Observations from Countdown and practice

I agree that Kon is in the likely starting five, but I definitely think he's the fifth starter. He is an offensive savant. He can pretty much score whenever he sets his mind to it. But while he is active on defense and works very hard, he just doesn't have the skill set to stay in front of many people. I think Scheyer will want to plug that hole from time to time, even if we lose a little of Kon's creativity on offense..
 
Folks, I am just telling you what I saw in a couple hours of practice today. Gillis is absolutely behind Sion in the rotation.

And I stand by my statement that Sion is a better defender.
 
JasonEvans said:
Folks, I am just telling you what I saw in a couple hours of practice today. Gillis is absolutely behind Sion in the rotation.

And I stand by my statement that Sion is a better defender.
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And I was sitting practically next to you the entire time, and I saw it differently. We'll see. In any case, it's still early October. We've got 2 weeks until we see even an exhibition game against real competition, and a month until the first official game. I don't think rosters will be set in stone before that.
 
SkyBrickey said:
I'm worried about him being disappointed, sure.

But he knows Kon is a better player right now. He guards him every day in practice.

At the end of the season, if Isaiah is looking at coming back to start for a coach and team and teammates he loves, I'm not sure why he'd leave to go somewhere else.

And hopefully we are beating a lot of teams by 20 at halftime so Isaiah and Darren do get to mix in some with the starters in the second half.
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This is how you build a program. When you are up 20+ with 10-12 to go, you need to start putting guys in and eventually empty it with 6-8 to go. I would rather win by 15-18 than 30+ if other guys played and get developed. I have a feeling this is gonna happen a lot this year. I hope Jon does it.
 
scottdude8 said:
This is an absolutely fascinating development. If Gillis, the Big Ten sixth man of the year and an unquestioned leader on last year’s national runners up, can’t carve out a solid role in the rotation that has to mean Kon and Sion have massively exceeded expectations. That, or Mason is not living up to expectations, but that would be super surprising for a super senior with the amount of tape he has. Can’t wait to hear more details on the pod!
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I don't think Gillis ever averaged more than 22ish minutes in any season at Purdue so I always pegged him for less here because we have more talent.
 
There is ZERO chance that Brown and Gillis don't play significant minutes.
For this and other reasons, this time COULD be our best defensive team in many years.
 
diveonthefloor said:
There is ZERO chance that Brown and Gillis don't play significant minutes.
For this and other reasons, this time COULD be our best defensive team in many years.
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But does that mean we are going 8 deep? Or do you have Gillis ahead of Sion or someone else?

Because I agree with Jason that Gillis is our 8th man. There's a positional factor here too. Proctor, Foster, Sion are clearly our three guards. Sion was even bringing the ball up some last night. So you'd expect those three to share the 80 minutes at the 1/2 in competitive games.
 
So, that means our first three subs off the bench are Malik, Sion, and Mason. And the signs (and prior year awards) are that all three of them are All-ACC level defenders.

I expect that we’re going to have a LOT of games where we have significant leads. We’ll give people minutes in those games.
 
dlmzzz said:
I expect that we’re going to have a LOT of games where we have significant leads.
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I hope you're right, but I think you're setting yourself up for some disappointment with this thinking. Team with only 2 returners, a highly involved freshman group, and a gauntlet of a schedule probably won't dominate as much as you expect.
 
teenagedreams said:
I hope you're right, but I think you're setting yourself up for some disappointment with this thinking. Team with only 2 returners, a highly involved freshman group, and a gauntlet of a schedule probably won't dominate as much as you expect.
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Well, one of the biggest problems with freshmen is consistency. If someone is having an off game, we’ll likely be replacing them with someone better than the equivalent player in the other team. I do think that will give us more games where we build up a significant lead.
 
Phredd3 said:
I agree that Kon is in the likely starting five, but I definitely think he's the fifth starter. He is an offensive savant. He can pretty much score whenever he sets his mind to it. But while he is active on defense and works very hard, he just doesn't have the skill set to stay in front of many people. I think Scheyer will want to plug that hole from time to time, even if we lose a little of Kon's creativity on offense..
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Free the Knueppel!
 
