Originally Posted by
SilkyJ
I guess we'll be longer at the 3 by playing a true forward there most of the time in murphy, amile or hairston, instead of a 6'4"/6'5" guard like we did last year (Dre or Austin), but it seems to me our size at the 1 or 2 isn't going to change. Thornton and Cook will get 35-40 minutes at the 1, and Seth/Sheed should get 35-40 at the 2. Sheed has solid length at the 2, but the other guys are just average size
So you make up for lack of size with quickness (and good hands, smarts and craftiness). IMO, Tyler and Seth are just limited athletically in their quickness, so there's not a lot that can be done to change that. So it really seems to fall on Quinn or Sheed. I just don't expect Sheed to start and play 20+mpg though, so it really falls on Quinn. He had the knee injury last year and has this off season to get healthy and work on his quickness and defense. No one can say whether it will happen, but we have to hope it will, otherwise we're in for another potentially short March.
I'm sure this will shock no one, but I think a lot of this team's success will be correlated with how much Quinn improves as a sophomore. If he can win the starting PG job, hit a decent % from 3, and play better defense, we become a real force to be reckoned with...the most important improvement though has to be on defense. Someone has to be able to guard an opponent's quick PG/scorer, and the only people we can legitimately expect that from are Quinn and Sheed, and again, I don't expect Sheed to play enough to make that impact. (I would be happy to be wrong on the Sheed point, but logically, its tough to see him displacing Seth at the 2 or Quinn & Tyler at the 1, so he'll play backup minutes at both spots and be effective when I'm in, but he won't become a starter and 25-30mpg guy until next year.)