Yeah. I don’t care about ratings. In terms of guys who did nothing as freshmen and became decent staters as sophs, Damone Brown is the blueprint. He was also behind Burgan and Blackwell as a freshman though.
But in terms of an athlete with no skills shown as a frosh - that eventually showed major skills, I think Damone is the blueprint we can realistically hope for?
I’d be thrilled with a 9 and 5 this year, culminating with being solid on a really good team as a Junior and being a 16 and 8 type stud on a good team that he largely carries as a senior.
Good post.
I think a lot of the trepidation is based upon whether or not he can be a significant contributor, and what he'll be able to provide.
Coming out of HS, Benny was touted as a wing. And maybe a 'tweener, but with some ability to shoot the ball, handle, and pass. What made him such a good system fit on paper was his size -- guys who are 6-7 or 6-8 and have some versatility tend to thrive in our system. Plus, he'd have the requisite size of the zone. He was also the highest rated recruit we had in awhile, and the most explosive athlete we'd recruited in awhile. So expectations were high. And then during the preseason, Mike Waters [who is no slouch when it comes to evaluating players] indicated that he was playing really, really well in preseason practices, which fueled some of the higher expectations.
Then, the season starts, and Benny looks lost. Game seems like it was moving too fast, he wasn't producing, he made a lot of mistakes when he DID play, and then seemed to get the yips a bit which undermined his productivity. And then -- and this has nothing to do with Benny per se -- we started losing games in the preseason at an alarming rate. When that happened, there was less margin for giving developmental PT to a young player -- JB had to find a way to try to claw out wins against teams we might normally win against easily. So Benny got benched, and he lost confidence, and didn't have the opportunity to play his way out of the funk. And said funk carried over for the majority of the season. Outside of a few highlight reel blocks and the Duke game, there wasn't much encouraging with the kid's frosh season performance.
Fast forward to the off-season. Benny doesn't bail -- that's a good sign. And he helped reel in Mintz. Even better. And now we're looking at where he is on the developmental curve, and we re-baseline expectations and hope that he can produce as an undersized but uber-athletic 4. Rebound a little, score on put backs, score in transition, maybe knock down on occasional J. But focus on those things. And playing next to a proven shot blocker like Jesse would -- again, on paper -- help mitigate him being a smaller 4.
And that would also "work," because we brought in two recruits in Taylor / Bunch who are natural 3's, who might be able to play alongside him. Brown is a natural 4, but it remains to be seen whether he's ready for prime time, so the hope was that Benny can be good enough at 4, and that will allow one of those frosh to slot in next to him, and give us a balanced frontcourt. Because heading into the season, inexperience at forward is a major, major issue for this squad. So Benny being able to step up would help alleviate some of those concerns / issues / problems.
This summer team was a good opportunity for him. Quality of competition has to be taken into consideration, but it looks like he had one stinker and then a couple of decent performances. But is he a 4? Is he a 3? Can he rebound well enough [11 rebounds suggest yes, but he also had a couple of 2 rebound type performances, I believe -- or at least one].
So a lot of the question marks remain -- how ready is Benny to produce at a high level this year? And what role will he perform on this team? And perhaps most importantly, is he a million dollar athlete with a poor feel for the game, or does he just need to get some game experience to settle down?
Disconcerting question marks for a former 5-star recruit entering their second year.
