Fan Day

1.) Most athletic team I’ve seen since I’ve been a student (this is my 4th year). Its nice to finally have more than 2 guys that can finish above the rim
2.) Demario didn’t play for some reason. Injury? Did I miss something?
3.) TWill is the real deal
4.) I forgot how crafty Pierria is on defence
5.) Braz still taking 3s
6.) Love energy from the new guys and sophs
7.) Willie Clayton has to work on free throws
8.) JT Thompson needs to work on shooting
9.) Seems like team chemistry is good (right now)

Starters Prediction:
PG: Pierria
SG: TWill?
SF: Demario
PF: Braz
C: Thorne

I’d also like to see both Clayton and Clark get a lot of minutes rotating in.

Other thoughts?

Spoke to Mayfield today. He is suffering from a high ankle sprain he sustained in practice. They are targeting him to return by Nov. 9th. Will most likely not take part in the exhibition against phifer.

My fan day impressions:

We are now pretty much a 180° from Lutz ball in terms of the style of team we have. This team is big and athletic at every position, but also, unsurprisingly, appears to be challenged to shoot jump shots. We only have one small player on the entire team (Ingram), and he appears to be the type of crafty little guy that inhabits most rosters.

The only question mark on the starting lineup IMO is whether JT Thompson starts. Common sense says yes, in terms of experience, he brings a lot to the table. But based on a limited scrimmage, it looks like we have a lot of viable 4 guys, including our Sr C who should be playing 4. I havent seen enough JT or the new guys to make the call there. Otherwise, the starters are going to be what everyone has been guessing: Henry, TWill, Mayfield, Bras, X. That may be our best 5, but that is a team that will face a 2-3 zone every night except for teams that specialize in man to man.

As I said in the season prediction thread, and encouragingly, Major hinted at it, for this team to succeed, heck - for it to even average 70 PPG, we are going to have to turn up the pressure on defense to create turnovers and stay out of a halfcourt offensive game. If we have to play halfcourt for 40 minutes, we might have trouble scoring 60 most nights.

So we have depth and size for more guys to play all out, and I am hoping it translates to 5-10 more easy pts in every game, and that could easily flip flop our record from last year. Here’s hoping.

The pessimist in me says we also lost any semblence of a put-the-team-on-his-back shooter - we have no Leemire or even a JB on this team. That is going to cost us some games too. We’re going to have to be more consistent from timeout to timeout, because we have no one who can shoot us back into a game.

Quick comments on a a few guys:

Pierria - looks 100% again. (thankfully).

EVic - bigger, but big enough? Maybe not yet. Didnt take a jumper.

Thorne - RAW. This season, I suspect we use him situationally. He is still a matchup problem for small teams, but I do not think he is ready for major minutes yet. He’s probably best suited for solid off the bench minutes, and to exploit a small post defender, which he can do.

Clayton - really hard not to love what you see on first glance. He may be the first big we’ve had who looks and plays bigger than his listed height. He has a motor and tons of charisma. Flaws - his hands when he takes lots of contact. FTs were an adventure.

Clark - if he were 2 inches taller, he’d be the feature player in every write up on us. I still do not know what his position is. He’s not as thick as I remembered, but he is very athletic and has a nasty streak.

Ingram - we have a legit backup PG. Not sold on his jumper tho, and yes, he’s small, especially on this team.

Benkovic - our best hope for a shooter. This kid is huge compared to what I expected. He might be an inch smaller than Evic, maybe less (he looks 6’5 on the court). He’s still freshman skinny and he plays deliberately (good and bad). Had one really nice looking stroke. The rest was kinda meh - finding his way out there.

TWill had the wake-the-place up play on an alley from Evic on a break. He is absolutely explosive. Did not see him make a jumper though. Even in warmups.

All of the freshmen looks like solid role players this season. Depending on JT’s health/effectiveness, Clark or Clayton could possibly see some significant PT. I do not think any of the freshmen (including Thorne) are ready to be difference makers in year one, but they all look like contributors with future starting potential.

