I do think it’s bizarre that we assume that early playing time is a guarantee for development when arguably our biggest problem since the national title can be pinned on Morsell’s collapse
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Just want to be clear - none of this is advice. I’m just talking on the internet. I’m just an idiot who enjoys watching and talking hoops. If Tony wants advice, I think he’d be wise to go for another Team USA stint…
That’s not my assumption. My assumption is that playing time is a precondition for improvement. Practice + games. One alone is not enough (which is frankly why I didn’t think Taine playing about 90 seconds last year was ideal for development)
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A great example of playing time does not equal success. Casey had every opportunity in-game to become a stud, but his shot never developed. That improvement happens in June taking 1k shots a day from all over the court.
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I’m ready to play Radford tomorrow though now. Hopefully we cruise a bit and get a bit more data on some of the things we are concerned about. I suspect that certain things that we saw will be an issue throughout the season but others will not. How far we go will be determined by how many fall into each bucket
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Great post - need more data points (but hey, we will take what we have and work it over…and over). The Navy game is the San Fran game from last year (the halves are reversed very closely if you look at he box scores). After Towson, I thought we were dramatically under ranked. SF burst that bubble. So, can’t draw too many conclusions from just the Navy game.
CTB will have to have the defense work against Radford and contest 3s, because that is what we are going to see all year, along with a variety of zones daring Kihei and Reece to shoot. Good thing is, we know that’s what’s coming and can adjust. If we make progress with our defensive identity and run a semi-clean offense (generally good looks without appalling turnovers and clean up our defensive boards), I’ll be happy. Radford shooting 14-31 deep is going to make me very unhappy.
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I watched the highlights from the Navy site. The one thing that stood out was exactly that. Being late to close out on 3 point shooters. And second Navy getting to offensive rebounds. Distant third was Gardner getting couple 3 lay ups blocked
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Biggest hope is for Franklin to have a good game. If he gets into a Morsell-like headspace then we may be under .500 this season (unless someone like Taine breaks out)
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I’m really not worried about Franklin. Definition of small sample size
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Kinda disagree. Navy was not exactly FSU inside.
Edit - sorry was thinking Gardner not Franklin. Agree small sample but he looked really shaky on his attempts and you could see he was questioning his stroke from the third shot on. The only thing next level shooters like Kyle or Joe question is why it didn’t go in.
Re: Armaan, the ShotQuality website (it basically uses tracking data & player data to determine the expected points per possession for every shot attempt) has him actually getting the highest-quality looks of anyone who played big minutes for us. ShotQuality data can be a little noisy sometimes but is usually a pretty good evaluation of how good a guy’s looks are — for example, last year Trey was 97th %ile and Sam was 96th %ile in ShotQuality points per possession.
I’d bet the shots start falling for him soon enough. Hopefully vs Radford, because it’d be good to get him a confidence boosting game early in the year.
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Can’t believe I’m even asking this but is Radford as good as Navy? We need a get right, tune up game in the worst way before playing Houston
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Kenpom has them 256th in the country. Navy was 156th. Torvik has them 281st, Navy 159th. So, yeah, I would guess they’re worse than Navy. Kenpom gives us a 93% chance to win, expects us to win by 17.
edit: fixed weird wording
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No. At least not projected to be. Navy was 188th coming into that game while Radford is 259th.
Gets into the necessary vs. sufficient conversation. Nobody says playing in games is sufficient for our young guys to develop and become high end players. But it is a necessary part of the process.
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Thanks. Tangential question for anyone: Where do you find shot charts? I thought ESPN did them for every game, but I didn’t see it in the game page. Maybe they only do it for ESPN mothership games?
Navy played 14 games last year against 5 really bad teams - They lost to Maryland by 30. Maryland.
Oral Roberts lost by 39 to Missouri last year before making the Sweet 16. I’m not really sure what your point is
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Right, and Santa Clara beat '04-05 UNC by 11 in November. Santa Clara (who went 15-16) also lost to New Mexico that year by 34! (random thing i just learned - Richie McKay was the coach of that New Mexico team)
nothing I saw implied we have potential to finish the season like that UNC team did… but i also don’t know how their fans felt after that loss.
i do know that however i feel about our team today, i will feel a very different way in mid-Jan, and then mid-Feb.
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Don’t know where else to put this as I’m still vetting over the other night but Henry Coleman had 27 in his first game at A&M. On the flip side neither CJ Felder (who I really wanted us to pursue as a 6th man) nor Phildareous Fleming started or did much for Florida the other night. 4 and 2 pts
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Coleman would have been good
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