Come on, dare to dream big.
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Ironically, Thomas played well against Nova, seemed to play well v Vandy (top scorer, right?), but has been meh in the cupcake games, including some ānot idealā decisions on defense.
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Thomas has had a rough start to the season, but heās been very active and on offense you just get the feeling that heās about to explode. Heās shooting 21% from deep in two games. Feels like heās due for a couple games where he canāt miss.
But on defense? I hoped heād turn into a good perimeter defender, but he hasnāt shown much yet.
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Yeah heās been our worst perimeter defender so far this year for sure. Iām not worried at all about his outside shooting but did show some of that in the piece.
To your point, he was like the sole steady perimeter offensive presence across both scrimmages against better competition though.
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Worse than Hall on defense? Nah
IMO easily.
Thomas is a little more disruptive than Dallin but way less sound in general and has had a significant chunk of our mental mistakes.
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Yeah I think his skillset will be more valuable when the games get tighter. Right now, weāve been able to bully everything inside when weāve needed a bucket.
On the defensive side, he seems to have been out of sorts positionally. Some of it seems to be pressing to try and make an impact and then of course poor communication.
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Thomas has all the tools to be an elite defender, but he isnāt. Hall doesnāt have the tools ā lateral quickness, etc. ā to keep up with quick guards. So Hall is meeting my (low) expectations as a defender. Thomas is not.
So Iād say Thomas is worse than Hall, but itās relative to expectations.
Separate topic, but if I were rolling out our best defensive lineup today, Iād probably have Chance, Elijah, Ugo, GrĆ¼nloh, andā¦ uhhā¦ nobody. I canāt think of a fifth guy to add. Who is the best defender among Thomas, Hall, White, Lewis, and De Ridder?
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Lewis has been solid enough. Didnāt Cuts have some breakdown of this? Iāve only skimmed his NCC piece so far
W/o getting into the āwho is worse on defenseā debate between Hall and Thomas, they each just have natural athleticism caps on what they can do. So they just need to tighten up the mental side. I really want Elijah to become a better shooter / more of a weapon on offense, and that will help, too.
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I didnāt go hard on Lewis but did talk about him a little in NCCU - thereās a very small three clip section.
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Thomas has better tools than heās showed, but his tools max out at solid defender, IMO.
And Hallās tools are worse. Hall doesnāt have good lateral quickness. But, at risk of trafficking in some cliches here, I donāt worry about Hall hurting us. Heady player, gym rat, etc. 
And I hope you all knew not to take this part seriously:
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Hopefully we discontinue this nonsensical full court man defense with Hall ā¦ good teams will just blow past him and play 5 on 4 all game.. actually hate it no matter who is guarding the PG except EGā¦
Slows down the pace of the game and hurts our rhythm on offenseā¦ if we trap off it and actually try to turn them over then ok.
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This is interesting - Iād love them to trap off of it sometimes, but I disagree here.
Itās inviting the other team to make a mistake, which teams as good as Villanova did several times. It might only net you a couple of empty possessions a game - but that adds up. Rarely have we seen a player just beat Hall at a full sprint to the bucket - and running someone at a full sprint into either of our Centers seems like an invitation for them to take a bad shot.
Weāve already seen it create a decent number of turnovers at very little defensive cost so Iād want to see it actually burn us a lot to get away from it. Iād much sooner just put Jacari or Chance on the ball and play Hall off before stopping the system altogether.
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Side questionā¦I didnāt watch the game, but were Gertrudeās two misses from three as ugly as they were from Rider and the Nova scrimmage?
Heās now 1-21 for his career (if you include his 0-3 in the Nova exhibition). His shot doesnāt look improved from Year 1 (granted he missed a lot of practice timeā¦). Starting to wonder if that ever develops.
Edit: he also passed up a couple of wide open opportunities against Rider. Worried we get another Dunn situation.
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I agree. Thomas is not an elite athlete and the difference physically between he and Dallin is real but also not that significant.
I think heās got more potential in the system when we get to the part where weāre taking calculated risks within the defense to try to be disruptive. Thomas should be better at that and it suits him well - thatās how he got so many steals at SF as primarily a deny defender who wasnāt great at sustaining defense when his man got the ball.
But Dallin will make fewer mistakes and has already started to make some intuitive rotations.
Both are acceptable in Odomās system because itās not the end of the world if theyāre chasing an offensive player into the midrange jumper - so itāll be a trade off analysis.
GrĆ¼nloh and Onyenso just help cover for a lot.
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They werenāt bad misses but they werenāt in and outs. His shot form just seems inconsistent to my untrained eye
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Lewis is a bit of a question mark to me. Heās a tall shooting guard whoās hitting 50% of his threes and contributing 10 points per game ā whatās not to like? But he doesnāt seem to contribute much else to the offense and things seem to flow smoother without him. And heās meh on defense.
Itās interesting that heās our starting shooting guard but he played something like the 8th-most minutes against NCC. He got 21 minutes against Rider and then only 14 against NCC. Seems like Odom is giving his minutes to White and Gertrude and Mallory. Is that just early experimentation or is Odom not happy with his contributions so far?
Still, itās early and heās hitting 50% of his threes. But thereās something about Lewis that leaves me wanting more.
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Going into the season, I had two hopes for Gertrude: first, that heās healthy and just as explosive as before. That looks true. But second, that his shooting improved with all his time off. Sadly, that doesnāt look true.
His lack of shooting puts a hard cap on his playing time in Odomās system. But he should get plenty of non-con minutes in the next few weeks. Hopefully some shots will drop. But thereās no way Odom can play a small-ish shooting guard who canāt shoot even though heās a really solid perimeter defender.
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Exactly how I feel. Really just wish he was more assertive. For as good of a shooter as he is, doesnāt feel like someone who hunts his shot or puts a lot of effort into getting open. Maybe that changes as he gets more open but heās a good enough shooter where I want him getting a lot more looks
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Itās so early for anything predictive, but I do wanna flag that descriptively, the defense is close to 0.5 PPP worse in Hallās bench minutes vs his on-floor minutes. The lineups in Hallās bench minutes have had a combo of 3P bad luck, worse rebounding, and a total lack of turnover generation; we will see if any of that continues or if thatās just small sample size theater.
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