Norm Peterson

I wasn't going to say "last minute surprises" and leave it at that because, on the football side, we had a lot of last-second decommits and I didn't want to tempt fate, here. Just asking whether anyone thinks there'll be a last-minute add. Remember Standhardinger? He showed up on our commit list and no one but nobody knew who the hell he was or that we had been after him. Total surprise. There've been others of those through the years. How about this year?

And there is all that kudzu. (Some people like it, apparently.) Yeah they got lots of that crap down there, too. Yes, it is a veritable cornucopia of regional culinary delights, non-native invasive plant species, restrictive moral culture, and widespread poverty and inequality. What more could an 18 year-old ask for?

Nike shouldn't but Converse might.

There's not a lot in that article, as it relates to this recruiting class, that hasn't crossed my mind dozens of times in the last few weeks. Especially when I learned that Jacobson projects he'll hit about 6'9 1/2" before he's done growing. It's like a complete starting lineup on its own. A player at every position. And not just place holders; good, solid players at every spot. And, potentially, some real stars. Remember in years past when we would lament that we were just that one player short of being pretty good? Just missing a shooting guard? Or, if only we had a decent power forward? Well, we got one each in this class and I'd say we're set up for a solid next few years as long as we keep adding to it. There's enough star power and the other guys, from what I've seen, are all more than solid enough, that we can put a competitive unit on the floor that can compete in this league.

Does becoming a free agent mean he HAS to go elsewhere or does it mean he can force the Royals to come up with more cash based on his value on the open market?

Lee B. picks us 12th this morning in the Big. Sobriety. KenPom has us at 13th right now, so how is Lee's pick sobering? You might have misunderstood HB's point. He might not have been saying that Lee B's pick was sobering. I think he was just letting us all know that he achieved sobriety this morning. At about the same time he discovered Lee B picked us 12th. Those two events just happened to occur at roughly the same time. In fact, if anything, Lee's pick might cause one to want to drink. (And, why not? It's 5 O'Clock somewhere.)

I agree completely with Jimmy's hopes. I'd love to see those things as well. However, I won't necessarily consider the season a failure if those things don't all happen. But I also agree with Jones: The real test in my opinion happens next year. We ought to dance next year. I think it's possible we could dance with the team we have right now, but we darn well better dance with this crew next year. If next year's group can't do it, then I'll be hugely disappointed. Talented sophomores are old enough and experienced enough to get you to the dance. Talented sophomores did so for us two years ago.

And there is all that kudzu. (Some people like it, apparently.)

Lee B. picks us 12th this morning in the Big. Sobriety. For the record, I never said we are "there" this year. I don't know as I agree with Lee at 12th, but I certainly don't expect us to be in the top half of the league at this point. But if we can't get "there" with this group of players (and the ones coming in) by next year, I see no reason to think this group will improve so much more by the following year to give us confidence that the right number is two years away. If we're going to be able to sustain success here, with the kind of players we've brought in, we need to make the tournament next year. I think we have the players to do it, with the possible exception of not having a stud big man.

Ok, found a reference (and link) to the article in the "Countdown" thread. (Who's going to see it there?) Thought it deserved more attention.

Surprised no one posted anything about this. Nice article. Says Miles is wide open on starting lineups and could go a lot of different ways. You might even see McVeigh with his 7 foot wingspan playing center. Vets probably start the exhibition, though. Benny at point, Tai, Shavon, Andrew, and then either Hammond or Morrow. Jacobson is not quite up to full speed and Bakari is out with an ankle sprain. Effusive praise for Watson, whom Miles said is our best playmaker. Played fantastically well in the afternoon scrimmage against Wyoming, but he won't start. Why? Because Benny is really playing well and has really improved. Miles said he could play them at the same time and would like them both to be on the floor. If you weren't already a little geeked, go read that article and run through your mind the thought that, on any given night, there'll be five guys who didn't start who could have. Sorry, no link. I'm on my phone.

Nick Fuller is a good kid and I hope he does well in life. When I saw Nick play at the scrimmage, other than not connecting on and open three pointer, I thought he looked like his Game head really come a long way. Nick's problem is not that he hasn't improved enough to contribute. Nick's problem is that, with our recruiting, our roster has improved enough that Nick isn't likely going to be able to find minutes even with his improvement. There are just so many good players in that part of the roster anymore. I feel bad for Nick because of it, but he chose to return and that will probably now mean that he will continue to ride the pine notwithstanding his improvement.

