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Message: [QUOTE="newmexicuse, post: 2557813, member: 57"] Assuming Ty gone and the rest stay. How do we get better ? D - ty was very good at the top of the Zone. In half court sets he will be missed. However, we did not get many transition points. That will have to improve. Carey is a quicker player; hopefully, he can get more breakaways than we got with ty. the frontcourt should be better on D with more experience and by being stronger. Hughes is a wildcard, but let us assume he is a Ty lite on D. So let's just say that shaking it all out that the D is comparable to last season in terms of our first 7 (hughes or Carey and Sid comprising the 6th & 7th players). A D wild card is Buddy. How many minutes will he get. He may be a big three point asset on O, but on D he will lack experience, strength, and relative to jalen he will also lack quickness. D could be worse when he plays. in other posts i have been advocating a 40 minute soft press. That is even more necessary now because the depth of the team is the backcourt. Up front there is no depth. The soft press will buy precious seconds for the frontcourt players to defend less time. We have plenty of backcourt legs to implement this concept. O - biggest weaknesses last season were unimaginative O sets and three point shooting. During the tournament run, we did start to run more plays thru the post and that helped. gotta keep doing that more. in terms of three point shooting a big part of improvement will have to come from existing players. Frank and Oshae need to improve consistency. Can marek extend out to three with his push shot ? Carey and Hughes should be able to replace what Ty did from three range, though, of course, neither will replace the rest of his game. Buddy is a potential big weapon off the bench that we lacked last season. he should be able to provide at least situational minutes in terms of improving three point shooting. So at the very least, we will now have the capability to put four three point shooters on the floor at once. if marek can extend his range, potentially we could have a small ball lineup of marek, oshae, hughes, frank, and carey that could actually have five three point threats on the floor at once. And that still leaves buddy available !!!! Don't expect to see much of that lineup, but at least it exists as a possibility. If marek can't extend to trey range then the small ball lineup could still have four three point threats and now we could have chuk at the five for better d. As the team stand now, jimmy should have 8 pieces to work with. we could really use another big, and i will be surprised if we dont bring one in. but barring another body blow to the roster we should be better than last season. we might have taken quantum leap w Baz, but we should be able to take an incremental step with this group. [/QUOTE]

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