Details. I want them.
nickerson- was very impressive. very smart player. moves well without the ball and knows how to take it to the hoop. had a great pass for a wide open layup. needs to improve his outside shooting a bit but the sky is the limit for him. may end up being our best player by mid season. there i said it.
williams- had a couple nice drives for layups, good defensively. not a whole lot else to analyze since he only got a limited amount of shots.
mayfield- i expected more from him today, missed a couple threes. finishes strong at the hoop. like his defense.
henry-very strong defensively. appears to be a good passer and has good court vision. didnt look confident shooting from outside. very vocal.
luka-like henry, his shooting may have been affected from having to wear a mask. i didnt love his ballhandling but he has good size and bulk.
thorne-good size. plays solid defense. hit a mid range jumper and his free throw which were good signs.
ivankovic-had five points and an and one, defense was okay but hes not skilled enough to play a lot of minutes. good role player.
bradbury-didnt play.
braswell looked good. his post moves appear to have improved and he hit a three. deuce hit three threes including one with 1.1 seconds left to go ahead in the game. colby got decent minutes but didnt do a lot. derrio looked the same. it was tough to get a read on the team in a twenty minute scrimmage but i think we will be good if we can find a consistent outside shooter and stay healty.
predictions
nickerson is starting by mid season over barnett. he is too skilled to stay on the bench and barnett didnt show me anything. thorne shows rapid improvement throughout the season. deuce keeps his starting job but derrio and mayfield flip flop throughout the season. henry plays more minutes than luka.
Soā¦
First off, for anyone not there, this was a real scrimmage. Guys were really getting after it. Fouls, floor burns, all of it. It looked like game conditions.
We have a lot of very similar sized players with very similar overall talent levels. But indivudally, they have different skill sets. Trick will be finding the right mix. I am not sure who will start, but I saw no one who wasnāt capable of contributing at this level.
I still do not know who our PG is. Saw good and bad out of every candidate. I think thatās going to be an ongoing question unless the staff is seeing something in practice that we didnt see today.
I felt really sorry for Pierria and Luka. Those masks suck. I saw Pierria without his. Ouch.
Pierria was kind of all over the place. I need to see more of him before I get a good read. Luka looked like the mask was bugging him.
Nickerson has the potential to make an immediate contribution in our halfcourt sets. He creates problems for defenses. He is absolutely adept at feeding the post. He drops passes inside, in close to the basket, that hit our bigs in stride, so they can spin and finish. He also slashes to the basket well and is tall and loooong, and can finish if he gets a step on you. He needs some work on D and Iām guessing weāll only want him jump shooting when heās left open.
TWill is a lot closer to ready than I thought. Heās bigger and stronger than I thought. He has some moves and attacks the basket well. That said, he disappeared in the 2nd āhalfā.
Thorne is HUGE. Legit size. Not paper size. Iām gussing he is a legit 6ā9 1/2 in his socks. Maybe a full 6ā10, and he is stronger than I thought too. He is not in shape though. Got winded after just 3 or 4 up and downs. Heāll see limited minutes until he gets his conditioning right. Remember Phil early on? Yeah.
Ilija is not just 5 fouls. Heās smart, rough, and plays hard. Can definitely see him being a situational enforcer, and he will help us in half court games on both ends of the court. Was very pleased to see he was more than I expected.
Mayfield, Henry and Voncina didnāt have partcularly good games.
Braswell looks better than I thought. Honestly, based on his accounts of his summer, I thought heād be out of shape. He looks ready to go, and like I said earlier, will probably benefit the most from having EVic on the floor. JB and KJ look about the same as last season. Briscoe and Green too.
I can see us having to tough out some nailbiter games when we cant shoot the ball. I think interior post D and pressure on the opposing PG will be issues for us, but I dont think rebounding will. Weāll probably do that by committee. If we ever get Thorne in shape, he looks like a potential defensive rebounding machine.
So, some good things. I think we need a couple of months to work on it though. I definitely see what we were thinking with the non-conf scheduling.
Wouldnāt read too much into Luka or Henryās handles today. Luka said the mask essentially made him blind except for what was right in front of him. Should be getting better ones soon. Explains why he lost the ball between his legs in the corner and had no idea where to find it.
thats what i figured.
Very impressed by Nickerson. The other freshman will need time IMO but are ready physically. Tough to tell on Henry and Voncina as has been said. The new 7 are not shooters. Derrio, Deuce and JB will have to hit some shots. Will have a lot more layups and transition baskets.
First, it was a scrimmage. Yes they hustled and were really into it, but we wonāt know what they can do until itās a real game.
With that said, I really liked all of the plays towards the basket. There seemed to be an emphasis on attacking the basket and using the big men in give and go situations, pick and rolls, low post plays etc. That type of focus will open up the three point line and I think we have a couple of guys that can hit them but it will not be a primary tool in this offense.
Scoring
Deuce 13
Braz 11
Evic 7
Green 6
Mayfield 6
T Will 5
Ilija 5
JB 3
KJ 0
Pierra 0
Luka 0
Colby 0
Bradbury 0
This was a legit scrimmage. In the past, our Green vs White games were full of fast breaks and street balling with little to no defense. Definitely not the case. It was only 20 minutes, and against ourselves, but we played disciplined. Very good ball movement and defense. Ballhandling was a bit off, but that Luka and Pierra were wearing masks, so donāt take anything from it. We donāt look to be a very good shooting team, but we took smart shots.