It very well might be semantics but we might also disagree on what Tai should be doing on offense. To me a three point threat is a guy who is going to take a lot of 3pt shots or a guy who makes a high percentage at a lower rate. For instance, Brandon Ubel throwing up 20-25 shots a year at a 25% rate isn't a threat. David Rivers hitting 100% of his 3pt attempts last year (1) also doesn't make him a threat. Let's look at Tai's shot selection over the last 2 years His freshman year he took 77 2pt shots and 35 3pt shots and got to the FT line 84 times. His sophomore year he took 57 2pt shots and 52 3pt shots and got to the FT line 38 times. I have no distance data on the 2pt shots. I think he will be successful with a 70% 2pt / 30% 3pt shot spread where he's drawing contact. I think he will lose minutes and maybe get benched if he has a spread like his sophomore year. I want him to take near the ratio of shots he took his freshmen year. This makes him a threat to drive to the basket. Also Benny, in very limited action, brought his 3pt % up near 30% (29.3%) last year. How is he not a 3pt threat by your definition when he's accomplished what you want Tai to do? To me they're both guys you have to worry about stopping the drive first. Benny shot a higher percent from beyond the arc last year than "Walter P for Me" so that might mean Benny was a threat, especially if you think Walt was.

Dimes, you and I are not on the same page as far as what a threat is. In your way of looking at it, apparently, a threat is someone you intend to utilize in your offense for that specific skill. To me, a threat is simply something where the guy is good enough at it that you can't ignore him and you have to guard him. If Ty can get up near 30% from three, he will be a threat that the opposing team will have to guard. It takes me back to your earlier post where you were talking about any configuration where Tai is a threat from three would be a bad thing for us. I don't think he has to be a good shooter from distance in order for opposing teams to have to account for him on the perimeter. He only needs to be a threat. Benny has not been a threat. Tai can be.

I would love to imagine what the votes would have been like if we'd had Paschal Chukwu along with Anton Gill sitting out as a redshirt transfers.

According to this article, Mike Edwards is a projected starter at Georgia this year: http://bustingbrackets.com/2015/10/28/georgia-basketball-georgia-bulldogs-2015-16-season-preview/

That way, we could have had TWO empty spots this season! But seriously, uneblinstu, I agree. He's not finding minutes, especially with our improving talent level. He's a nice kid and a good worker but he's more along the lines of a practice player. I just don't think it's Miles' style to run guys off.

C PF SF SG PGMorrow 5 20 Jacobson 10Hammond 15 White 8 20 McVeigh 12 Shields 10 20 5 Webster 5 15 5 Parker 10 15 Watson 25 I could see something along these lines in terms of minutes per player (minutes per position are off slightly.). For what it's worth, I think we will be a nine deep rotation team this year. We have more talent in depth this time around. Granted, Miles has not gone nine deep in the past, but that's mostly because we didn't have the personnel to go nine deep. We do now and maybe then some. I think the breakdown you propose is fairly reasonable. Obviously the end result will vary.

What i have heard is that Hammond just really isn't that good. Hopefully I'm wrong thoIn fairness to Hammond, he's not that bad. He is not a stiff like Sergej was. But he clearly does not have the game that Brian Diaz had. But I think he also has a tougher mindset than Diaz. He has potential. You cannot coach height. He certainly has height and length. He just needs to add a lot more mass and probably needs to spend a lot more time in some individual workouts developing some skills.

