My likely not-so-final thoughts on the Buddy vs. Carey debate that's ebbed and flowed depending on whether Buddy hits six threes in a game.
I love the way we handled Buddy. Love it.
That being said, have we ever seen a Frosh that more consideration was given to in ensuring he doesn't fail? I kind of want that for everyone.
Buddy can do all of about one thing well enough to warrant playing time, and we said, "do that well, and you get minutes! Even if you don't do that well, and you're abysmal shooting the ball early in the year, we'll stick with you until you do succeed in that one thing, because that's why we recruited you!"
We didn't even play him against Va Tech because he wouldn't be able to handle ball pressure. We wouldn't let him fail, or get frazzled...but we would throw Carey in against Duke, at Cameron, at PG, against Jones (whom Jay Bilas informed me is the world's greatest defensive PG), and then glue him to the bench. I don't know...I'm not sure we would do that to Buddy at that juncture.
When Buddy's defense was awful, it was fine. When a team suddenly pressed earlier in the year and he seemed like a deer in headlights - it was fine. We let him focus on that one thing - set shots. He could expand his role based on his own development...it was sort of unique to see with this program.
I don't know. I feel like Buddy is the first Frosh in awhile that we really made a concerted effort to develop through the year despite early season struggles, and always placed him in positions where he could succeed and build confidence...everyone else just gets handed a full plate, and if one item - fork, knife, spoon, shaky potatoes, falls off the plate...we just compound the problem.
Carey sucked, but if we want to talk stats, they shot the same in HS from three, did we consider just using Carey as a set-shot three point shooter, that could be more a disruptive force on defense? Would we have allowed him to start the season shooting like that if we did give him that role? I could be wrong...but it just seems like we took a different path with Buddy, one I prefer, but I feel like we won't see again.
It's going to go back to, are you ready to be thrown in the fire from day one, or not?
If so, great!
If not, screw off - we have no time to build your confidence!
To reiterate, I LIKE the way we handled Buddy, but I think it was an anomaly. I think normally we just say, "do it all, and do it all well, you get a few chances, and then hit the bench if you fail." Whereas, Buddy we seemed to just pick his strength and cater very much to it to help him develop and ease into his role so we had a better, more mature player at the end of the year and not some frantic Frosh that still was playing with jitters.
Anyway.../rant
