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Message: [QUOTE="billsin01, post: 1135423, member: 837"] Nice post. A comment and a couple predictions of my own: The comment: Cooney is completely confounding player who is hard to predict b/c we really don't have any even rough comps to him. For one, he's a redshirt player and he's here for a fourth season -- both rarities at SU. Secondly, he came in with a rep as a shooter but in his first taste of playing time had trouble hitting the rim, let alone making a shot. Then he put together one of the most confounding seasons I can remember last year. Hit 51% of his threes in the first 13 games. That number for that many games would be impressive regardless but he did it against some decent competition and in some games that could have gone either way. He then settled down and had a decent if not terribly impressive stretch during the first half of ACC play -- some pretty good games, some quiet games and the BC game when he went off. Then he finished with an absolutely atrocious 8 or 9 game stretch. So how do you predict cooney this season? I have no idea, but I'd suggest two things are likely. 1) He shows a bit more consistency. I'm fine with 40% for the first 13 as long as he's in the 35-40% range in the last 9. Will he be that consistent? Probably not, but hopefully he's made some improvement there. If he has, he's a key player b/c he's proven he's an adequate defender and not terrible ball-handler. Would it be great if he added a bit to his game inside the 3-point line? Yes, but I would argue that's not as important as consistency. 2) He would benefit from a more rest. I doubt it will happen b/c we know JB loves the guys he trusts. But Cooney has a ton of legs in his shot and the idea that he's going to start playing 37-40 mpg once Jan. rolls around has to make everyone nervous in March. Regardless, an improved Gbinije and maybe some contributions from BJ or Patterson at the 2, would go a long way toward making Cooney more valuable to this team. As for other predictions: -- Roberson leads this team in scoring. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on how he plays, but that's my guess. Roberson followed by Cooney and then maybe Joseph? -- This team plays at a faster tempo than we've seen the past couple years. The coaches have talked about this but we've gotten next to no transition buckets for two years and I"m not sure why. I love not turning the ball over but I really think the ability to make teams pay with fast breaks and secondary breaks after bad shots and turnovers is an important part of basketball in general, but particularly for SU which is not going to spend an entire game running precise half-court sets. -- Johnson struggles to find minutes and we start hearing transfer rumors. I'm obviously not hoping this happens but I think minutes *could* be hard to come by. Gbinije/Roberson/McCullough are ahead of him at , Cooney/Gbinije/Roberson (potentially) are ahead at the 2. The kid seems like he has great potential and maybe he starts making some of those jumpers he loves to hoist this season, but if not, it could mean a lot of pine time and given the fact that I don't get the sense that his family has any shortage of confidence in him, it could make for an ugly situation. That's all I've got. [/QUOTE]

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