Let's just get this out of the way: the argument that a 23.1 3pt% is much better threat than a 19.5 3pt% is just flat out ridiculous I'll easily buy that his confidence level is back near or above his freshman level and that the change of roster is a part of it. I'll buy that his lack of confidence led to him going from starting most of his freshman year to coming off the bench and playing less minutes last year. I'll buy that he starts at least half of our games and is among the top 5 players on the roster in minutes played. I'll buy he'll be one of our best defenders and a valuable contributor to this team. I'm not buying that this magically turns Tai, a guy who I've heard admit on a podcast that he doesn't think he's a good shooter, into a good shooter. He most definitely can be a valuable contributor to this team but expecting him to do so as one of our main 3 point threats is a recipe for disaster. As long as Andrew White and at least one other guy can be at least average, there is no reason Tai should be taking over 50-60 3pt attempts per season or else you're setting the guy up to fail. I also think Tai will be a pretty good player for us. I just think it won't be as a shooter. Beggin' your pardon, King Yurtle, but nowhere did I say Tai would be a good 3-point shooter. I was responding to your post where you said, and I quote, "Tai is a career 20% 3pt shooter. There should be no lineup/configuration that is dependent on him being a 3pt threat." And the very first sentence of my response was, and I quote, "In fairness to Tai, everyone was pretty bad last year shooting from deep." That's not saying Tai's good; it's saying he wasn't the only one who was bad. And there's a difference between "being a threat" and "being good." Ray Gallegos was a threat but I don't think anyone would say Ray Gallegos was good. And if Tai makes the same or similar incremental improvement between his sophomore and junior years as he did between his freshman and sophomore years, he'll be in Ray Gallegos territory for 3-point accuracy. Which at least makes him a threat. Now, whether 23.1% is "much better" than 19.5%, I guess if you want to quibble with one word in the context of a much larger point, fine. Delete the word "much" from that sentence if it makes you feel better. But let's examine those numbers in the abstract. You know how, if you get a 16 oz. bottle of pop instead of a 12 oz. bottle, they'll sometimes say on the label that it's 1/3 more? Well, examining those numbers in the abstract, 23.1 is 18.5% more than 19.5. In other words, you can multiply 19.5 x 1 and come up with 100% of 19.5. Multiply it by 1.185 (18.5% more) and you get ~ 23.1. So, 23.1 is 18.5% more than 19.5. Is that "much" more? I don't know. Arguably it is. More arguable than, say, cherry-picking one word out of a long post and saying the use of that one word was flat out ridiculous.

On the other hand ... Andrew White appears clearly to be one of our better shooters, has a beefy physique, and looked for all the world like one of the best rebounders on our team during that open scrimmage. I mean, let's give the poor guy his due. It's not all bad.

Relatively slow, can't dribble, can't play guard, can't play power forward. Sounds like we should bring him in off the bench in garbage time. He can take the place of Trevor Menke, maybe.

Yep. We've never been much for offensive rebounds under Miles anyway, so big, small, medium, whatever, isn't going to make a big difference for us on the offensive glass. And, it's never really been our style under Miles to try to score points in the paint by a post-entry to a big man. Usually, our points in the paint come from penetration. So, again, playing small doesn't really affect that. Going small might actually allow us to exploit some match-up issues against the other team when we're on offense. But even with a 6'10" guy with great leaping ability last year, we got used in the paint by teams. Remember the second half against Creighton? Remember Indiana? They just used Walter like he was a cheap slut. I don't know how we're worse off throwing Andrew White and Ed Morrow out there, but that's probably a big part of why we went 13-18 last year. (The other big part was we couldn't shoot for crap and hopefully that has been rectified.)

Tai is a career 20% 3pt shooter. There should be no lineup/configuration that is dependent on him being a 3pt threat. In fairness to Tai, everyone was pretty bad last year shooting from deep. I think it was a team-wide funk and I think there was a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that contributed to the malaise in the program that most people not affiliated with the program might not realize. There were some pretty big egos coming back from 2 seasons ago and a couple of them were incompatible. The first chinks in the armor that I noticed were Walt's self-pitying tweets after the NCAA tourney loss about not getting the ball. I've been told by a very reliable source (who, for information about Petteway, falls into my first category of sources, if you remember what those were) and he's said that Petteway couldn't stand Pitchford. I've also been told that Shavon wasn't particularly fond of Terran, either. The players have made comments this year that have been quoted in the paper that give one a strong sense that there was a lot of dissension in the ranks last year, and our shooting numbers from a year ago seem to show it. So, looking at Tai's career numbers: We know, as a freshman, his confidence took a hit during the season. He went from being nearly a double-figure scorer during the first third of the season to practically not scoring at all in the last third. Which is about the opposite of what you'd expect for a player -- you'd think they'd get better as their freshman season went along. Last year, we were in a team-wide funk where no one was shooting very well (as I've detailed above) and still Tai improved his shooting percentage by 6 points from his freshman year. Tai was actually much better as a 3-point threat last year than Shavon. And Shavon had been at least a reliable threat from deep in his two seasons before that. So CAN Tai turn it around and become a threat from deep? Oh, absolutely. Will he? I have no idea. But I suspect the coaches do. And, FWIW, Tai has seemed a lot more confident and playing within himself in the action I've seen since last season -- both in Spain and at the scrimmage here. So, take it for what it's worth, but I'm not ready to kick Tai to the curb. I still think he can be a pretty good player for us.

That's a good point about White and rebounding. During the limited scrimmage, he certainly appeared to be somewhat of a beast on the boards. And having him come out to set high ball screens sets him up for the pick and pop. I agree also that we need a deep threat at the SG spot.