Ah, the Opening Day of Cuts Season! Fantastic start, thanks!
Thanks!
Finally had some time to sit with this. Thoughts:
- It’s a bummer they didn’t play a better schedule. Every clip can be useful to see something, but I tended to yada yada past the Norfolk State stuff. I wanted the UCLA stuff to be better, but it didn’t seem like Irvine showed up, and then it was just tough to tell much. (From your clips, it basically looks like a scrimmage, unlike say our Nova scrimmage that got pretty heated if I remember correctly, and guys competitiveness bubbled up, even if the coahes were not pulling out all the stops to win). The lack of decent comp. does give me pause about some of my defensive optimism.
- Transition offense - Agree that this is very encouraging, but I also agree there’s a worry about it translating. Similar to Malik: you worry that his craftiness won’t be enough to score as efficiently against ACC caliber height / strength / athleticism.
- I had been intrigued by Kyle Evans as a rim protector single-skill guy, but that’s the only thing he seems to be able to do at a power conference level.
- Defense: I think we basically see the same things, but I’m more encouraged by it. You compare him to Malik a bit, but I think he’s just a naturally better, more instinctive defender than Malik. He’s more disruptive than Malik and he’s better at stopping penetration than Malik.
- Some of your defensive nitpicks all seemed excusable. All those games were effectively over (and to be fair, you mostly noted this).
- Agree with and want to underline your defensive on ball takeaway: “His ability to slide with his man with very good quickness and use his hands to bother the ball will be a significant asset for us. I can see him pressuring the ball up the floor in our full court defense, too, generating more turnovers than we were used to creating last year.”
- Some of the off-ball defensive stuff? Eh, I mean there’s some Malik Thomas stuff going on here for sure. Gambles with high downsides and low upsides.
- I know the goal was not to break down why Irvine lost to Hawaii, but in the most important game of the year, he disappeared down the stretch (from like 5:00 to 1:20 or so), only to reappear in the last minute or so, but then made a boneheaded decision to basically seal the game for Hawaii. Not ideal.
- Facilitation. I mean, yeah? Okay. He made some passes in those clips. Found the open man. Nice. I guess watching these clips and yawning is what didn’t make me a Rohde appreciator. I don’t seem him being much of a creator.
- And in that vein, in general, his offense at the power 5 level kinda looks like a nice bonus to whatever we are already doing. You say high single digits would be nice. I think that’s a stretch goal (Jacari and Chance were about 9ppg last year; seems optimistic for him).
- In writing these up, I realize I’m running into your same issue: I seem a bit lukewarm. But I’m not lukewarm about his defense, especially in transition.
- I did this already in another post a month or so ago, but the “word cloud” on the takeaways are stuff like “nice piece”, “great fit”, “glue guy” etc. Which seems about right.
And more important than all those thoughts: Thanks so much for doing these! It’s an incredibly valuable service and a really great asset for Wahoo hoops fans. And all as a labor of love.
Very curious to see Harmon and also Vide. Bummed we won’t know that much about Anya (still think it’s really weird that he redshirted last year when he coulda been a big piece on a Sweet 16 caliber team, even if a bit lost in the mix). Will be grateful for anything you can cobble together on Nolan ( or nothing is fine, too!).
Thanks for the comprehensive write up - yeah, his comparison to Malik was how he played away from the ball defensively. Very much focused on keeping his man from catching it and really odd positioning with his eyes in the backfield, so to speak, quite a bit.
Contrasted with Harmon who was a very alert and a positionally good defender away from the ball, but who doesn’t have the quickness that Dixon does to close out/defend on it (the Harmon piece should be coming very soon).
It’s one of those things where I think he’s nice as a 5th starter who should be most valuable on the defensive end and, oh by the way, was his team’s leading scorer so you’re going to get some bonus offense mixed in there… but he might also be a very good 6th man, depending on how we play Lewis and Adekunle. There will be plenty of things he’s a better option for than having both of them, I believe.