Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Gurleyman, post: 5205223, member: 175"] Theres a huge leap between second team All-AAC and first-team All-American. It’s odd to suggest he arrived to us as a fully developed player. He was a bad shooter (under 40 percent) at ECU and had 5 assists and 3.5 turnovers per game his last season there, which is a terrible ratio for a PG. I didn’t see anything in his stat line at ECU, or in how he played his first two months here, that led me to believe we had an All-Big East player, much less a first-team AA. He was surrounded with better talent of course, but that meant he had to adapt to a different role and a different system, and it didn’t seem to work at first. And then he became arguably the best PG in the country his final year. He was a maestro running our offense - still not a great shooter, but the way he made reads off the bounce and found guys for shots was fantastic. His 6+ assists per game usually included great playmaking assists and not just system assists. Lobs, feeds for dunks, finding Spencer wide open in rhythm, etc. I didn’t appreciate it enough in real time, but watching replays of ncaa games, I find myself thinking “damn, Newton was good” a lot. He was by no means that great before he came here - he had empty, inefficient stats on a bad team, which doesn’t always translate to winning basketball. An SI article had him rated the 11th best player in the portal that year (Alleyne was 16th) - not bad, but certainly not someone who the world considered a potential All-American. He greatly exceeded his “ranking” [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach