I am ‘out’ on Devo as a broadcaster. Fan favorite, I know. So this won’t be a popular rant, but… his experience and fan appreciation of him and his microphone didn’t impart intelligence or logic. He consistently rationalizes our failures with the ridic excuse that this ‘new era’ is challenging because of the need to blend players from other programs, etc. Well, that’s the case with just about every other team too. That will be the case going forward. Not an excuse. He had another excuse—that we could have been a 9-4 team if not for losses by just a few points. Yeah, well, that’s what wins and losses come down to. Derp. And yeah, we could have lost a few of those games we won by just a few points. Dumb. That bit about the fans on social media not having a clue…. Glass houses and all that.
Just massive, illogical homerism, defying both fact and logic. He reminds me of Christopher on The Sopranos, mixing up/melding common idioms and phrases. Chris once said if Adriana, when describing her experience managing clubs(?), “She’s been wanting to get her teeth wet with the entertaining….” I wish professional communicators could communicate good. A well communicator knows all the better sayings. Just saying.
We don’t have athletic advantages anywhere on the court. We have a 6’10” 5-star, and I can’t remember him ever dunking. I’d be surprised if our entire team has more than two alley oops on the season, while other teams get four or five on us per game. We are constantly stuffed at the rim. Fast breaks? A memory.
The defense is still atrocious. Freeman has no clue. Is he hurt? He limps back on d from time to time. He sags off guys who then just take open jumpers on him. And make them. Is this from the coaches? If so, it’s insane/incompetence. Lampkin still overrotates and goes way too far on switches and hedges and leaves his man and the lane wide open. Cuffe and Lucas are bordering on ’good,’ except for their occasional lapses. I actually saw Bell defending well for spells today. Shocking!
Good to have JJ back, on the timeline indicated by the announcers weeks ago.
Still far too many really bad unforced errors. From everyone. Still too difficult to get the ball inbounds. Playmaking? What’s that? A guy dribbles at the top and four guys stand around. Lampkin’s Magic passes have disappeared. Because teams are ready for that now, or because no one moves/cuts anymore? They double Lampkin in the post and expose his clumsiness.
We had back to back plays with Freeman shooting midrange jumpers. The second of which was a nice recognition from Petar. Maybe the staff should let Petar design the offense and call plays. Anyway, so, those two plays were beautiful, so of course the next time down the court when they went back to it, it was a disaster. Oh, wait—no, they didn’t go back to it. I said when Freeman was a recruit that he would be most effective in an obvious system, where plays are designed and called for him. Not to have him just roaming and factoring into random circumstances. He’s not getting those system situations.
I remember 45 years ago, in my CYO days, there was this big kid on another team. He couldn’t do anything. Except he wouod stand at the elbow already facing the basket, take a pass and just shoot it. No dribbles, no feints. Just catch, shoot. And he killed us. That was his system. We have a system where we let players do varied things. When you have talent, that’s attractive to a player, and can be successful on the court. When you don’t have talent, all you do is fracture focus, and diffuse effectiveness.
