trueblue32

Yes and this also says Iso + kickouts. I really don't have a problem if an extra 4 times per game Williams + Segu are beating their guys off the bounce and kicking it out to Jack/Brewton (plz regain CC form)/Skogman/Segu/Williams. If a possession ends with any of them taking an open three that's a good possession imo

Mading has already said on social media that he’s not redshirting. It’s the player’s choice as much as it’s the coach’s decision. I’m sure they have dialog on what the playing time expectation is

“nothing has formally been brought to the NCAA to approve at this time.” Not to my knowledge but I could be wrong

No in basketball if you touch the floor in a regular season game and don’t have medical hardship that causes you to play under 33% of team games you’re burning a year of eligibility. football you can play up to 4 games and redshirt I believe

Bench production != depth. It may pan out that our depth isn’t good but with 3 clear best players, if rotations are properly managed at least 2 of them will be on the court at all times and most offense will run through them. Our top players being able to handle a larger workload is a good thing. We’ll get a better idea as we see a larger sample size and there is more foul trouble or health issues that challenge depth. So far Jones appears to be a capable backup true PG and Skogman appears to be a better big option than we had last year. Wild cards are Brewton regaining his form from Coastal and Mading developing since he’s not redshirting

Yeah I disagree, it feels like we're playing to lose by a close margin rather than trying to win. We could play that match-up 100 times and I can't imagine Brock wins that match-up in any. I know Hardnett wasn't healthy, but I can see a scenario where he or Mballa hits a couple threes, or blow by Dickinson a few times and get him in foul trouble. One of the primary reasons he's not in the NBA is he doesn't defend well on the perimeter. You gotta roll the dice in some of these situations if you're looking to pull off an upset like we did against Arizona. A more egregious example to me is like Dylan Swingle on BG last year. That kid was bad, but we'd start Brock as the token big guy as if Hardnett was going to lose us the game trying to defend Swingle. Or when Hardnett was in the game, on offense we'd have him float on the perimeter or in the dunkers spot rather than letting him handle the ball and make Swingle defend a ball screen. We've recruited a bunch of long, athletic, skilled bigs and I don't feel the staff has fully figured out how to utilize them yet

My takeaways from the first couple of games: -There were questions about who would step up and be a closer, Segu and Williams to me look like two guys that can get and make their own shot. Graves was a good player, but I don't think him being a creator was ever the best role for him. -I had concerns about Jack stepping in for Graves, but I think being a better shooter + lower usage is a better fit in an offense with the Big 3. He's rebounding at about the same rate, I still need to see more defensively -I'm not concerned about style points in the North Texas game. Their brand of basketball is winning rock fights. They were a top 50 defense last year and 350/357 in pace. There were 65 possessions last night, the last time we played such a slow paced game was against Coppin St. 12/10/2016. That's a style of game we've struggled with for the past 5 years, and we came out with a win on the road. I'll take it. -Hardnett being back is big, he doesn't post the rebounding numbers that Mballa does, so he doesn't get the love, but I think he's the best defender on the team. I'd like to see Mballa/Skogman split the 5, and Hardnett/Mballa split the 4. I like Brock but he's not one of our top guys, so if everyone's healthy I don't think he needs to start. One of my main criticisms of Whitesell is that he tries to match other teams rather than making them match us. Oats played 6'7" Jeremy Harris against 7'1" DeAndre Ayton, we don't need to be trotting Brock out just because the other team has someone 6'10"+

Yep I was just about to post that. That's a monstrous swing for there not to be injury/suspension news on Michigan's side. Kenpom spreads are generally sharp to Vegas spreads and KenPom has us losing by 17. I guess we'll see if any news comes out.

