Originally Posted by
shoutingncu
There's an interesting, albeit off topic, discussion in the HB thread.
So I ask this question:
Would you rather have a senior shooting guard turned point, who makes heady plays (few turnovers), but doesn't exactly dazzle with breaking down defenses, or an inexperienced point guard not asked to do much his freshman year, and admittedly, who didn't show very much as a result?
I actually think it's a pretty fascinating sports fan hypothetical. One team has all the experience in the world, but not much NCAA tourney success. The other has youth, youth and more youth, so the jury is completely out. Obviously, Duke has very good players, and the incoming freshmen should certainly improve the core. But those very good players have faltered in the tournament, so to praise their experience as the deciding factor, to me, is to be content with very good regular season numbers and little more. On the other hand, there's no way to tell how good youth will be, but they do have the players at each position. So, would you rather have no actual point guard, but upperclassmen in the spot, or a true point guard that has not been given the keys yet? (And this is not a question of depth, first because both teams are shallow at guard, but second because a player shouldn't be judged on what would happen if he weren't in the game).
Of course, it's all hypothetical. Duke would rather have their junior combo guard have the breakout season, and Carolina would like it's second year true point to have the standard freshman to sophmore jump.
Also from the conversation in the other thread, I agree that Drew II looked a bit like young QT, but if he can improve to senior year QT (an improvement I think happened out of necessity for Thomas, and therefore, may very well happen for Drew), well, I'll take that in a "rebuilding" year any time. QT had some very fine moments in '08, and if Drew can match that, well, we'll take some lumps, but man, we could be there at the end.