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Message: [QUOTE="jordoo, post: 1182952, member: 569"] Thanks for taking the time! Glad to see you are back. I am going to disagree with you on a few things for once although they are more of an I think its too early to say 100% on some of these things. Possibly more orange tinted glasses and preferring to see the future potential than the actual now. I do agree that it will be a very interesting team to watch that can certainly do a lot of things that we wish we could have last year. There are a lot of interesting parts with different skill sets but most importantly a bunch of guys who can shoot and can drive. I'm not sure that we won't have some stars on this team though. Superstars probably not but Rak, Joseph and Chris can all certainly be star players this year. I'm also not ready to say our ACC ceiling is 4th or 5th simply because Kaleb, Chris and Tyler have only played one exhibition and its hard to say where they will be in 2 months. I also expect all three of them to improve on defense as the season goes along. I agree about Carlton not being as good as they are touted but conversely they have played together for a very long time and are allowed to practice and scrimmage/exhibition as much as they want. They have a good coach who had a great game plan against our zone and its young wings. He pulled them up on the overload and then tossed it down to the corner for open 3's. Then he started his guys driving on the close out while sending a cutter from the opposite baseline. Carlton had some excellent interior passing and they didn't hesitate at all at the rim instead going right up quickly. That combined with Rakeem getting into foul trouble is how they got their big lead. Still Carlton in the ACC season when all the teams have had their OOC would struggle and get worn down and be in the bottom of the standings although they probably would pull of a couple major upsets on nights when they had 3 guys shooting well from beyond the ark which is something they are capable of. A great first exhibition where as you mentioned we had to play to win in the second half. The next exhibition will likely be much different and I doubt we will see Kaleb, Trevor, Mike, Chris, Rak lineup for long stretches at all. Agreed mostly on all the player evaluations other than a couple of nitpicks. You did mention that Kaleb and Chris where bad on D and I agree but I would like to see you expand on that a bit. I felt they both tried but were simply lost more than anything. How much better do you think they can get on defense and how long do you think it will take until they are at least adequate. Obokoh is a downgrade from Rakeem so even if he plays well for himself he will have limited minutes. I am not throwing in the towel but seeing Chris and Tyler at the 5 in the first half is not a good sign at all for where the staff feels he is at right now. Is Tyler one of those players who really shows it in practice but can't quite pull it off in the game? You can see the gears turning when he gets the ball on offense in fact the one time he didn't think he made a tough little fall away 12 footer. He's not playing bball on offense and it looks like he's trying to think about his next chess move. I was very surprised to see how poor he played defensively after being here all last year. I want to believe that this kid is starting because he just needs to get into the flow and play but he has yet to show us any real proof that this is the case when he has played. Call me concerned. I though BJ played better defense on the back line than Chris or Tyler. He strangely didn't look to shoot or score much having just the one drive that started out nice and finished a bit out of control. We should see much more of him in the next game. [/QUOTE]

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