Great win tonight. We have been giving Fox a ton of crap and a fair amount of it has been warranted, but he deserves a lot of credit for the win tonight. The zone really shut down GW. Also never thought we would've won without Maten for the last 3-4 min.
1) JJ and Yante are incredible. Nothing else needs to be said about them
2) Juwan Parker should be starting - just look at his stats from tonight. He's not great, he's not flashy, he's a little slow, he's not the best shooter, but he's a good all around player compared to what else we have. He should be playing 15-30 minutes at this point in the season. He will likely lose minutes as the season goes on.
3) Harris & Diatta. Love what I've seen from them the last couple of games. For the people complaining about them not playing more, they both got a fair amount of time tonight and I think they will continue to get more and more as the season progresses. I'm really impressed with how Harris looks. Diatta is obviously not a 4, he's definitely a 3
4) Turtle, OBD, and Edwards have been disappointing on offense up until this point. None of them look polished or totally comfortable scoring out there for us. OBD and Edwards looked better tonight, but Turtle just does not look good driving or shooting. As long as Crump be the scorer longterm, maybe it's not so bad that Turtle is more of a true PG and not a scorer. Still, that first 3 he took looked awful
5) KPG and Wilridge likely won't play much moving forward. IDK if KPG was hurt, but he did not play at all tonight. Seems like Diatta, Harris, and Crump have taken most/all of his minutes already. Perhaps this should've happened sooner, but considering we've only lost one game, it's hard to say he cost us that much. IDK what's up with Wilridge. Not even sure what position he should be playing. He likely won't be a contributor until next year or his senior year.
6) Kessler. It is what is is. We all hate watching him play. I absolutely can't stand it. He offers literally nothing. However, he has to play when you only have 4 post players. Foul trouble is going to happen and so he will continue to play around 10 min a night (on average). Fox deserves the blame for not recruiting another post player so that there are 4 people in front of Kessler. Diatta is clearly a 3, so don't say he should take time from Kessler. Yes, we could go with a small lineup, but it's not very often that you can do something like that. Plus that requires our team to learn another lineup and we already have a lot of young, inexperienced guys playing to do something like that effectively. I could be wrong on this point and will admit that, but my thought is that Fox thinks it would be too much for a first year guy to play 2 positions right now. Perhaps that changes as the year goes on. I certainly understand why people don't want to see Kessler play, i'm right there.
7) Not sure why we aren't seeing more Crump. Perhaps he's still adjusting to playing PG. He doesn't look as smooth as I thought he would, but he's made some nice plays. If KPG's and Parker's minutes continue to trend down, I'm sure we will see more and more of Crump. I hope we do, as we are going to need his 3 point shooting. Fox needs to get him out there more.
Overall, I feel ok right now. We desperately need a 3rd - 5th scoring option and we haven't really seen it until tonight. Hopefully OBD, Edwards, Harris, and Diatta continue the upwards trend. Fox needs to let our guys run more like tonight. I liked the full court press as well.
The Kansas game is going to suck. Interested to get some of y'all's thoughts as well.
1) JJ and Yante are incredible. Nothing else needs to be said about them
2) Juwan Parker should be starting - just look at his stats from tonight. He's not great, he's not flashy, he's a little slow, he's not the best shooter, but he's a good all around player compared to what else we have. He should be playing 15-30 minutes at this point in the season. He will likely lose minutes as the season goes on.
3) Harris & Diatta. Love what I've seen from them the last couple of games. For the people complaining about them not playing more, they both got a fair amount of time tonight and I think they will continue to get more and more as the season progresses. I'm really impressed with how Harris looks. Diatta is obviously not a 4, he's definitely a 3
4) Turtle, OBD, and Edwards have been disappointing on offense up until this point. None of them look polished or totally comfortable scoring out there for us. OBD and Edwards looked better tonight, but Turtle just does not look good driving or shooting. As long as Crump be the scorer longterm, maybe it's not so bad that Turtle is more of a true PG and not a scorer. Still, that first 3 he took looked awful
5) KPG and Wilridge likely won't play much moving forward. IDK if KPG was hurt, but he did not play at all tonight. Seems like Diatta, Harris, and Crump have taken most/all of his minutes already. Perhaps this should've happened sooner, but considering we've only lost one game, it's hard to say he cost us that much. IDK what's up with Wilridge. Not even sure what position he should be playing. He likely won't be a contributor until next year or his senior year.
6) Kessler. It is what is is. We all hate watching him play. I absolutely can't stand it. He offers literally nothing. However, he has to play when you only have 4 post players. Foul trouble is going to happen and so he will continue to play around 10 min a night (on average). Fox deserves the blame for not recruiting another post player so that there are 4 people in front of Kessler. Diatta is clearly a 3, so don't say he should take time from Kessler. Yes, we could go with a small lineup, but it's not very often that you can do something like that. Plus that requires our team to learn another lineup and we already have a lot of young, inexperienced guys playing to do something like that effectively. I could be wrong on this point and will admit that, but my thought is that Fox thinks it would be too much for a first year guy to play 2 positions right now. Perhaps that changes as the year goes on. I certainly understand why people don't want to see Kessler play, i'm right there.
7) Not sure why we aren't seeing more Crump. Perhaps he's still adjusting to playing PG. He doesn't look as smooth as I thought he would, but he's made some nice plays. If KPG's and Parker's minutes continue to trend down, I'm sure we will see more and more of Crump. I hope we do, as we are going to need his 3 point shooting. Fox needs to get him out there more.
Overall, I feel ok right now. We desperately need a 3rd - 5th scoring option and we haven't really seen it until tonight. Hopefully OBD, Edwards, Harris, and Diatta continue the upwards trend. Fox needs to let our guys run more like tonight. I liked the full court press as well.
The Kansas game is going to suck. Interested to get some of y'all's thoughts as well.
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