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Message: [QUOTE="sutomcat, post: 2020664, member: 27"] Has to be short. I think TL is playing at about 90% and has been all season. That tendon injury has affected his agility and quickness quite a bit. You can really see it when he tries to close on someone playing a wing in the 2-3, where he is now somewhat of a liability. It is a tribute to his competitiveness that he has been able to play as well as he has. I know JB wants to play him at the 4 but he is much better defensively at the 5, and a major upgrade to DC2 or especially TT, who is bad on a wing but just awful playing center in the 2-3. The other good thing playing TL at the 5 does is give PT to TR at the 4. That again puts our best wing defender on the court. He is much better than TL here. Having those 2 at those positions also really helps our rebounding. TT is not a very good rebounder at the 5 or the 4 right now. His problems with rebounding and defense negate the positives he brings to the half court offense (where he can at times be amazingly effective for a true frosh). I think it was a blessing in disguise that TT got into foul trouble. Hope JB starts TR at the 4 and TL at the 5 the rest of the season and uses TT as a backup at both positions. Our defense and rebounding are way better with the vets in and the team plays harder. TR in particular brings a badly needs infusion of energy and hustle to the team that is badly needed. JG has some faults to be sure but he also plays hard. Was impressed with his defense last night. He absolutely drove UM's PG Ja'Quan Newton nuts with his quickness and fast hands. His ability to get into the paint really helped get TR and TL going with easy look putbacks. Last night was the first game this season against a good opponent where I saw our guards (JG and TB) consistently stop dribblers trying to get to the paint. It is tough to learn how to use your body to do this and not constantly foul and is essential if you are going to be successful playing up top in the 2-3. Very encouraging. TB didn't score a ton of points but he was patient, took advantage of scoring chances when they presented themselves and was content to mostly focus on playing good defense, which he did other than an awful foul on a bad forced shot. It looks like he is getting it now. AW is really stepping up now. Thought he had his best game as an Orangeman. Really impressed by his willingness to work down low, rotate to cover bigs underneath and to battle with them for rebounds. If he doesn't rebound hard all game long, we lose. He still is forcing a few bad shots here and there but I like that he is trying to drive, trying to take mid range jumpers, trying to avoid being a one dimensional 3 point shooter. Getting back to TL for a second, wanted to touch base briefly on something that he did last night for the first time that I loved. If you watch SU play much, you will see that when teams play us in man, they like to put someone relatively small on TL. This largely negates his ability to drive, as he doesn't have a quickness advantage on a SF type. And it often takes away TL's ability to shoot from the outside, as he is more tightly guarded when he has a small guy on him (the big guys like to give him a lot of room so he can't drive by him). The way to counter this is to post up the smaller defender and start throwing down dunks and layups on him. TL has rarely done this in the past. Our guards haven't been great at getting him the ball when he does try it and overall, this strategy therefore has been successful. Last night TL was really aggressive trying to post up the little guy (mostly the frosh Brown I think), he was given the ball in good positions when he did and he made the Canes pay by scoring inside a number of times. This was great to see for his development and for the development of the team. Hope he continues to do this more in the future. If he plays a lot at the 5 and we can force teams to guard him with a 5, or sub out and play without a center, it will really help us to win more games. Bottom line, AW and TL played great and were at their best when we got in trouble and really needed baskets. We haven't had a go to guy when we get in trouble at all. Having 2 players step up was great. When he and TL are playing like veteran leaders are supposed to, we can beat a lot of teams. Even in the ACC. [/QUOTE]

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