Wanted to say something about Ryan from last nightā¦ā¦ dude has improved his dribbling drastically from last season. He looked like a child dribbling at times last year. Now he looks competent dribbling for a 4.
Scoring outside of dunks and garbage man points has been a struggle. But ball handling has taken strides.
Yup I donāt cringe when I see RD bring the ball up court nowadays. I still donāt like him when heās contested but heās a lot better.
His offense worries me. Love the dunks and rhe hustle but as @Hooandtrue he has 0 gravity and it is hurting the rest of the offense.
Yep! Imagine unlocking Rohde this last month of the season as a 40% shooter from three and someone who can hit free throws!
Suddenly the media and teams will realize how many weapons we actually do haveā¦
āUVa you sandbagging SOBāsā
Wow. Got home late last night from Vegas for Super Bowl and watched the game this morning. Yes- the refs were bad and calls were missed. It was atrocious so I wonāt cover that here
. These are my observations -truth be told:
I didnāt see this coming. Thought we wouldnāt be very good. Maybe we are? I donāt know but we start to play real teams soon. Incredible turnaround that nobody saw coming. Impressed by our development and strategy. I was wrong- I think.
Reece is better than I expected this year. He always underwhelmed me - every single year. Not anymore. I have been privately critical of him to Fresh but I see it now. Hope he crushes it next year for the Celtics!
Rohde played good- for him. Iām still not sold that heās very good in the grand scheme of things. But last night he was decent - not good in his time allocation. . Hereās my point:
When we get to the point where a UVA starter has a massively mediocre game in 32 minutes and we celebrate it, I have issues.
Look at his stats in 32 mins. Itās better than Taine last night and almost approaching good. Rooting for him every game. But letās slow our roll. Score 16 pts and and have 5 assists in 33 mins one game and Iāll shut up. Gladly. He still real low on every metric. But improving and I will root for that.
Blake is going to be real and no threat of leaving early or transferring. He will be good for a long time. Great motor and he competes. He isnāt soft or nice- which I like. He gets after it time after time after time. I
Elijah is another story - he has been cut out of the rotation for some reason and I think itās a bad mistake. If Elijah played 33 mins, and handled the ball a lot- do you think he would be better than Rohde? Itās not even close. Please - just give him some minutes. This is an area of blindness on our staff.
Question for the Forum- What (to date) will be our (edit: worst loss) for the committee to review? Wondering because it feels like some of those losses were a long time ago. Memphis sucks all of a sudden. Is it Notre Dame? Memphis?
As a late arrival to the comments- you guys hit all the main points. Anyway, loved the win last night. A good step. It gets harder from here.
Go Hoos.
I donāt know how to tell you this, butā¦you left early.
I am so thankful to be out of that hell-hole! It was a work week for me being out there. I have a media company and we were on āRadio Rowā all week - interviewing everyone. Itās was fun but tiring.
My favorite interview of the week -Fake Andy Reid.
Here is a picture of him with my producer. Fake Andy Reid is a celebrity and indistinguishable from the real guy!
Rohde, is still our weakest starter, but Iām hopeful that last nights game will be his spring board. Iām not sure Eli is ready, but he oozes potential. I know youāre right, and that he will benefit from playing time, but that only works in the beginning of the season, and we missed that opportunity in a big way by redshirting him. Iām all about playable depth, something weāve been horrible at since McKay leftā¦ At least we have a comfortable 9 man rotation this year, Bond and Eli being the odd men out. Teamās looking good, and weāre deep, Eli will get his shot next year.
Receiving texts from a few people on this board that Rohde is a better QB than Mahomes or Purdyā¦. Okay I made that up. Enjoy the game team. Much love from FL.
Best win for committee purposes is probably away at Clemson, @chavlicek15. The neutral site win against Florida has aged well too, probably our second best win.
Rohde is this years Kihei in terms of him being the topic of discussion regardless of outcome.
And Iām in the camp that Gertrude wouldāve been a liability (at this stage) against that pressure. Would like to see him against Pitt though
I hear you but Iāll challenge you too because I challenge myself.
Is that a false narrative we have created? I feel like every forum creates false narratives- not just LRA. I donāt know the answer. Like would we be better or worse or the same if we gave Elijah all of Rohdeās minutes and kept Taine and Dante the same? I donāt know but I feel like it would be the same or better. Just one semi-bloated guys opinion.
Also- KC wins by 10 tonight. Rooting for him to win so he can be only 4 SB wins away from TB12-The Goat.
I donāt think that anyone is lauding Rohde too much. Some people saying itās good that he made a couple of threes which I canāt disagree with. But he played 33 min because of foul trouble with Dunn + Minor. Letās not mistake it.
If anything I think people celebrate bad to mediocre Dante play too often here.
Rohde is more than a game manager.
