This is a deeply flawed team. Ball handling, jump shooting, rebounding, passing, frontcourt offense are all suspect. Not every game. But far too often and especially when we face a good defense.The inability to move the ball down the court or in-bound under pressure is , at times, is downright sad.
Yes. It's very frustrating because, individually, our first six guys are very, very talented.
The problem is that two of them (Brimah & Facey) are still new to the game. They haven't gotten as many reps against hungry opponents as almost every single one of their peers. Neither goes full-on "deer in headlights," but both have long stretches where it looks like they're kind of surprised at how intense and physical things are.
This is especially problematic when they set screens. I'd venture a guess that no "top" team in country sets worse screens than Brimah & Facey, which has only exacerbated the existing ball-handling problems. It's something I hope they both work on over the summer.
Hamilton & Purvis, meanwhile, play like AAU stars. They can both make some great open court plays, and have the talent to look like an NBA player at any given moment. The problem is that they can also look like a super-talented 15-year-old making the jump from JV to Varsity, so you get stuff like blocked jump shots and an endless parade of careless turnovers. I can understand why Hamilton makes those mistakes (he is, after all, a freshman), but with Purvis it's beyond concerning.
Calhoun has been a pleasant surprise, but clearly isn't 100% back yet and was never a ball-handler or passer anyway. Boat is a warrior, but as the only real veteran on the team... I mean, I'm not sure Chris Paul could lead this group to a season of solid play. Boat's got no chance.
That leaves the rest of the bench guys. They are - to be blunt - the fruits of our APR penalty & conference realignment hose-job. None of TSam, Phil, SCII or Rock should be anything more than a 10th man at this point, but here they are at Nos. 7-10 in our rotation. All of them have been asked to contribute big minutes, and none have really come through.
I'm not saying they don't belong - I'm glad that all of them are Huskies, and for TSam & Phil they locked up their UConn legacy forever in Dallas last year. But we missed out on guys like Josh Perkins, Abdul Malik-Abu and a handful of others over the past 2-3 years who I honestly believe we'd have landed if we hadn't gotten punched in the face by the powers that be.
It's frustrating as right now, and I'm running low on faith that it'll get better this season. But each of the last two classes have been better than the one before it, and while an NIT appearance won't help things at all, it also won't lead to the same crush of problems that the postseason ban and relegation to the AAC did.
At the same time, KO & Co. have now had a full cycle to recruit, which means they've gotten onto kids like Waters, Samuels, Brown, Japhet-Mathias and a bunch of others earlier in their recruitment (comparatively speaking) than they did for the 2014 or 2015 classes. With that kind of jump on things, combined with the fading memory of the postseason ban, I honestly think things will improve and we'll end up reclaiming a lot of the regular season consistency that's eluded us since the start of the decade.
In the meantime, this year sucks. I feel bad for Boat, and I want to see more from KO in terms of sanding down the rough edges on Purvis & Hamilton especially. The hallmark of the team over the past two years was how they improved over the course of the season, and to see that not happening has been a bummer.
By the way: Next year might suck, too. I expect all 9 guys to return, I expect all of them to improve in the offseason, and I expect at least one more top 100 recruit to join Adams & Enoch. But we'll still have a freshman running point, which is almost always a recipe for misery.
But!
But the year after that, in 2016/17... that's when we win our fifth title. And we'll be a top 15 team every year thereafter.
