Here is why IM excited and NOT excited...

[bullpoke]

After last yrs... what ever you want to call it... I have a few thoughts.. I have said ALLLLL along that all I want to see is IMPROVEMENT. A team can SUCK but if they are Improving that shows me a bunch.

Last year I thought our Talent sucked.. this makes me excited because at least the COACH noticed it too.. and got rid of some of those players that I thought just didnt have "it"... Grade A+

I also saw huge Improvements with Johnson.. not sure why he really came on but Another A+.. being that we can improve. (now with that being said not sure why most of our other players didnt improve)???

Schoyers Offense?>>>> This is my biggest complaint.... IMO if your 5 man shoots a 3 pointer he sits on the bench.... period.. I dont care how good he was/is/or wants to be.. his role is and should be in the Paint. go in and get a freeking rebound and dunk it on some one.. THATS how you win games not out busting treys.. His 4 out 1 in just doenst put guys in position to get rebounds put backs ect and hence why I just dont see us ever getting somewhere...

I do think the talent will be much better and I think we will see improvement (at least I hope so) but just not sold on his O...

Any thoughts on that???

 

[UWWIND]

I agree with you about the talent. Johnson and Ewing were consistently good in conference play and Jones had his good games and bad games, but aside from them we had some inexperienced players and some players that simply were not up to par talent wise.


Its hard for me to put much stock into last year. Like you said, our talent was poor overall. It probably wasn't so bad that we could only win 12 games, but we just didn't have the type of players Heath wanted. We had a lot of guys that could do a couple things well, but in the offense we played this wasn't enough to do well. The offense is based on a lot of ball-movement and scoring activity from every player. This requires versatile and athletic players. We didn't have them. The same is true on defense; Schroyer wants to play with a team defense strategy. Our personnel wasn't athletic enough and versatile enough to make that work.

I do think the 4 out 1 in will work with the right players. We have more of them this year: Ogirri is more versatile than Jones, Thiam is more versatile than Nelson and Taylor, and Afam is a million times more versatile than Dermody and company. I'm no expert on offenses, but it seems that the 4-1 is based on a sound strategy: if you spread the floor with players that can shoot and drive and distribute the ball quickly and make quick decisions easy shots will result.

I don't think we'll be a great offensive team this year, but we should be much better. On defense I expect the greatest improvement, though. We have more capable defenders, especially at forward and center.