Also word is a lotta sharp money piling in late on SF. @chavlicek15 just left Vegas coincidence? Nope
Simply comes down to Rohde has pg skills Elijah doesnāt. If Elijah did and was showing that in practice he would get 40 minutes given Tonyās affinity to multiple ball handlers on the floor.
Tony has given opportunity to freshmen a lot in the past. Reece taking over both Morsell and Woldo. Kihei starting right away. Marco Anthony transferring cause he knew Morsell was going to play over him. Upperclassmen Thompson and Shayok getting out because they saw what Hunter was doing in practice on top of having their minutes takes by Jerome and Guy. etc. etc. Heck even Klay Thompson talked about how Tony was playing him a lot as a freshman. 33 mpg for Thompson as a freshman under Tony.
Tony has a precedent of playing freshmen over veterans within the system. And Rohde isnāt even that, a veteran in the system. A good question to ask Tony in a coaches corner, or even ask Williford, is āWhere is Gertrude behind in Tonyās eyes that Tony wants to see improvement on so that he can get the opportunities other talented freshmen under Tony have had, even on veteran rosters?ā.
@HoozGotNext has hit it on the head a few times: Rohdeās minutes are because of his pg skills but also they speak to what we donāt have.
No one is saying Rohdeās play is ideal. We are just happy he finally showed a solid game after rough outings out there looking afraid and whatnot.
Coaches look at how the pieces fit together not individually. Otherwise, heck play Dante 40 minutes a game and heāll give you 20 point a game like he did on a really bad Georgetown team. Gut feeling is that the team success wouldnāt be what it is now.
I think Rohde is going through the same thing Morsell and Armaan did their first year; they were both mentally struggling in a completely different playstyle than they were used to. However they also played heavy minutes because of their roster situation, not because their production warranted it.
lol yeah basically just this, but in wall of text form
I believe this very strongly about most coaches and definitely this staff. Worth keeping in mind when looking at single game plus-minus, on-offs for individual players (Iām guilty, I know); thereās a lot of noise when you look at an individual playerās stats on this, but less so when you look at how a bigger combo (especially a five man lineup) is performing.
What PG skills? I know we didnt get a guy out of the portal for thisā¦
He isnāt an PG. And we didnāt recruit him to be a PG. We recruited him in the transfer Portal to be a scorer because we had Reece and Dante and Bliss coming along. He was supposed to come here and be a scoring guard/wing - thatās what we got him for. And he isnāt that right now but Iām cautiously optimistic.
And lots of people on this board were ālaudingā him here way too much. Look back two months ago. Or worse- look back to this Fall.
Lastly, I still think he is hurt or something. At the end of the game he ran down the bench after being subbed out for and it was caught on camera. He looked hurt or injured. Anyone else see that?
Oh I agree with you that heās been disappointing in terms of what we recruited him to be.
But thatās an entirely different conversation as opposed to what we were discussing which was what Tony sees in him that he values a lot to play a lot given the context of this roster.
I do think you are having your way though Hav. Tony has been dialing back the Rohde minutes (for example NC State where the taine minutes were really good and the Rohde minutes were bad). Just against FSU Dunn was in foul trouble and the Dante/Taine minutes were atrocious
If you view him as the wing scorer this roster needs, then yeah heās been bad. Getting better but still nowhere close.
I absolutely was super high on him LOL.
Maybe injured (and itās like Armaanās foot injury). I think itās moreso the point I made in teh Rohde thread. There were like 5 offensive categories, 2 he is really good in (Dribble handoffs and transition) and 3 he was really bad in (Iso, spot up, ball screen). Our offense is very much geared towards the three things heās pretty bad at. But itās also what Reece and McKneely are good at so we aint changing shit scheme wise LOL. But he still has value in Tonyās eyes in letting Reece play off ball some
Ok - good call. Itās tough to watch sometimes as a starter, but I am rooting for him. But if our offense is geared towards the three things he is bad at, then we shouldnāt have have recruited him.
He feels like a player who would be really good at Davidson, or old-school Gonzaga before they were real. He played freely at St. Andrewās (shout out Fresh) and we donāt play freely. I guess I think that when we get a guy in the portal (with a Natty within the last 5 years), we should get a stud. Hes not a stud. Rohde is fine- not good or bad- and I would be okay if he was scoring 10 a game and giving us 5 assists a game in his 27-28 mins a game.
But so far, in my opinion, he has been a portal āmissā and Iād rather give half of his mins to Elijah or Taine. There is a reason the team plays worse when he is in and he is always one of the lowest PERās in every game. He always draws the weakest wing defender against every team we play and they donāt guard him much.
Lastly (again), I do think he will āexplodeā for 15 pts in a key game at some point this year.
So lets keep it rolling- something is working.
