Shabazz is only a sophomore? Kemba was a junior, we're not talking freshman to senior here. That's a one year separation and Shabazz had a season last year that was probably value wise, 1.5 given experience and duration and playing under Walker.
Yeah know, I can see some validity in the Pops vent. I do tend to think last year was the perfect storm to success and a crazy outlier - Kemba Walker was just that good and had that strong of intangibles. Does Uconn use it's big men well - god no. If not for Emeka Okafor who was a self made rocket scientist of basketball player, we likely wouldn't have had the stream of solid recruits on the blocks like Uconn has had. Prior to him there was no recruiting success there. Guys like Travis Knight and Jake Voskuhl were hardly blue chips. But a once in a lifetime golden child like Okafor and two NC's will develop traction.
You can argue to why AO doesn't do this instead, yada, but one also has to understand the psychology of a kid. They want to feel like they're involved on O, have a chance. They just don't want to find all their O off the lunchpale stuff. And at some point when you get limited chances and quick hooks, your mentality is more afraid to fail in those few chances than confident to succeed. Especially when they're the only upper classmen on the team.
Hate to look to corporate references, but this team is a just a mismanaged dysfunctional clusterduck or a unit.
