has some info, but he never/rarely gives useful info out publicly
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So what was Tony’s excuse for benching Taine after the way he performed in all his double digit minutes games?
What was the defensive excuse for not playing Igor who was better defensively than Gardner, Stattmann or Poindexter?
And way better than Clark?
I dont know Im not Tony. I know bugging HGN Tony wanted to play Taine a lot but was still adjusting and struggling on some things. But Tony has said he is the hardest worker. I do expect a monumental leap from him since staff are still really high on him.
Last season was a throw away anyways. Kody struggled but provided some length on D that was crucial at times (on McGusty vs Miami for example).
I’m sure he did! Everyone on the team struggled; it was a mediocre team. Again, it just doesn’t answer the question in my mind re: tradeoffs.
Edit - perhaps this is 25% too snarky, even for me, but if Tony wanted to have a rule that said “guys who struggle, can’t play” then we would’ve been putting 0 or 1 guys out there for a lot of games.
Maybe I should leave it at this: Tony made some lineup choices that puzzled me at the time, puzzle me to this day, and will continue to puzzle me into the future. The only future state of the world that will answer the puzzle a bit is if Taine/Igor/Carson wind up being really bad or non-impactful at all in college hoops. That’ll just leave me with one question - Malachi had a buttery smooth jumper off the dribble and he played lots of backup minutes. Why wasn’t Tony demanding that he show off that buttery smooth jumper to the whole world, rather than hiding it under a bushel?
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So Malachi will score double digits and shoot 39% from 3 land?
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Malachi doing well would not surprise me at all. I hated to see him go.
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It’s all good. Tony did a great job with Mal. His confidence grew by leaps and bounds being under him for 2 years. Any takers on him shooting at least 43%from 3 while scoring somewhere around 15+ per game? I saw him out there, he didn’t surprise me but damn he was amazing.
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Wishing him the best; I’ll be keeping an eye out. Those stats would be great!
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According to this post and his IG bio, Jayden Nixon will continue his basketball career at Johns Hopkins as he attends their graduate business school
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Power move.
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Wow. solid solid resume there
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Awesome. Hopkins has been a top-25 D3 team for the last couple of seasons.
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Nice… my cousin played running back at John’s Hopkins from '94 to '97 knowing he wasn’t big enough to play post college and wanting to be a doctor… he’s now a thoracic surgeon in Philly. Great school!
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Looks like Taine is on the way back to states, per his Instagram
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Throw in the Italy trip and this kid’s racking up some frequent flyer miles!
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Also, it seems like this question should be in a different thread, but I don’t know how to do that. But with Taine back, have the first-years arrived and is everyone finally together?
Expected back the end of this week.
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