There's my contrarian!
This is a great post. It will be interesting to see how Jon operates. I do believe Jason that he's got his top 7-8 today. But is it set in stone?
One thing for sure we saw Kon's rating go up and Evan's go down since the early recruiting. I'm excited to see how the new players to our squad perform against tough opponents. Matter of fact I'm looking forward to seeing improvement from Tyrese and Caleb. We need to remember both were injured last season.
This is the elephant in the room for me.
I'm anxious to see how Jeremy does as the point-guard for a very good Baylor team. Wishing him the best unless it's against the Blue Devils.
For CTC 1, Kon had the best showing. I agree with you that Caleb was great in CTC 2.
The return part of the conversation can definitely be about how to land big-time recruits. Kara has been doing more with less. She needs to learn the secret of how to do more with more. Emilee Skinner hopefully helps with that. But that's more a topic for the women's thread.
We didn't see that in RSCI. Isaiah was 17 in the summer and 16 in the final. Kon was 15 and 14. They both had movement up and down in the individual ratings.
I made this point earlier. We didn't get a perspective on just how big this team is at CTC because both squads were huge.
I’ll buy the skepticism of Foster/Proctor improvement but I’m more skeptical of Roach playing PG. If you want more reliable but still inconsistent scoring, sure Roach has a track record there. Hopefully offense isn’t a huge issue with this team…
There can be downsides to size, though. I'm very interested to see how we do against small, quick teams. Duke's defense has traditionally had issues when it cannot contain dribble penetration, and we may have some weaknesses in that area, especially a guy like Kon. But it is hard to see those until you play live games against opposition you don't know.
I think Tyrese and Sion will be good defenders. Caleb has the tools to be a good defender but will need to show improvement this season.
I see those numbers and come to the opposite conclusion. In non-competitive games, I think your 8th man is getting more minutes than usual. I would expect them to log fewer minutes than their average in competitive games.
McCain played 31 min/gm and couldn't guard the chair I am currently sitting in. Kon has him by 4 inches and 20lbs. Kon will be fine.
I don't know if that is a fair comparison. Is it a swivel chair with wheels?
Jon didn't have Maliq, Mason or Sion to turn to last year.
Reports on McCain from the 76ers are positive on his defense -- plus having a nose for the ball.
I agree, I really liked Roach a lot and wish him well, but not a great distributor.
I want to chime in here since I'm with you, Edouble, about Mason, being one of his biggest proponents over the summer... but I also think Jason needs some defending here.
We're now under two weeks from our first exhibition and about a month from real game action. So here's the question: if Jon was planning for Mason to be playing big minutes alongside our key rotation players, why wouldn't he be practicing like it? I'm with Jason that I see no benefit to hiding something as innocuous as our 7th/8th man's role during an open practice.
If, for instance, the plan was for Mason to get 10 mpg at the 4 alongside a lineup that looks something like 2 out of our 3 guards (including Sion), Cooper/Kon, and Maliq/Khaman, wouldn't that be a lineup that would merit getting significant run during practice? I think most of us assumed that this would be a lineup we saw a lot this year, but the fact that it wasn't is extremely noteworthy/newsworthy... and it's the exact type of insight we're lucky to get from a guy like Jason for free
It's also worth remembering that rotations change over the course of the year. Just because this is what things look like now doesn't mean it won't be different in January. In fact, I think it's very possible that this is Jon's initial plan based purely off of talent and practice performance, but once this team gets punched in the mouth (proverbially speaking, of course) in game action he'll decide he needs the defense/toughness Mason brings.
Here's the final thing: Mason being a guy who has already shown his versatility and flexibility for four years at Purdue makes his situation a bit different. If someone with Mason's profile was a freshman or sophomore, I'd be more worried about his ability to shift into a bigger role when needed based on what Jason is reporting. But as a super senior who has been a swiss-army knife on a top-tier Purdue team, I think Mason is much better suited for a role that fluctuates based on the matchup, how freshmen like Kon stand up to ACC play, etc.
But, but, but... I was being told (not by you) in earlier discussions that this was the year we would have 9 guys averaging more than 12 minutes per game (even though that happened only ONCE during K's tenure and it also coincided with a significant injury of the team's best player).