The season will come down to how well we defend, and failing that, if we can find a dependable shooter to play at the 2. What we really need is another dependable scorer to compliment Bras & Mayfield.

Here’s a quick synopsis. This will either be the best team Major has had and maybe the best team we’ve had since 2005 or it will be the worst shooting team we have had in a long time.

[quote=“NinerAdvocate, post:3, topic:27030”]The only question mark on the starting lineup IMO is whether JT Thompson starts. Common sense says yes, in terms of experience, he brings a lot to the table. But based on a limited scrimmage, it looks like we have a lot of viable 4 guys, including our Sr C who should be playing 4. I havent seen enough JT or the new guys to make the call there. Otherwise, the starters are going to be what everyone has been guessing: Henry, TWill, Mayfield, Bras, X. That may be our best 5, but that is a team that will face a 2-3 zone every night except for teams that specialize in man to man.[/quote] Thanks for the observations, I didn’t get a chance to see any of it.

I’ve been a bit disappointed to see how rough Thompson’s jumpshot seems to be, but then rust is probably to be expected, hopefully it comes around.

I agree the 2-3 zone is going to be a big pain this year. Our main hope is going to be that Henry (~33%) and Mayfield (~30%) can up their shooting percentages from 3. I bet we’ll see Braswell drift out and shoot a lot of 3’s too. Not sure how I feel about that. He can hit them in the right circumstances, but when the better defensive teams force him to shoot from outside, he tends to force things. Whatever we get from the sg spot will probably be bonus, but I’m not expecting that much from outside this year.

It’s silly to read too much into these things, but I did see Henry’s 3 shot at MM, and it wasn’t nearly as much of a rainbow as what he was putting up last year. Hopefully that’s a sign of how his shooting arc will look this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him improve quite a bit.

Henry’s J didnt look effective in that limited scrimmage, but he is once again very effective at getting to the cup.

Ingram can quick his way there too.

The only smooth J I saw all afternoon was Benk’s 3 in the 2nd half.

I should have mentioned the score… it was tied I think at 13 each after 20 minutes of play. Yeah, they were going at it for real (some surprisingly hard fouls), but if that gives you an idea of scoring efficiency. They picked it up in the little 4 minute OT, final was 21-20.

I feel like a lot of the time you don’t see this guy coming… he just shows up and we all feel like he’s been playing like that forever. I’m hoping that’s the case.

This has not been mentioned, but Colby Lewis was the offensive star today. He was 4 of 6 from behind the arc, and the two that he missed were kind of rushed and/or off balance. He played the entire game (some guys were subbed in and out), and they were running set plays for him to get a shot. I know people will laugh and scoff at this idea, but I would not be surprised to see him get 5 or 6 minutes a game off the bench to provide a scoring spark. When his feet are set, he DOES, NOT, MISS.

Other observations… Darion Clark is a BEAST, and will be a force on defense. Pierria will lead the league in steals easily. Mike Thorne is VERY quick and mobile for a 6’10 240 center. Twill looks ready to take on the starter spot at the two, but still needs a jumper. Denzel Ingram is quick and crafty with the ball. Benkovic didn’t seem comfortable most of the game, but did sink and absoluetly beautiful three kind of fading away at the top of the key. JT Thompson didn’t impress too much, but looked solid. I highly doubt he starts, and if he does I can’t see him playing a ton of minutes. Willie Clayton will relieve a lot of the post scoring stress from Braz. He has legit pf size and skills, even as a freshman. Evic didn’t really do anything that made me think he’s made strides from last year, but he also didn’t attempt a single jumper.

Please keep in mind this is all based off of a short scrimmage.

Our D is nasty and effective, but our O needs a lot of work. Overall I am optimistic though (as I always am).

I cannot freakin wait for the season to start!

