Czar
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- Aug 27, 2011
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I think we're going to continue to disagree on this.
As to your original points:
How much time do you give someone wandering around, not playing to his potential, unable to finish against anyone in the Big East.
He's shooting over .550 from the field - even if it's all dunks, it shows some aptitude to finish. Not even sure what you're talking about w/ the wandering around comment. I've never seen him end up sitting by CTO in the middle of a play. The kid gets yanked after every miscue - if he lacks confidence, or plays tightly, I can't blame him for that. If he seems to lose interest, well, I would too i I went entire games w/out one person passing me the ball outside of the one bailout pass from MCW per game after he leaves his feet (and honesty it's not NEARLY the issue some of you make it out to be).
It takes a special player to keep his motor running non-stop just to rebound. It really does. I've said it before, it's not an admirable quality, but it applies to lots of big men. If they don't touch the ball, they tend to have What moments where they lose focus. It's not all that out of the ordinary or just a Rak problem. And as of late I haven't seen him doing it much.
Want to touch the ball? Get a damned offensive rebound and put-back. JB doesn't stop him from that.
Really? Want to touch the ball, get a rebound? I don't know, seems like a philosophy. Our guards cannot shoot, why not let some of the other people that cannot shoot try missing too. See my point above - half the time he's up trying to set screens, and he still is second on the team in offensive rebounds. Still shoots .550 plus from the field. It's not like he's the walking dead.
If you actually watched the games you might discover the "bizarre reasons" he gets pulled for. Or do you actually think JB is pulling him just for kicks?
Why did he get pulled in the first half today? He gets pulled off one mistake, JB is notorious for that (it tends dissipate Sophomore years, but to Rak's discredit there has been sometimes where he's lacked intensity and he seems to be in some permanent dog house because of it - Baye gets a much longer leash imo) - it's not a new thing.
If the player behind him offered up a bit more, I wouldn't care. If it was for DC, and DC getting touches to develop his game, so be it. Baye comes in and offers up very little - certainly not more than Rak, and can make the same mistakes and stay in (let's not pretend that making mistakes is just a Rak thing - it's absurd but it feels like a lot of u think that). I just find the rotation confusing. That's all.
Again, Rak was the only player in the UConn/G'Town game that was a net positive, when Baye was in both games we got destroyed. Yet Baye's still getting substantial minutes and foul trouble wasn't an issue in either loss. Maybe Rak was fatigued, but he's played longer stretches, and since he's resting all the time anyway when he's on the court (supposedly) he should be fine to stay in.
By no means am I arguing Rak is great - but he's serviceable, and we do little to use him. He does need to be more productive on the boards, but as I said before, there is a ton of time where he and Baye are 1 on 3 on the boards because the forwards are always rushing in late. You have to be a pretty exceptional rebounder to excel under those circumstances, neither of them are to begin with so it gets accentuated a bit more. Especially with Baye because he lacks strength.
This team sucks offensively, I don't see why when he posts up, and he does, we don't toss it in there once in awhile. See what opens up. It's gotta be better than jacking up threes w/ our sub 30% guards.
And he does box out - ur mental or maybe kept watching the Georgia game and didn't realize it if you missed that for an entire game today.
Rak: 5 in 22
Fab: 5.8 boards in 25 last year
I agree with everything you say. Playing Baye is like playing Jeremy McNeil. And as much as I loved McNeil, he never should get more than 10 minutes per game.