Vegas money is on our side as we started as 18.5 point dogs. This reminds me of the Ayton match-up. Back then we had Perkins, Harris, and McRae as outside threats to compromise Ayton defensively and they went 7-16 from 3 that game. We don't have big men with their track record shooting the 3 which is concerning to me. If we're trying to match Dickinson with Bertram I think it could be a long night

Tickets are on sale for the game vs. Canisius at Key Bank https://www.ticketmaster.com/mens-college-basketball-tripleheader-buffalo-new-york-12-18-2021/event/00005B66D2F94521

The compliance office account recently followed him on Twitter for whatever that's worth. Mading and Prather followed each other recently as well

Maybe the most important thing to me today is having Mballa/Hardnett/Skogman knock down some outside shots. Important for the trajectory of the season, but also I want Michigan to have tape showing that they can't drop Dickinson in ball screen coverage. If Michigan can get away with letting him clog the paint all game we don't stand a chance, they were #3 in 2-point defense last year.

I swear I was gonna post this whenever the Michigan thread started lol. Zaakir Williamson has some highlights of him scoring on your cousin at 1:26, 1:34, 1:45, 2:14, and 2:36 in this video. Not to disparage Dickinson but rather show Williamson against high level competition. I'd imagine he redshirts but he won’t be seeing anyone 7’2” when he starts playing in the MAC

Well that significantly decreases the intrigue of this game lol. Hopefully we get plenty of Mading/Jones/Blocker/Williamson minutes

I figured I'd get a game thread going for the first game (even if it's an exhibition) in person in a couple years. I gotta reiterate how I appreciate that we always get Daemen for exhibitions as they are a great D2 program that would beat a lot of lower level D1 teams. Daemen is the de facto #38 ranked D2 team as the 13th team receiving votes. They have already played 3 games beating the de facto #26 team, and losing to the #4 team by 11 points, and #3 team by 3 points. Their big man Andrew Sischo was a first team all-American. He's averaged 18.3 PPG and 9.0 RPG in his 3 career exhibition games against us. I've always wished we could poach him off of Daemen lol

Rigsby holding a UB decorated guitar doing one of the photo shoots that recruits do in uniform on their visits.

Yeah for a while they ran shuttles from the dorms to the games. I think it's a good idea, but it shows how easy you have to make it for a large percentage of students to get to a game. If people weren't taking the Stampede to the union and walking to Alumni from there, I'm not banking on them taking the Stampede, walking to the subway, riding the subway, then walking into Key Bank.

Sounding likely we get WKU and MTSU. From a conference standpoint, this is a good boost I think in basketball talent, however this won't get us out of one-bid territory so we're just adding more competition which isn't ideal. KenPom has a Program Rank metric that ranks programs based on his data going back to 1997. This round of realignment would see the MAC receive a slight bump in average Program Rank, although the conference doesn't move up at all in the conference rankings:

https://www.instagram.com/stories/keishawn3/2696759708094531203/ Rigsby was on campus for an official (presumably) visit this weekend

Saint Louis’ best player

More quotes from Whitesell in this video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=880536935929458 Notably he mentioned that Hardnett has competition from Skogman to start, Jones is ready to play a lot of PG minutes and Mading is making a bid for a lot of minutes. I think all of this was semi-expected, but it's exciting to hear him speak highly of younger guys. We know what we have in the returners but if they're being outplayed by young guys I think that's what takes us from #77 in KenPom last year to having the ceiling of a bubble-caliber team.

NIT field was half the size that it usually is. They would’ve been in in a normal year regardless

Hurley won 0 P5 games. While you view a 12 seed as the “promised land” that’s really not concerning to a P6 team. We also had 0 track record of maintaining that year after year. ‘19 is the first year we beat 2 P6s, ‘20 we beat 1 P6. ‘21 was a short COVID year, meh. Edit: also the most likely Cancun 2nd game is top 100 Saint Louis, and Id bet on UCI finishing top 100

Single game tix for Bonaventure are on sale. Not a ton of tix left on the primary market: https://mpv.tickets.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=23_bonnies_mbb_single_game_tickets_on_sale_now&utm_term=2021-10-20&agency=STBON_MPV&orgid=3535&pid=8970685#/event/8970685/seatmap/?selectBuyers=false&minPrice=18&maxPrice=38&quantity=2&sort=price_desc&ada=false&seatSelection=true&onlyCoupon=true&onlyVoucher=false Just grabbed our tix for a group of 5. Hope to see more UB fans there!