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Message: [QUOTE="Kemba Time, post: 3781494, member: 2962"] This game is such a perfect example of why every Alterique conversation on this site always turns into a giant argument of "He would be our best PG option and we miss him vs. he was so horrific, how could anyone ever think that?" If you choose to watch the 1:13:44 before that, he was a major part of the reason UConn was in a position to win this game. He was the key player during a run that took UConn from down to up 5 in the second half and clearly outplayed Gillespie on both ends ... and then he threw a pass that was very much the equivalent of missing two free throws with the game on the line, and that's all some remember. AG had his moments. He was a better player in a UConn uniform than anyone who says he was horrific is remembering. Posters who do things like choose to put up his stats over final 9 games instead of using his final 10 because 10 games ago he had 17 points on 66.7 FG and that would change being able to say he shot 31% to he shot 37% over his final games with UConn are wrong. I mean, seriously, who uses a nine-game sample size unless they are trying to make it fit for them. A simple look at the last five games after roles were settled going into the AAC tourney shows that he and Gaffney were pretty close to equal by the end of the season with a slight edge to AG, but that's not an argument worth having for the 1000th time now. People who say things like we wouldn't have been in position to beat Creighton with Alterique at PG are very wrong: We were in position to beat Villanova, Florida, Houston (twice), Xavier and Wichita with him at PG last year. What happened at the end of some of those games is another story (those Florida and Houston wins were fun nights) -- one that unfortunately often looked like the end of our most recent game. And it's amazing the way some constantly explain away Gaffney's 33% FG/26% 3FG and then say AG couldn't throw it in the ocean for shooting 37/31 in his career. And anyone who peddles the "we started winning when Gaffney took over the PG job" narrative is really ignoring that the schedule became much easier at that point. AG gets killed for close losses to Wichita, Nova and @Houston, who were all ranked at the time. Gaffney gets credit for taking over with a win against Temple and the only ranked team we played the rest of the way was the Houston win that Gilbert actually started and played 33 minutes to Jalen's 27. Bouk also developed into a much more consistent threat, Vital took his game to another level, Whaley took over a key role down low -- which would have solved a major issue of AG throwing dump passes that Carlton couldn't catch in the post, because Carlton cannot catch the ball -- and so much down the stretch had to do with having two capable PGs to share the load instead of needing one to do things like play 45 minutes with the ball in his hands of a 2OT Wichita State game because Gaffney looked like a deer in the headlights when good teams pressured him for the first half or so of the season. That said, Alterique's UConn career was undeniably a disappointment and it was time for him to move on. Some of it was injuries, we all know that. Some of it was coaching early in his career. Some of it was being miscast as the next Kemba/Boat/Bazz ball-in-his-hands guard when his game after those injuries clearly didn't support that. And some of it was his own on-court decision-making and an attitude of trying to prove he could do it all by forcing the issue instead of deferring when things started spiraling. It's really time for everyone on both sides of it to stop feeling the need to bring his name up every time our current PG play is the topic of discussion though. If you still feel the need to drag the kid over the coals, your New Year's resolution should be to not be a jackass on the Internet. If you feel the need to post that he would be a better option than what we have now, you are falling into the same trap those who relentlessly ripped AG did when he was here: Gaffney and RJ are our point guards now. Support them. There's no more need to focus on if we'd be better with Gilbert than if we'd be better with Kemba, Marcus Williams, Antonio Kellogg or Taliek. [/QUOTE]

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