Mullins really did a lot of good things in limited action (he got minutes - but was rarely involved). Picked Dybzantsa clean in the open floor, then scored on him, then AJ demanded the ball to go at him and lowered his shoulder. Mullins could have flopped but stood him up and AJ did hit a little short jumper. But he wanted to show Mullins up after the steal and bucket and ended up with sort of a soft basket, whereas in a real game, maybe Mullins draws the charge there and wins another battle. Then Peterson tried to iso on him and he locked him up. Fadeaway contested three. Brick. Those are the two top recruits in the country and he didn’t back down.
Mullins also swung the ball beautifully to an open shooter instead of thinking “finally I get to shoot” - which the other 23 players in the game would have done. He read the D and made smart back cuts and was ignored and spaced the floor properly and was ignored. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a personality clash that affected how people played with him. Boozer in particular. He had about 7-8 chances to do a fundamental pass and swing the ball his way and passed it zero of those times. Ament ignored him too. Maybe it was just standard all star game selfishness - but it looked weird to me.
Adams obviously will want to burn the game film, but he showed foot speed on defense a couple times that I didn’t see from any of our guys this year. He might get bully-balled by larger wings, but he looks like someone with the quickness to guard smaller people and disrupt them with his length. If he is indeed a better 3 pointer shooter than he showed - there’s 3 and D potential.
Reibe looked comfortable shooting - but didn’t look like he had the instincts to be a rim protector. But we’ll see - some of that is strength and conditioning too and getting quicker off your feet.
