Well, the college b-ball season is underway. What team do you root for? What’s their outlook for this season?
Me, I’m a Kentucky fan. I’m a bit nervous about UK’s ability to put together a really good run this season with how many studs we lost to the NBA draft last season, but so far we look pretty good.
Let’s see how they do against Washington tonight.
GO BLUE!!
I root for Memphis. Surprised they are only ranked 15 (up from 19). I expect a Final 4 appearance.
I don’t know what it means but U of M has 3 ex pro players sons on their roster. One was a short time pro, the others are Hardaway and Dumars.
I’ve been watching the Illini pretty closely this season and I’m concerned. They have a assload of talent, one the best lineups in years, but they seem fundamentally flawed. Bruce Weber has confirmed an apparent ability to recruit but his slavish devotion to his system might end up becoming a problem.
Weber’s beloved motion offense is very dependent on creating outside jump shots. It’s very good at that and the Illini has some guys who can fill it up, but they also have a ton of really athletic guys who can run hot and cold. When the ball isn’t falling and these guys can’t find the range this team goes ice cold for stretches. Now, if we were a mid-major or a athletically challenged grind-it-out team like Iowa or Wisconsin that might be a fantastic design. But we’re long, fast and dynamic and have players that can get into the paint, create offense and get to the line. Weber’s system particularly avoids that and we’re constantly losing the free throw battle. It’s just a bad fit. Weber needs to adjust and needs to be more flexible. Recently he banned the pick-and-pop play from a practice and made the Illini play a scrimmage without any screens to see how they executed the motion offense and ball movement and they failed miserably and couldn’t buy a basket. Who’s at fault there, the players or the coach?
Defensively it’s the same story. He loves his pressure man defense but they lack the tools to be effective there right now. They are young and a little lean which means that the swingmen tend to get beat inside often. We’ve got insane length but strong thick guys tend to body us out of the paint. Tisdale and Leonard are nice shooting 7 footers who block shots great but the give up position and can’t dominate the defensive boards.
It’s a generally young team that hopefully will grow, but right now we’re not where we need to be. They absolutely should have won that Texas game and they have to get better to win a stacked Big Ten.
McCamey is the guy everyone is looking at this season to be the next Deron Williams and that’s sadly not going to happen. The guy just isn’t special. He’s good and can put up numbers against weaker opponents, but he can’t control games against good opponents. Unfortunately he’s the only true point guard we have so he’ll have to find a way. Paul looks good for a Sophomore but he’s trying to do to much and can be a chucker and hoists ill timed shots and his legs fail him at the end of games, as a PG he’s a bad fit since he’s a shoot first player.
Mike Davis and Bill Cole are both disappointing so far at the 4 and if they can’t improve their inside play then we’ll constantly rely on jump shooting. It’s early, but both guys are veterans and should be starting out much stronger than they are. I don’t know why the youngsters Paul, Richardson and Richmond are getting so much playing time and control of this team. If it pays dividends come conference play great, but right now it’s stressing me out.
If these kids mature and the defense comes around they could be a Final Four team. If not, good teams will run all over us when the shooters falter.
There is already this thread ongoing. Do we need two threads?
They should probably be merged rendering my comment redundant!
Whoops. Didn’t see it, apologies, although brianjedi is one of my new favorite posters.
Mods, please merge threads. My bad.