RipCity said:
I dot really want to take away from Purvis. It's hard being efficient when you're the only person on the floor creating your own shot. Hamilton racked up boards, but aside from that was awful yesterday. He threw away several passes, shot the ball horribly, and of course we saw him in the closing seconds. He's a freshman. I'm glad Calhoun is looking productive, but this team needs someone to find their 3 point stroke or they'll fail to stretch the defense.
Awful is too strong a word. Uneven or mediocre, yes. But in addition to the boards, five assists on this team is pretty good - especially when you figure Brimah cost him two early by missing shots at the rim and Boat wasn't there to kick the ball to. His defense was good, save for the out of bounds play when he ran into Facey and took them both out. He obviously rebounded. He made some mistakes on offense (turnovers and passing up good looks to take worse ones), but so be it. He has a lot on his shoulders as a freshman, and I like the learning curve he's on early in his career.
And actually what we saw in the closing seconds was Purvis try to create his own shot and he couldn't do it - he had to throw a bailout pass to Hamilton to avoid getting it blocked and then the onus was on Hamilton, who gave a good fake to create space and at least got to the line. That was about the sixth time Purvis had to bail on a shot in midair with a "hot potato" pass, none of which resulted in turnovers but they bogged down possessions. One of our problems this year is precisely that Purvis has had trouble creating his own shot well from the 2 (his good days have mostly been knocking down shots on kickout passes) and he doesn't create for others. Hamilton can clearly do both - he's created dozens of his own midrange shots and has been our best guy at feeding the bigs. Would be nice if Hamilton could be third in the pecking order as a freshman getting his feet wet but he's had to be second. Which means you'll see some mistakes.
They both need to get better, and I'm sure they will. I definitely don't think we've seen all that either of them will be yet. But at this point, I feel like Hamilton needs to keep getting the basketball for some fine-tuning and experience, while Purvis seems better suited to a limited role depending on others to create shots (or driving lanes) for him. If Purvis becomes better than that as he gets more comfortable and can be a consistent creator himself, great. We can sure use that.