JasonEvans said:
BDW, Coach K became the top coach of all time in college basketball by ignoring everything you just cited. I see nothing to indicate that Jon is different in that regard.

Also, I was specifically talking about playing Sion less than 20ish so you could play Mason five more mins. Many of your points are targeted toward the larger issue of depth overall. My point is that if Sion, a guy who played 35+ for Tulane the past few years, is playing low-20s minutes, why would you reduce THAT so Mason plays more?

Sion is better. He should play as many minutes as Kon, CFos, and Reese sitting will allow him to.

Note- all the above goes out the window with an injury.
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To put this back in a context I'm comfortable with...do you really think a Board would hire a CEO and suggest they copy the approach of his/her very successful predecessor, who started his career 50+ years ago? IMO, Coach K was a great coach despite his short bench / lack of depth, not because of it.
 
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I thought Gillis was more of a forward and Sion more of a wing, and given our lack of depth at guard I was envisioning Sion backing up Foster and Proctor. I wasn't thinking of Gillis and Sion being in competition with each other for time, except maybe at a bodybuilding photo shoot.

Evans is the biggest wildcard to me. He looked smooth offensively at C2C, but he lacks strength and could get pushed around. I don't expect anything from Harris this year even though he is talented. Looking forward to hearing more details from practice on the pod.
 
I was impressed by Evans and he has not gotten much DBR love. It’s all been CFos, Coop, Kon, Sion, Man-Man, and even Harris lately. Look for Evans to play major minutes, if not start.
 
JasonEvans said:
At practice today, the starters were in white. Sion joined them reasonably quickly (sometimes for Kon, sometimes for Caleb). Maliq was next (for Man-man).

I think Gillis only put on the white once, and it was only for a minute or two.

I hear all the folks who say he is going to play 15+ mpg, but we have seen this story A LOT over the years and the ending is never different.

If the ACC championship game was tomorrow, I would project him for about 5 minutes played. There is nothing he does better than Sion (who’s outside shot is better than I expected) and I dunno why Scheyer would say, “Sion is getting about 20 minutes off the bench… but I should cut him to 15 so I can give Mason 5 more.” What is the rationale for that?!?

My bet, in a biiiig game —
Prcotor 37
Cooper 35
Foster 32
Kon 29
Man-man 25
Sion 20
Maliq 15
Mason 5
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The beauty of this team is that Gillis is still good enough to credibly play 15-20 minutes on a championship level team. He's already done it. Every season in recent memory, someone in the top 5-7 has to miss time during crucial games in the season. Caleb Foster missed the NCAA tournament last season. Mitchell missed the Tennessee game 2 years ago.

It's luxury to have a quality glue guy like Mason who you can trust when someone is in foul trouble or is out due to injury. And the best thing about him is that he's probably cool with playing 5 minutes and will still provide all the leadership and intangibles and no drama.
 
Wow! Well I guess we will have most of that experience we went out and got in the portal playing mop up duty. Sounds like same ol’ same ol’ to me!
 
Music man55 said:
Wow! Well I guess we will have most of that experience we went out and got in the portal playing mop up duty. Sounds like same ol’ same ol’ to me!
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No, they'll be playing key minutes. Sounds more like 2 or 3 of the freshman will be struggling for minutes, unless they earn more time in practice.
 
Music man55 said:
Wow! Well I guess we will have most of that experience we went out and got in the portal playing mop up duty. Sounds like same ol’ same ol’ to me!
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Drawing breathless conclusions based on a short period of practice makes no sense to me, but whatever.
Assuming Scheyer wants some continuity in his program, not playing guys like Harris and Evans will run the strong risk of departures. I don't think he wants that, but we'll see. I'm not buying into this narrative.
 
Keep in mind the Mason Gillis story as to why he came to Duke. The staff after losing to NC State wanted toughness and competitors . Coach CWell said they needed a Mason Gillis and he was their first call. His value is that he does whatever it takes and makes winning plays. There is value to having a person like that on the team and in daily practices versus playing a lot. So, I guess we will see how much he plays.
 
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