@Cuts_from_The_Corner I noticed Saunders rebounding rate was average (6% Oreb and 14% Dreb) but your piece noted this was a strength. Any sense of why the disconnect? Was it lineups he was often in? Something else?
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I believe I listed it as both a strength and also an area of concern at times (at least that was my intent, that may not have come across clearly).
He’s a very good rebounder, but the “for his size” caveat comes in. He boxes out well, crashes down from the wing well, has good spatial awareness of when the ball is coming off of the rim and when to jump and grabbed a surprising amount of boards in traffic that way. But there are also a lot of times where he’s just outmatched in the length and/or weight combo and a motivated opponent will either push him out of the way or play volleyball above him for it. He was actually pulled out of the game against UAB at the end of that first round NCAA Tournament game because (I assume this was the sole purpose as he was playing fine otherwise and there were a few dicey possessions in a row as they attempted to close the game.
He was yanked right after giving up several offensive RB attempts and fouling his man, conceding FTs) he was struggling to secure the glass and they needed to do so.
So, my takeaway would be - he’s a technically skilled rebounder but it still depends on who he’s rebounding against.
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I’d just add - he lost his starting spot halfway through the season but he still played a little more than half of the game on average for the year and was often in at the end of games - so it’s not like they lost their faith in him. It was because SDSU wanted to add more size to their starting lineup to compliment/not put as much post grind on LeDee and then they could work Saunders in against some frontcourt rotations, etc.
But this is one reason I keep saying Saunders is more of an ideal 3/4 than a 4/5.
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Ok cool that’s helpful and all makes sense. I was just trying to circle the square looking at his KenPom numbers.
Really hope we get back to being a rebounding juggernaut soon (at least defensively).
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If Saunders is regularly getting time at the SF, I think we’re going to be very good on the glass. He’ll be able to crash down and help a ton and he has a good nose for the ball. If he’s logging huge minutes at the 4 alongside Blake and/or ARob then I think that’ll be fine maybe even good much of the time - there will still be times where we’re at a disadvantage there (and a lot of that is going to depend more on BB and ARob). If he’s playing 4/5 alongside Power, I think we’ll be pretty terrible on the glass and the tradeoffs on offense will have to be huge.
So, we’ll see!
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I think Saunders actually does look close to 6’8. In the team pic posted from camp last week, he doesn’t look more than 2-3 inches smaller than Blake and looks noticeably taller than Rohde. I think he’s definitely taller than Zay and Jayden Gardner.
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I saw some of the discussion around this - the perspective is weird in those photos because he’s standing a little forward in front of the line and some of the guys around him are looking down. When I saw it, I thought he’s probably about an inch, give or take, taller than Rohde which would put him around 6’7"
That’s probably where I’d list him if I were trying to be accurate.
A lot of that is colored by having watched him a ton last year, though, where he definitely was giving up a lot more than an inch to a bunch of different guys listed at 6’9"
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It is impossible to say until you see a guy in person
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Just catching up on the Saunders deep dive. Thanks @Cuts_from_The_Corner ! Great stuff, as always.
My takeaway: While I agree sorta with the concern about a Power/Saunders 4/5 combo defensively, I actually view it more as a certainty than a concern. So you deal with it and move on. The bigger question is how they complement each other offensively, and how they’d complement whoever we play at 1/2/3. On that score, it’s a bit of a mix of 
and “I sure hope so.” They both seem like pretty good to maybe very good spot up shooters who don’t do (or I should say, haven’t done) much of anything else.
I have a high degree of confidence that Tony can take the pieces and create an at least good defensive lineup (something like Warley, iMac, Saunders, Blake and someone else). But can he create a good offensive lineup out of these parts? If so, I don’t particularly care that it’s medicore defensively. I think Tony needs more reps in (1) trying to run a decent offense again, (2) and figuring out what pieces he has for the year following.
So to circle back to the point, the question vis a vis Power and Saunders is whether that’s a good offensive combo. I know they won’t be good together on defense, but I DO NOT CARE AND I REALLY REALLY HOPE THAT TONY AGREES, BECAUSE IF HE DOESN’T CARE, THEN NONE OF THIS OTHER STUFF MATTERS THAT MUCH, UNLESS YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE “HEY, ANOTHER DOUBLE BYE! WHAT A SEASON! DIDN’T GET THAT FROM BIG HEAD PETE AND THE MONSTERS, DID WE?” types.
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TL;DR - yes, of course Saunders and Power will suck together at the 4/5 on defense, but that might be fine.
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Also implicates the unanswerable** question of whether Blake will be good on offense.
** Because Tony hates letting us watch hoops when he’s not contractually obligated to. The sixth pillar - only show your fans hoops when Walt Disney’s frozen corpse compels you to.
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@haney tranquilo
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TL;DR Carthago delenda est
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I appreciate the thoughts/discussion as always.
I don’t agree that this would be fine, though. Power/Saunders would be a 4/5 combo that could both actually shoot, but the idea that what they’d bring in that area would be enough to offset their defense without a Center feels incredibly unrealistic, to me. Plus, I’m not actually sure their offensive lineups would be much better as neither are good ball screeners or finishers inside. Offensively it’s probably just going to be better to play Buchanan or Robinson with Warley or Ames and then surround them with three shooters, IMO.
There has definitely (and understandably) been a bit of an “offense at all costs” mentality that I’ve seen this offseason but I don’t believe the path to our team success is just accepting bad defensive lineups with hopes that enough shooting will make a difference. I think we’ve actually tried that quite a bit recently and seen it’s not a great recipe.
IMO, the path forward is playing good positionally sized defensive teams/lineups and then putting enough resources/energy/innovation into your offense that it better fits who you’re playing on the floor and players are comfortable running it.
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I agree. I hated the undersized everywhere lineup of two years ago. This team is such an unknown that I find it hard to predict anything but I am 100% in favor of Buchanan/Robinson at 5 and IMac at 2. I don’t know beyond that.
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I don’t really disagree with any of that but I think that Tony should try to find something that works offensively.
Lots of other things in our program are going fine and are capable of going fine. Offense is a fucking crisis and it’s not really clear Tony wants to fix it.
(I’m also not convinced that Power and Saunders would work at the 4/5 offensively, but if it does work, in my opinion that would be good.)
TL;DR - I know Tony cares about defense. I know he cares about various vague offensive “principles.” I’d like to see him care about actual offense, even if that means other thing suffer.
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And further:
Power/ Cofie/ Saunders at the 4
Sharma/ Taine/ Power at the 3
iMac/ Taine/ Bliss at the 2
Bliss/Ames/Warley at the 1
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On second thought, I disagree that we’ve done this recently. The last time we had two shooters at the 4/5 we had a top 20ish offense. We ostensibly played some guys last year because they could shoot well, but then had no discernible plan for how that was meant to lead to decent offense. Which leads to your next point…
Yes, I kinda agree with this. I sorta disagree with the implication that defense needs to come first, but either way, yes the main point is Tony needs to care about offense (or to use your term “put enough resources / energy /innovation into it”, IMO that’s saying the same exact thing, except mine is fewer words). Just putting shooters out there with a bad plan or no plan on how to capitalize won’t work.
But I’d also argue adamantly that putting shooters out there with a good offensive strategy but who can’t defend their position well is almost guaranteed not to work - and I’d bet to a much greater degree given that neither are great or versatile offensive players (at least they weren’t last year) anyway. They should be improvements over what we’ve had recently but they’re not Hauser or Huff, at least not yet.
And among those two, there was also a rim protector.
It doesn’t have to be that you value defense more - just that you should play good defensive lineups on the whole as a starting point. It’s still CTBs special sauce and if we neuter it with personnel then what is our advantage?
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Also, while I get this is a chat forum so people are going to talk about lots of stuff, it’s simply implausible to imagine CTB putting a lineup out there that cannot play defense well.
Sure, we could discuss it, but it’d be like discussing whether Gardner would be a better player if the games were played on Mars. We can discuss it, but it has no bearing on anything.
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