This can be true of every offseason, I think.
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Saunders. I believe Saunders can defend ACC 3s. He slides much better than I expected.
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I hope Cofie is in the conversation before Lang.
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If there’s anyone on the roster who’s built to be 4/5 versatile, it’s Cofie. Obviously he’s got youth working against him, of course.
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Who’s on the list of ACC bigs we would be scared to defend with a small lineup?
I think we could find ~10 mins/game for a small lineup against most teams’ backup bigs, or their small lineups.
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Off topic but…One of the reasons I expect Blake Buchanan to make a big leap next season is how many great big men he had to play against last season. it was the year of the center in the ACC. Bacot, Burns, Filipowski, Hall, Post, Omier. Hard year to get thrown into the fire, but should pay dividends.
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I think BB is the forgotten piece next year. I expect a big jump as well and I think he could be the darkhorse key to the season. He, Saunders, Power will be a heck of a rotation in the frontcourt with versatility throw in ARob or Lang or Coffee it is a good versatile deep frontcourt.
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It wasn’t sustained last season, but I think BB showed what he is capable of in the Florida game.
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Ditto on BB - he runs the court well and I think he’s demonstrated that he has good hands. With him at the 5, you can both push the ball and move him around to get potential mismatches for Power and Saunders on the offensive end, especially if he can be a consistent threat from 12-15 feet out,
Hope so. He was asked to do way more for us than a normal first year big, so I think the blemishes we saw were more a function of that versus being far behind other first year bigs we’ve had. (Some of those blemishes were rough though, getting blocked at the rim most games … woof)
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We need the old man strength guy down low. Maybe Blake has bulked up. Maybe ARob can be that guy. Maybe it will help that Bacot, Hall, Burns, et al have moved on.
Minor really helped on that front the latter half of the season.
Not sure how much rim protection we’ll have. But it won’t matter that much if we improve enough offensively.
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I don’t think we need to have names to answer this correctly.
Saunders was fine defensively at the PF much of the time in the Mountain West last year. Occasionally, when they ran into a team that had multiple big/strong players, he’d run into some issues but it normally wasn’t bad… but when he got switched onto the opposing team’s Center, now he’s scrambling to front them and they’re throwing easy passes over the top of him (or shooting and they’re easily collecting the board), now he’s having a hard time boxing them out and they’re keeping boards alive, now they’re sealing him in the post and SDSU is sending double teams like crazy…
Saunders is listed at 6’8". He’s 6’6" if we’re lucky. He’s not under-listed like everyone’s under listed - he’s under-listed by more… visibly shorter than some guys he’s listed as taller than and an easy 3 inches shorter than guys he’s listed as 1 inch shorter than. He plays bigger because he’s really strong and he has good hops - but that stops being relevant when he’s giving up 3-4 inches and 20-40 lbs to guys. He really struggles defending Centers - and skewed to the 3 last season more often than he did the 5 (even though the 4 was his sweet spot).
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I’m of the opinion that no matter how good your offense is, you always need rim protection.
At some point, you’ll run into a team that can score that has it, and you’ll be at a huge disadvantage… and when you can’t legitimately threaten to alter/touch the easier shots then pretty much anyone has the potential to score with you on any given night and everyone can shoot with confidence.
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Feel like ARob being playable will be a big determination on how good our team can be.
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I think there’s a good chance Robinson is better than Blake by January… and not because Blake is doing poorly… Robinsons improvement arc the last 2 years has been tremendous.
And he has the size we need at the 5 - not just to defend but to actually bully opponents in the post offensively.
Haven’t had that since 2016.
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Yep, it’s been hard to imagine Saunders and Power at the 4/5 more than just opportunistic moments to exploit the other team’s defense. Like if the opposition is playing a purely under the basket rim protector at the 5 who has no post game - could see us trying that pairing a bit. Otherwise I can’t imagine it’ll be a regular thing. Especially with Tony’s love for Blake.
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Yeah, I don’t mind it against a smaller team or to try something against a matchup here or there.
Where I do have concern is that we’ve seen us fall in love with these kinds of lineups in recent years even when both the defense and total output have been poor. And because of that, it’s hard to believe that we’re going to view it as “a random thing to try every once in a while” instead of “a core part of our rotational strategy that we give chunk minutes to most every game.”
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Yep, like I have been saying here since we got him … he is 6-6, not 6-8. I still like what he brings for us in any case.
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I do wonder if that’s less about wanting to go small and more about line up imbalances and individual player preferences in those roles. RD’s defense means you had to play him + new bigs last year who struggled + Groves being one of our only shooting threats. Then BVP as a connector + Kadin … stuff.
I think a more balanced line up and consistent big that battles down low on the boards will probably get the coaches back away from that small ball option. (Not making a judgment on it, just calling out the tendencies).
I think Tony loves BB and it sounds like the staff loves ARob so I don’t see much of Saunders at the 5. I do think we’ll see Power at the 4 but I’m not sure we go super small with Saunders at the 5 unless it is to exploit a super slow big
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