Short hilight clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duPqG9qk4U0&feature=plcp

If Colby Lewis was the offensive star we’re f’d

i was going to say. someone give colby some props. he looked great as a shooter coming off screens. he cant create for himself but he will need to play this year at times to give us that outside shooting threat. thorne needs to go up quicker with the ball but he looks promising. clayton looks like he has good post moves and can rebound. clark is a beast but him and clayton need to work on their free throw shooting. i am concerned about nickersons and williams outside shooting. it did not look a lot better. benkovic looks to have a nice stroke but nothing else. i love henrys defense and intesity. he is definitely the leader of this team. i liked what i saw from ingram. it looks like he can run a team and give us another ball handler and is good at driving to the hoop. there is no reason we should not be strong defensively and rebounding. not having lester hurts because we need his outside shooting but i am encouraged at the new guys. thompson looks solid but i thought his jumper was going to be better but maybe he is rusty.

also, nickerson looks like he grew and could be about 6’8" now.

Nickerson looks like he’s 6’6, just an inch shorter than Clayton.

[quote=“2k, post:13, topic:27030”]Nickerson looks like he’s 6’6, just an inch shorter than Clayton.

[/quote]

he must be slouching there. he looked as tall or taller than clayton in person. he is definitely taller than 6’6".

Wait so why can’t Vic be 6’7 and Clayton be 6’8? Not that it really matters if we don’t win.

Guess it depends on whether you think Braz is 6’9" or 6’8". Clayton looks to be about an inch shorter than Braz, and EVic looks to be about an inch shorter than Clayton.

[quote=“NinerAdvocate, post:3, topic:27030”]My fan day impressions:

We are now pretty much a 180° from Lutz ball in terms of the style of team we have. This team is big and athletic at every position, but also, unsurprisingly, appears to be challenged to shoot jump shots. We only have one small player on the entire team (Ingram), and he appears to be the type of crafty little guy that inhabits most rosters.[/quote]

I know this is only a snippet from your entire review. But sometimes you guys make it sound like we previously only had midgets. Or…that the current roster is more similar in size to a Syracuse.

I still see a 6’8" Braswell starting at C. See Kelvin Price or Martin Iti. A 6’7" Clayton at PF. See Withers or Cam Stephens. A 6’5" Mayfield at PF. See Lamont Mack or Eddie Basden. A 6’4" TW at SG. See Jobey Thomas or Deangelo Alexander. Perhaps the only significant size difference is at the PG, with 6’3" Henry.

[quote=“Normmm, post:17, topic:27030”][quote=“NinerAdvocate, post:3, topic:27030”]My fan day impressions:

We are now pretty much a 180° from Lutz ball in terms of the style of team we have. This team is big and athletic at every position, but also, unsurprisingly, appears to be challenged to shoot jump shots. We only have one small player on the entire team (Ingram), and he appears to be the type of crafty little guy that inhabits most rosters.[/quote]

I know this is only a snippet from your entire review. But sometimes you guys make it sound like we previously only had midgets. Or…that the current roster is more similar in size to a Syracuse.

I still see a 6’8" Braswell starting at C. See Kelvin Price or Martin Iti. A 6’7" Clayton at PF. See Withers or Cam Stephens. A 6’5" Mayfield at PF. See Lamont Mack or Eddie Basden. A 6’4" TW at SG. See Jobey Thomas or Deangelo Alexander. Perhaps the only significant size difference is at the PG, with 6’3" Henry.[/quote]

The only thing Normm is that we didn’t always have those type of guys on the court at the same time. In my mind this team looks like they are the most physically gifted team since the mid 90s. Now we have to remember most of these guys are freshmen and sophomores that we are talking about. The fact that we practice physical will only help us when we play teams less physical than us. I see our offense as the type that drives and crashes the boards more so than shooting.

Norm makes a good point, about the starters at least. The big difference I see is that we are deep with size (wow, that sounds kinda dirty). We will be able to keep a size advantage over a lot of teams even when we have to turn to our bench. I would not be surprised to see someone step up and become a big shooter for us. You can’t always predict who it’s going to be, will just have to wait to see as the season happens.

I’m rather excited about this team and I should be back in the US in time for the season opener. Cannot wait.

Nice. Where can I get myself one of those luvly posters…