McNeeley was a pretty big solid guy and I remember him setting screens pretty well on top of his rebounding. I love the 62% from Mullins but why isn’t he taking more of them?
Mullins two point ability is something that isn’t showcased enough.
But many of the previous games against the weak teams have not been easy at all.
In your opinion, how does he compare to Jordan Hawkins?
And you think we defeated teams in those years that were comparable to Michigan, Arizona, Houston, etc., this year? I think this year's team is better than last year's, so we wouldn't lose to this year's equivalent of Florida, but I find it hard to imagine us making it to the FF.
Are you sure that "humility" was the word that you had in mind? Because my post was closer to "we're not good enough," so I'm not sure humility is needed.
Florida in 14 was definitely equivalent. They were on like a 30-game winning streak. San Diego St. in 11 had a guy named Kawhi Leonard who was pretty good.
It's a good question. Hawkins feels more like a rythym shooter more than Mullins, was much more a part of a system like UConn had that was specifically looking for him to free up off actions, elevate and rip. Mullins seems to have more variety in his bag, some back to the basket stuff, runners, etc. He's also a better overall shooter. I wouldn't say Mullins has a ton in his bag of yet, but more than Hawkins did.
The way I see this year is there is Michigan - and they're not that good that they will auto run it through the tournament, they'll be challenged. So who knows what can happen. We'd likely not see them till a semi or final anyway, which would be success as far as I see it.
After losing to UConn.
Sorry, I had a feeling when I posted this that I didnt express things very clearly. No, I wasn't referring to Florida in 2014. I just meant that, unlike last year when we lost to Florida, if it had been this year’s team playing them, we would have won. [Yeah, way too convoluted and not that important. I’ll show myself out.]
This is all fair.
Name a UConn freshman who overachieved.
I didn't recall Josh Boone having a particularly special freshman year. I looked up his stats: 5.9 pts/5.8 rbs/1.7 blk. Compare that to Clingan 6.9/5.6/1.8. They were both decent as freshman but overachieved? My pick for best freshman all-time is Nadav. He came out of nowhere and dominated as a freshmen (but he was like 24 years old so not sure that should count). But other than that I can't recall any UConn freshmen being significantly better than McNeeley. We may see more of it in this new era but my point is that McNeeley was pretty good and we should appreciate what he gave us in his one year with the team.
Overachieving is often a product of being put in the right situation. Josh Boone had the luxury of playing alongside Okafor his freshman year. Talk about sloppy seconds. Okafor would often get double teamed on the block. If he missed a shot, Boone was there to clean up and get the uncontested layup. He had almost as many offensive rebounds as defensive.
The feeling back then was that by just starting and having a significant role on a championship team Boone was better than his reputation coming in. He also was very good defensively and played the perfect role UConn needed with Okafor and Gordon being the big scorers. Remember he started over Villanueva who was a highly touted recruit coming in.
Clingan was incredible as a freshman but he had to share the center position with a junior star center and only played 13 minutes per game. Edey and Clingan had the best per 40 stats in the country.
Yup, beating out a McDonald’s All American alone was overachieving for Boone.
Granted, it is hard to tell just by looking at stat lines, whether a freshman was slow to develop or just was limited by an established star ahead of him in the rotation. My point is that in generally we aren't that hard on freshmen because we know they are young, still getting stronger and figuring out the college game speed.
OK. That could be, I don't recall. It's a nice story but he wasn't really a major contributor to that 04 championship.
His per40 that year was 10/10 and 3 blocks.