Out of position a lot. lack of experience in general let alone in how we operate and chemistry, trying to go up for rebounds as individuals against bigger front court players instead of boxing out for guards to get the boards sometimes (which we used to prioritize in past years).
Size also a factor of course but not the end all be all. Miami runs Matthew Cleveland and Norchad Omier, two 6’8 guys. The will has to be there. Eric Dixon at Nova is another who comes to mind.
They’re not really. They’re bad at team defense right now. Leads to being out of position to rebound too often. Should get cleaned up as the year goes on.
Not saying they’ll be a great rebounding team because there are issues with the personnel. Anytime Groves is on the floor, they’re trading rebounding for offense. And you don’t really want to rein in Dunn too much, so his aggressiveness is going to lead to giving up some offensive boards. But the extent of the suck right now is more a symptom than the problem.
The balance between “bad rotations” and “personnel” is hard to decipher.
I mean look at Torvik’s recent tweet about our rebounding yesterday – its not just bad, but top 10 worst among Power Conference Teams in the last 15 years bad.
I hope the talent issue is only 25% of the problem.
I’d agree with this mostly - although there were also plenty of possessions where we simply didn’t box out and ball watched as well.
They’re hunting blocks (#1 block rate in the country) and steals and generally creating chaos on defense, which isn’t necessarily bad, but has some clear tradeoffs in terms of being near your guy to put a body on him. Their rim protection numbers are quite good in terms of shooting percentages, but I think they are getting there essentially by putting two on the opponent attempting the shot at the rim.
Sorry for the dumb question. Who is our PG next year? EG or Dante or transfer portal? Wholly unimpressed with Dante so far. If EG, wouldn’t it be even more important to play him this year? Or is EG a Devon Hall, McKneely type
That’s the question. Not loving the most probable answer.
Bliss will probably share time with Dante.
Bliss is going to be a 4 year starter for us until proven otherwise.
Bliss McKneely Rohde at the 1-2-3
Every first year pg we have recruited out of HS has started for Tony at some point their first year. It’s pretty clear that Dante isn’t the pg of the future and I dont think Tony is close to thinking that as well (Tony has only used Dante situationally)
Couldn’t find the tweet. What’s the context — a comparison of our rebounding first five games vs. all other teams’ first five games over the last 15 years, or five games compared with entire seasons?
Because if it’s the latter, that’s a bs comparison that no good statistician would ever put out there with ~85% of games left to be played.
Hard for me to imagine Dante as our starting point guard.
that would be a terrible situation
I’m actually okay with Harris next year as the veteran backup. We’ll need someone with system experience to spell Bliss who will have his ups and downs.
If in the spring it’s looking to Tony like Bliss isn’t ready for big minutes, and Harris is still who he is now (chaotic), would Tony bring in a Nigel Johnson? (We’d need some attrition to open up a scholarship, of course.) Seems we have a lot riding on Bliss.
Here’s the tweet in question:
https://twitter.com/totally_t_bomb/status/1726821836288356517
Agree with this. There’s a coolness to Bliss game that Tony loves and it will keep him on the court. Personally I think Harris is better suited off the bench anyways. Nothing against ability as a player but he’s an awesome change of pace once a game flow has been established. He’ll learn to fit into our system/style more as time goes on.
I think if Tony isn’t ready with Bliss (But I doubt it), then you swing for the best point guard in the portal and offer a wide open starting spot on a team that has a lot of talent elsewhere that needs a guiding hand.
But Im pretty sure it’s going to be Bliss. If you tried to create a pg out of hs with the parameters being “a kid who will vibe with Tony bennett both playstyle and in life and literally every aspect” it would straight up be Christian Bliss.
I completely agree, just posing the hypothetical. And I worry a little about overburdening a freshman to the point that it may stunt their development, like some argue we may have done with Casey. Though I worry about that less with a guy like Bliss. Blake, on the other hand… we’re gonna wear that poor guy down if we can’t get Minor to help him out.
Eventually, I anticipate that Gertrude could play meaningful minutes at point guard.
I don’t want to minimize this, but it could have just been a (historically) bad performance.
Unless there is something that I’m missing, then I don’t really know what this is other than “Wow, look at this.”
I guess what I’m saying is that if it is a symptom of a systemic problem, then yeah, it’s bad. But if it is an outlier, well, maybe it isn’t the end of the world.