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Message: [QUOTE="DogMania, post: 5262153, member: 21"] No I don't! Taliek and Ricky were not role players. In fact they were both starting PGs for national championship teams. What I meant by role players are off the bench reserves, who didn't start, nor were part of the regular rotation. I do remember Taliek getting some criticism, but I always supported him. As for Ricky, I don't remember much negative threads on him, but that's a long time ago. He carried the offense for the first part of the 1999 national championship game against the supposedly pre-crowned Dook team and played lock down D all game long including the final shut down and go home stop against Trajan Langdon. The Boneyard can be relentless at criticising players, including starters and rotation bench players. Just about every UConn bigman from Travis Knight to Samson Johnson seemed to be targets. But IMO, Aidan stands alone as far as a lightly used bench player receiving constant bashing here on the Yard. He was the victim of both expectations and being recruited for a role he was not suited for. If he was brought here for a Joey Cal type role surrounded by better defenders and rim protectors he might have been fine. He's simply not a BE physical PG. Granted, he quickly lost confidence once there was a step up in competition. Though he had a few solid games, showing improvement on both ends of the floor. He was asked to do something that turned out to be not part of his skill set. Note that most of his teammates didn't exactly help him due to not executing the motion offense all that quickly or precisely, and he didn't seem to be a quick decision make when he had the ball in his hands. He was a defensive liability that opponents tried to exploit, but he wasn't the only poor perimeter defender. From all reports he was a hard worker. I wish him well and hope he has a successful senior year where ever he lands. [/QUOTE]

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