My first impression was WOW we look tall and muscular. None of the new players look too weak to play the college game. EVic is by far the skinniest, but he fought pretty well in the paint - and he is looonnnnng and can get up there. Thatās another thing that impressed me, Evic, TWill, Pierra, and DeMario have game above the rim. My second impression was that there wasnāt a major talent disparity between the new and returning players. If I didnāt know who was who and you had asked me to identify who I thought were freshmen, and who I thought were upper classmen, it would have been difficult. Past green vs white games featured upper classmen scoring the bulk of the points and new comers struggling to keep up.
Itās going to be very difficult to say who starts. I say there are only 2 certains: Braz and Deuce. Braz looks more comfortable in the post and had some real nice moves. Deuce looks to have the best scoring potential on this team - and we look like we are still going to need offense. A lot of you are high on KJ starting at PF, but I was not impressed with him. I know this is just a scrimmage, but he missed a lot of point blank shots, fell into opposing players when attempting to make shots, and aside from 1 big game last year, has yet to show anything that would make me want to start him. The problem is that, aside from him and Braz, we have no true PFs. This is going to sound crazy, but if what I saw today holds true, I would start Ilija at C and Braz at PF. Not because Ilija was so impressive, but because he didnāt randomly run into people on defense, and because he only took shots he had a chance of making. We have an infinite number of wing players. EVic looks to be very dangerous off the outside wing, and I suspect that even as a freshman he will be a definite upgrade over Anjuan Wilderness. SG is another position that we have an infinite number of options. I am going to guess that Green will start. He was off in the first āhalf,ā where he missed open shots and didnāt generate much offense - but when the 2nd half came around he hit a crazy hard to hit off balanced shot, forced a turnover, and made 2 driving baskets. I feel confident in TWill and DeMario as backups.
Yeah I noticed that also, the main scorers were the scorers from the last few years, Biscoe, Green and Braswell, there were a heck of a lot less jump shots and more layups and drivesā¦ but I think we knew thatās what Major has been trying to do with the way he recruits.
I guess Iāll give my other opinions if anyone caresā¦
Positives-
Like others have said we are BIG! Luka and Henry are big PGās and E Vic and Thorne are huge out there.
I think Thorne will get some decent run this year, he held his position and was confortable in his size.
Everyone hustled and didnāt force as many shots.
Negatives-
I hope Mayfield just had a bad game because I didnāt see anything spectacular, if heās our starting 2 or 3 this year we are in trouble, JB missed a lot of shots also but we know he can hit those in the game.
Ball handlingā¦ but like others said, both PGās had masks on.
We are either one of the best defensive teams in the A-10 or we are going to score 50 points a game, baskets were hard to come by. But the players played hard and you can tell are playing hard D. Still a lot of unknowns, am ready to see how the rotation goes for the first game.
Thanks for the reports.
I donāt mind not having lots of shooters out there, but you do need at least one deep threat. I wonder if we have to try to make sure either Barnett (~40% from 3) and/or Briscoe (~43%) are out there at all times.
Even though itās just a scrimmage, I like hearing positive things about our post player backups. I was getting pretty pessimistic about them. We need more than just 10 more fouls out of Thorne and Ivankovic this year.
Not surprised to hear about the little things Nickerson was doing, sounds exactly like the things he did for his high school team.
Would like to see the whole scrimmage, but at least from the clips we seem to have a number of pretty good athletes now, with a lot of good size. That will help for playing defense with so much inexperience.
Iām looking forward to the season getting started so we can see these guys in a real game.
ā¦ anyway, hereās the women, tooI noticed one big improvement from last year in those highlight clips. Not a single under-the-basket shot on either end. Hallelujah!
The zooming in when the shot went towards the basket was a bit troublesome though (hard to see action after the shot, like fouls and rebounding). The zooming on the player that just made a shot is ok, but no need to lose the action while the ball is still very much in play.
Overall, the video was well-done I thought.
[color=green]I was actually impressed w/ KJ. He very active in reboundingāthat 1 play where he got his own miss twice was beast. He also had like 2 shot blocks. Great defense, havenāt seen true offense tho. Thorne and Ivankovic also impressed meāIvankovic has potential to start (only b/c of lack of true C, but also b/c he is more than just 5 fouls). Thorne also, played great and could potentially start down the road.
Deuce never fails to impress meāI donāt think he missed 1 shot in the 2nd half of scrimmage! We have much better handling now w/ more playersāshould create less turnovers. But, Derrio is doing the same things he always doesātaking questionable shotsā¦
Glad to hear Thorne and Ivankovic sound like they can provide help and that we actually played a competetive āpracticeā rather than a no defense streetball fest. Also, glad that there wasnāt a guy there pouting and refusing to shoot.
Its just one short practice, though. Guys can go from looking great to terrible and back again in the course of a season. Not that worried about JB and KJ, we know what we have there. Was interested to hear about the new guys, so thanks for the comments and the videos.
I missed why Luka and Henry are wearing masks, if it was posted anywhere else. Practice injury? How long do they have to wear the masks?
[quote=āX-49er, post:16, topic:25805ā]I missed why Luka and Henry are wearing masks, if it was posted anywhere else. Practice injury? How long do they have to wear the masks?[/quote]Both have broken noses (suffered during practice).
Hell of a practice! ;D
Henry broke his nose on Monday and Luka broke his the day after.
We spoke to Luka in the locker room tour and he said he is having surgery on Monday. Heāll get a better mask on Tuesday (where he can see out of it). He might or might not have it on by the time of the first game. Basically doctorās call.
Luka said the vision in the current mask was horrible. He had no peripherals.
Henryās black eyes were huge. I hate to see our guys hurt but at least we know they are practicing hard. From the scrimmage today, it looks like our team works harder than the one last year.
Thanks for all the input guys! Us out-of-towners appreciate it!!