Norm Peterson

Will the games go on?

It's also home to the world's largest gingerbread house village, composed of some 15,000 gingerbread houses made from repurposed caribou dung. Again, don't look it up and prove me wrong.

[rimshot]

That was quite the NBA backcourt we had last season.

Now that there's room?

Not a lot of kudzu, though.

Known Quantities: Thor Thorbjarnarson: Heady G/F with a high hoops IQ; good passer who moves well w/o the ball on offense; unselfish; came on as a spot-up shooter his junior year; lacks a bit of lateral quickness on defense so tends to play off his defensive assignment so as to err on the side of stopping penetration, leaving more space to the offensive player to shoot perimeter shots. Yvan Ouedraogo: Strong, thick-built but slightly undersized PF; appears to lack high-level explosiveness both in terms of leaping and quickness; hands are a question mark as both passes and rebounds sometimes bounce off the stones at the ends of his arms; has some low-post skill and sometimes does a good job of using his shoulders to create space but lacks touch and hasn't finished well around the rim; tends to try to finesse his way around defenders in the low post instead of going up strong with the ball and tends to take too much time to gather himself and loses the advantage of the defender being off-balance when he receives dishes in the low blocks; played his entire freshman year as a 17-year-old; could take a substantial step forward from freshman to sophomore year. Kevin Cross: Either a way-undersized big with A+ skills or an under-athletic wing with average wing skills. He could improve his athleticism with some off-season conditioning but has probably maxed out on size. Was out of position as the only option to back up Yvan and almost never played in any other capacity. Could be a quality Hoiberg 4 if he can groove his 3-point shooting, which he certainly has potential to do. Lacked production as a rebounder as a freshman. Akol Arop: Uber athletic wing with the platform to build a solid jumper, but very raw in the skills department and seemed frequently lost on the floor last season, particularly on the defensive end. Unknown Quantities: Everybody else, including Dalano Banton, who could end up being really *really* good. Or just average. Or terrible. We really have no way of knowing. At his prior school, he was a bad FT shooter (55.9%) and a bad 3-pt shooter (21.6%). Small sample size, perhaps. Might have really improved his shooting while sitting out. Might have. Might not have. None of us really know. At his last stop, Kobe Webster shot 33.3% from 3-point range last season; Kobe King shot 25% from 3 last year; Trey McGowens, if he's eligible, shot 31.1% from 3 last season at Pitt; Lat Mayen is a 6'9 juco kid who shot it well but not a lot; and Teddy Allen pretty much burned the nets up at the same school where Jervay Green burned the nets up the year before. So, in an offense that likes the rim and loves the 3, we seem to have recruited a bunch of players who love the rim even when they're shooting 3s. And while it's entirely possible that we've found the recipe that will get us into the top half of our league and get our danced card punched, it may be more likely that we finish outside the league's top ten. But there are simply too many unknowns to look at this roster and say we're *confident* in any sort of favorable outcome to the season. I'm all for being hopeful. But I have no confidence that I can predict this one way or the other.

I will say this: We have guys who played and guys who sat, and Hoiberg had a chance to watch all of them in practice and get a pretty good sense of what he had to work with. A lot better sense than any of the rest of us would have. So, a person can argue about how much that sit-out experience gained players like Banton. But there's no doubt it helped Hoiberg and Co determine what pieces they needed to add to fill in around the pieces he has coming back. And that's probably about as important as anything in terms of reasons for optimism this coming season.

A year ago, while we were all gushing about the job Hoiberg had done in bringing in, what, 11? recruits in 30 days around April-May, this pundit guy on Twitter was panning him. I kind of challenged the guy at the time because it seemed pretty impressive work to me for Hoiberg to completely fill a roster with what seemed to be a decent mix of players in a very short period of time. And the guy's response, which I couldn't really argue with, was yeah but there are no stars in that group. A 7-win season later, and I'm looking at the roster for next year asking myself, ok, where are the stars? Are there dudes in that group who are better than the players they'll face on other teams? Do we have any position advantages compared to teams in the top half of the conference? How much better is Year 2 really likely to be compared with Year 1? I think we'll be better. I think we'll be a lot better. But we were so bad this last year that we could improve a ton and still not be very good. So, do we have stars in this group? Do we have enough firepower to compete in this league? I honestly don't know and, until I see them play some games, I'm going to withhold judgment.

Year 3, probably.

So you're saying we're bringing in some Kobe beef?

I don't think 6' 4 1/2" is any more of an exaggeration on the low side, though, than 6'9" is on the high side.

What does "optimistic" mean when it comes to Cross and Arop?

What if King and McGowens are eligible? Ah HA! That's tougher, now, isn't it? Who, if anyone, do you drop from the above in order to add them?

He looked to me like a Turkish Jack McVeigh.

Well, @75unlgrad, if you're right (and you're probably closer to being right than I am) then you're talking about a starting lineup that looks like this: 6'8, 6'5, 6'6, 6'6, 6'10. That would be a team with some serious length across the board that should be able to rebound OK.

