Fred loves the coaches picking the Clones 5th in the Big 12 behind KSU, texass, OU, and KU. Motivates him and the team. I think most can see OU and KU but Fred could beat Barnes and weber with 8th graders. barnes is the most underperforming coach in the country and weber has already began his illinois type slide.
ISU just had a "scrimmage" with Minny and won 103-78 and didn't play McKay who is not eligible until December. Starting lineup was Morris Dejean-Jones(UNLV transfer), Naz Long, Hogue, Niang. Niang only played 20 min inthe scrimmage Fred has an issue he has never had this year...depth. We have No Illinois transfer Nader, McKay(Marquette shot blocking transfer) starting in mid December, Matt Thomas (PT starter last year), 7'1" greek Tsalmporous and frosh Custer. Legit 10 deep.
How does UCONN look this year? Lost a lot with Shabazz and Daniels but have to think Ollie has some talent to replace them
Looking forward to seeing what you guys have put together. I knew there must be a lot of transfers in the fold.
UConn has the pieces, its just a matter of if they gel right. We look to have some real offensive talent coming in with top 25 recruit Hamilton and Juco AA Sam Cassell jr. Purvis is a former McD's AA transfer who is currently our starting 2 guard. There's a lot of hype around him, we're waiting to see it with our own eyes and jumping to obscene conclusions in opposite directions after 1 scrimmage. I'm personally leaning towards concerned but that's not a popular opinion around here so early. Happy to be wrong.
The key to the season is Brimah. He definitely looks like hes taking a step forward in his ability to rebound the basketball and finish on lobs around the rim. While he has shown some back to the basket offense it looks easily disrupted if you body him and some attempts last night were not the nicest to look at. He also got into foul trouble which has been a problem. If he stays on the floor we have the potential for a huge advantage inside.
We have some unknowns at our 4 spot offensively, our best chance for offensive output at that spot looks to be Kentan Facey but he was very passive last night in our first look. The good news is we got some exceptional rebounding out of him (9 boards in 18 min) and he was supported by similar strong numbers from our 2 deep PF Rock Lubin.
Boatright flashed bazz like game takeover when things were looking dicey last night and it was intriguing to see him execute typical bazz plays in last years sets (a baseline jump step comes to mind). He won't be late shot clock heroics bazz but does seem to have good enough command of the team to lead in the right way.
I think we're going to take some lumps early but really put it together in late January and go on a run. Of course this may mean we lose the majority of our marquee out of conference games and then get penalized by the seeding committee, we'll just have to be content to make another run from a low seed.
Shooting is the key, if we have legitimate deep threats we can slash to the 2nd level and use Brimah to his biggest strength with lob passes at the rim. Otherwise we're going to be zoned to death.