Sorry for the delays - holidays and stuff.
Until Sharma can show some shooting, I trust Taine more against better opppnents. Sharma’s game against Holy Cross was promising but we haven’t seen him show much against any of the good teams we’ve played.
And, these early season stats are noisy. Sharma played 11 mins against St Johns and Tenn together, Taine 23. And then Taine sat all of Villanova.
Taine can be good against P5 opponents, with caveats. We saw what he could offer last year. I’d like to see something done to build his confidence. At a certain point you have to change course but don’t think we are there yet.
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Shooting isn’t what this team is lacking at the moment - it’s the rest of it - creation, defense, rebounding, ball security, and Sharma has been better at all of those things. Plus - Taine’s shooting hasn’t been good by his standard anyway and the best way to tap into Sharma’s great potential there is to give him reps.
It’s not just the metrics - although those are adjusted by opponent and 12 mins against St. Johns doesn’t really move the needle, IMO, plus Villanova is the third best team we’ve played - it’s the actual output over the time played and the eyeball test on tape.
Sharma is moving better, contributing in more ways, playing more assertively and with more confidence, and making fewer mistakes. All of this as a Freshman who should have room to adjust and improve.
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I didn’t see the HolyCross game so maybe he’s improved but if TJ Power isn’t giving us anything then maybe Taine and Sharma should be elevated to that 3 spot.
TJ lost his starting spot after Bahamas to Rohde already, justifiably so.
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Good point but might be a numbers game. Needing more height and non-Cofie/buchanan line ups
Good stuff @Cuts_from_The_Corner.
I agree with your take on the Sharma/Taine discussion. I’ve been moderately encouraged by Sharma’s floor game…I think that was a question mark with him. I think the shooting will come around.
On the frontcourt, it makes sense to me that Ron decided to totally split the Cofie-Buchanan pairing, it just hasn’t worked well on defense so far. There’s nothing wrong with it in theory, but in practice it’s been our worst frontcourt pairing* that’s gotten more than 10 offensive and defensive possessions. Now, the -18(!) that duo recorded against Tennessee weighs their metrics down…but those possessions did happen.
And surprisingly (to me) enough, he hasn’t played a single possession of Power-Saunders as the 4-5; their possessions always come with Cofie or Buchanan on the floor.
*N.b. For Hoop Explorer users, note that the lineup analyzer categorizes any Power-Saunders-Buchanan lineups as Power and Buchanan being the frontcourt, so if you look at frontcourt pairings aggregated, keep that in mind.
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