PG Kobe Webster, 6'0 Sr SG Teddy Allen, 6'5 Jr SG Dalano Banton, 6'8 So SF Shamiel Stevenson, 6'6 Jr PF Derrick Walker, 6'8 Jr Charlie Easley, 6'2 So Thorir Thorbjarnarson, 6'6 Sr Yvan Ouedraogo, 6'4 1/2" So Lat Mayen, 6'9 Jr The above is based on some assumptions. I'm assuming, first of all, that Kobe King and Trey McGowens have to sit a year. We're apparently applying for exemptions? But until they get cleared, I'm going to assume they won't be. Which leaves us kind of short of depth at guard and will mean that Charlie Easley will have plenty of opportunity to play real minutes as the back up PG. I'm taking Shamiel and Derrick over Lat and Yvan to start because ... becaaauuse I'm just taking a wild-ass guess that Shamiel can shoot it as well as Lat but will be stronger on the boards and with the ball in his hands. And, as an added advantage, he has a year in the system. And I'm guessing Derrick is just going to be a more explosive athlete than Yvan. I'm thinking they're both somewhat raw in the skills department, so athleticism wins that battle and Yvan was maybe just a little lacking in the quicks last year and I'm hoping Derrick is better. This is just hope. I don't know that he's better, I just hope he is. And I'm figuring Kevin Cross drew the short end of the stick and would be odd man out because he's small for a big and, on paper, doesn't have the shooting ability of Shamiel or Lat. If he commits to working out over the summer and retools his body, and works on his shooting, I suppose he could sneak into the rotation, but I think he has his work cut out for him. Thor is like Dalano but not as long or athletic, albeit perhaps a better shooter (if he maintains the gains from last year.) He's still going to be a valuable rotation piece but we don't have room for him and Dalano and Teddy in the starting lineup, so I just took a flyer that Teddy is the shiz and can keep his shiz together. It's hard to ignore Teddy's FT% given how bad we were from the line this last season. Kobe and Teddy would give us a backcourt that would probably average 85% from the line. Boy wouldn't that be a refreshing change of pace? Teddy strikes me as one of those guys who just knows how to get the ball to drop. And I think we need that. I am a bit more cautious in my optimism, however, since I would have expected similar from another WNCC recruit who just didn't quite pan out for us. I'm hoping for better with Teddy. I'm kidding about Yvan's height up there, but I'm telling you he is nowhere near 6'9". Assuming Ohio State wouldn't list a guy as being *shorter* than he actually is, I will say I saw Yvan standing next to and guarding Kaleb Wesson, who is also listed at 6'9, and Yvan was giving up at least 2 inches in height to Wesson. So, assuming Wesson really is 6'9, I can tell you with absolute certainty Yvan is not. My dark horse (which is a term that comes from horse racing and refers to a horse with long odds who finishes surprisingly well) is Lat Mayen. He's not very highly ranked in juco recruiting. Somewhere in the mid-30s or 40s last I checked. But he has an important skill set. He's one of those guys who flicks his wrist and the ball goes in. Some guys just have that touch. He's got a little of that Kevin Durant, throw-the-ball-at-the-rim-and-somehow-he-manages-to-get-it-to-drop in him. I am NOT saying he's Kevin Durant. Not even saying he's a poor man's Kevin Durant. So spare me if you're tempted to say "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE COMPARING A JUCO KID TO KEVIN FRICKIN DURANT." No, I get it. He's not KD. But ... He's long and skinny and he seems to know how to shoot the ball pretty well. And for a guy that long, he has fairly decent handles. And if all of that comes together and he turns out to be pretty springy to boot, we could possibly have caught lightning in a bottle with this kid. It's a longshot. But that's why he's my dark horse. I would like to have Adama Sanogo in my rotation. I'm holding out hope but it's dwindling. And I wouldn't mind having an elite sharpshooter at guard, but those players don't grow on trees, apparently. At least not trees that we've been able to harvest with much success. So, assuming what we've got is what we'll have, I've projected a rotation. And, given my history, you can pretty well count that what actually happens will look nothing at all like what I've predicted above. Anyone else care to throw a projected lineup in the ring?

I thought he was a golfer known for his "short" game.

That's what she said?

Yeah. Exactly. I hate that comparison.

I think you can go back and look at my contemporaneous posts following the scrimmage and they'll echo the same sentiment. I thought he looked slow. We'll see. I hope he's as explosive as that describes. By the way, I am willing to accept that our sit-out transfers could be better shooters than what we would imagine based on their career records. For Banton, Stevenson and Walker, their shooting numbers from their prior schools are based on small sample sizes. And when I saw them in the scrimmage, I thought Stevenson and Walker looked like they had decent mechanics from which they could develop a solid shot by grooving their range. Banton had a Lonzo Ball-esque windup and delivery but he could become fairly accurate with a year to sit out and develop his shot, and I strongly believe our coaching staff has the aptitude to teach shooting. My big question right now is what, if anything, are they doing to leverage the time they have during this strange off-season to make this team better next year. Besides recruiting. I assume any of the guys still in town would have access to the Hendricks Center, could sign up for times to come in and shoot, lift, do conditioning, etc. The staff could easily e-mail them a daily to-do list and could follow up with each of them through skype or zoom no matter where they are in the world. There's any number of things they could be doing right now. But whatever they're doing, I hope they're doing more than the guys in yellow and black to our east or the guys in orange and blue to the east of that. Or the guys in red and silver in Columbus or the blue and gold guys in Ann Arbor. Because if we want to catch up to those other teams, we can't have players show up in September fat and out of shape, having gotten no shooting reps in since March.

Man, I hope those descriptions are still accurate. When I saw him at the scrimmage, I thought he looked a step slow.

This is interesting to me. At least according to Jeff Borzello, we traded away the #39 grad transfer prospect in the country (Burke) in order to get the #26 grad transfer (Webster). (Ironically, former Husker Jeriah Horne was ranked as the #18 available grad transfer, so ...) And we traded away the #20 (Mack) and #46 (Green) sit-out transfers in exchange for #s 7 (McGowens) and 8 (King). So, if Borzello is to be believed, we've definitely upgraded in the exchange. And we didn't have to give up draft picks or players to be named later, so ... that's a plus. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/28167956/college-basketball-transfer-rankings-2020-21-2021-22