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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1338137, member: 289"] GUARDS Trevor Cooney 6-4 195 junior- He got off to a great start last year and was a big reason for our 25-0 start. He was also a big reason for our 3-6 finish. He can be a red hot three point shooter, as Notre Dame found out on February 3rd, when he touched them for 33 points, including 9 three pointers. He was also an under-rated defender who got a lot of steals and was big enough to occasionally help out on the boards. But teams realized he was our only reliable outside threat and assigned a player to harass him wherever he went for 40 minutes. Cooney, for his part, kept moving, in and out and around, using picks and screens when they were there but he not only couldn’t shake his defender but on the rare occasions when he got a really open shot, he tended to rush it and missed it. Through the Notre Dame game, he was shooting 43.6% from three point range. After that, he shot 26.2%. His problem was that he lacked versatility: 72% of his shots were three-pointers. With that taken away, he had trouble scoring. And that’s what he needs to be- not just a shooter but a scorer. He’s shown the ability at times to dive to the basket to score, shoot a pull-up, or dribble to the side of a defender to get a three-pointer off. He needs to do more of that. But I’m also hopeful that he won’t be out only consistent outside threat this year. In the early going, Cooney hasn’t been impressive. He’s not looked much different than in the late going last year. Like Roberson, he’s 12 for 33 so far, including an 0 for 6 game. From the arc, he’s 5 for 22 (22.7%). He’s got to get better than that or it could be a long year for him - and for the team. [I]Comments: It has been along year for Trevor and for the team. He shot .267 from the arc as a redshirt freshman, .262 after the Notre Dame game last year and .309 this year. That .436 stretch in the first half of last year is the only period during which he’s seemed an exceptional shooter. Yes, the opposition keeps a defender on him all the time but Rakeem Christmas gets double-teamed all the time in the crowded paint and still finds ways to score. Cooney has half the court to maneuver in and can’t get open. Even when he has open shots, he misses too many of them. Early in the season he was showing more of an ability- and willingness to move inside the arc to try to score. The percentage of his shots that were three pointers fell from 72% to 61%. His scoring went up from 12.1 to 13.4 points per game. His best game was against North Carolina, when he was 6 for 13 inside the arc and 4 for 13 outside of it and scored 28 points. After that 78 of his 119 shots were treys and he made 19% of them. Three pointers need to be a part of his game, not most of it. And he needs to be a part of our three point game. Not all of it. [/I] Kaleb Joseph 6-3 165 freshman- That listing seems out of date. He looks even a bit taller than that and more muscular than the weight would suggest. He’s an athletic point guard but also has skills dribbling and passing the ball. His highlight films suggest a mixture of Pearl Washington and Jonny Flynn, which would be quite a combination indeed. He can dunk with authority, can put on dribbling exhibitions and loves the fancy pass. He also loves his team to get out and run with the ball and JB says he’s looking to run a lot more to get his team out of the offensive doldrums they were in last year. The flip side of that is that Joseph may take more chances than Tyler Ennis did last year and make more mistakes. The one great trait of last year’s team as they built up that 25-0 record is that, led by Ennis they took an almost fanatical care of the ball. We had 149 fewer turnovers than the opposition last year. That may not be the case this season and we will have to make up for it with greater offensive productivity. In the early going, Joseph has had mixed results. He had a big game against Carleton with 19 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists vs. only one turnover. He was somewhat less impactful vs. Adrian with 9-6-4-1 or Kennesaw State with 4-5-6-4 and Hampton with 5-5-5-3. Several times I heard announcers say “Tyler Ennis wouldn’t have done that” and Kaleb will hear a little too much of that this year. He’s Kaleb Joseph, not Tyler Ennis. And that could be said about some of the good plays he can make, as well. For the second year in a row a freshman is our only real point guard, so he’s got to be the guy for us this year. [I]Comments: I don’t know what I was looking at in saying that Joseph was taller and stronger than his listed height and weight. He seemed to shrink as the season progressed. He had one great game against Boston College where he aggressively drove to the basket and made 7 of 7 shots, scored 14 points and dished out 4 assists. In his seven subsequent games he was 6 for 31, scored 15 points and had 13 assists. The scary thing is that he’s not about to lose his job as the only alternatives are Ron Patterson, Michael Gbinije playing out of position or Fran Howard, another high school 2 guard who will be making the switch to the point. Hopefully Kaleb is just another freshman who needs to get stronger, adjust to the college game and gain confidence to become a consistent contributor. [/I] Ron Patterson 6-2 200, sophomore- The third of the three ‘sons’, Patterson came here with a reputation as a long-armed defensive whiz. Instead he turned out to be a long-range, short memory gunner. He was “last in the league in time of possession”, (a line I used to describe Mookie Jones). He shot 37.9% from the field and 31.6% from three point range. The occasional shots that actually went in convinced some fans he should be playing instead of Cooney but Boeheim warned: sometimes he’ll make three in a row and sometimes he’ll miss the rim three times in a row”. Still that was better than Cooney was doing at the end of the season. This year he had a big game against Carleton with 15 points in 15 minutes, including 4 for 5 from three point range while Cooney was going 0 for 6. That sealed the deal for some people. But Patterson has cooled off to 3 for 13 and 15 points in 47 minutes in the three subsequent games, so maybe the deal isn’t sealed just yet. But I think he remains an alternative to Cooney when the latter isn’t being productive who should see more action than he did last season. Who knows? He might get hot. [I]Comments: Whereas Tyler Roberson’s shots are usually short and BJ Johnson’s usually far and to the right, Ron Patterson’s shots are all over the place, as if they were shot out of a T-shirt cannon. Last year Ron shot .379 overall and .316 from the arc. This year he was .313/.173. Jim Boeheim finally convinced him to stop shooting: in his last 9 games he was 10 for 19 from the field and only four of those shots were three pointers, (of which he made one). He did contribute in other ways. He didn’t turn out to be Trevor Cooney’s back-up/. Instead he was Kaleb Joseph’s. Per 40 minutes, Ron averaged 4.9 assists 1.5 turnovers and 2.0 steals. Joseph averaged 5.6/3.4/1.3. But he simply isn’t that good at any particular thing. He’ll have trouble maintaining his playing time as new players come into the program. [/I] [/QUOTE]

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