“But otherwise, that's a big part of why we have been so poor.”
Your words. You think Kyle instead of name whomever is why the team is 15-14? Coach talked about lack of toughness and both ends, and the first guy you thought about was Kyle?
No, I don't blame our record on Will Kyle. He's been great. He's one of the best shot blockers we've had in 20 years.
We assembled a pretty darn good roster, probably the most talent SU has had in 10 years.
But the fact is, Kyle is clearly not 6-9; he's 6-7. Maybe he weighs 220. He's tough, and athletic as hell, but he is often too small to defend in the low post. He looks like all those times we played terrific players like Maliq Brown out of position in the post because we didn't have anyone else.
I think Soare is a decent backup center, but Red seems to have lost faith in him, and instead plays Donnie as a "Small Ball 5". Donnie doesn't even TRY to play interior defense. He picked up Fat Eddie's habit of
turning away when people drive
right down Broadway.
Big, big part of our problem. He plays guys who don't help on the interior defense. We block lots of shots, but other than Sadiq and Soare, guys like Donnie, Betsey and sometimes Kyle don't block out on defense, to make sure we secure the defensive board.
How many offensive rebounds have we given up because these guys simply don't fight for it?
Who do we "blame"?
Donnie didn't come close to expectations. That's obvious. He's not nearly as good as he thinks he is. He's as soft as they come for a player with SO MUCH TALENT. Really poor basketball IQ. He doesn't seem to understand how to win games, which is so fundamental. He's just not that competitive. I don't feel like he 'loves' basketball like some guys do.
Some people are fixated on JJ being better than what he showed us over the last 3 years of his career, and that wasn't likely to happen, folks.
He is the SAME PLAYER he showed us the last 2 years. It's terribly unfair to the kid to expect him to be someone who he's not.
What I hoped for coming into this season, is that he would accept being 2nd fiddle, and I think he did. I think he was terrific about putting his ego aside to try to help the team win. But, no, sorry, he's not a star player.
News flash - he was never meant to be! And you guys kill this local kid. It seems really unfair to me.
George hasn't had a solid handle, and has only sporadically been able to throw those lob feeds to the bigs that we have seen from time to time. He has had some terrific games, but he has some games where he just falls apart. I wouldn't throw him away; I think he is going to learn and be better from the experience, if he comes back under a good coach.
Nate Kingz has brought his shooting numbers up to acceptable levels after a poor start. I feel like he has done well getting to the rim and finding shots in the mid-range when his 3 wasn't falling earlier in the season. Yes, sometimes other guys get the better of him, but I think he was one of our better defenders all season long (how many blocked shots did he have?). Yes, he wasn't at his best until a month or two into the season, but he makes the "all effort" team, in my opinion.
I don't "blame" Kiyan Anthony for not being better. He was a frosh, he started out well against non-P5 competition, but when the defense got more physical, he was not up to it. We hoped he could have been a scoring sparkplug off the bench, and he
was for maybe one game out of every five or so. But his defense was terrible, and his shot selection got worse as he found it harder and harder to get into the lane. But he wasn't supposed to be "the star' either.
Sadiq was fine. If he's back, he starts for me at PF next year. I love how he plays. He's got great skills, and yes, he has more upside than Terrence Roberts was able to deliver. But he's that kind of talent - bouncy, really good defender, jump hook inside, can catch the lob feed for a dunk, blocks shots. He's my guy next year.
I don't think rotations were optimal, but if you look at it, Red got better in terms of minutes distribution. Nobody really played more than 30 minutes a game, after people complaining about people getting 36 minutes a game last year who maybe didn't earn them.
Red had a total "lack of feel" for when to make his substitutions, though. He was too robotic about it. Lack of intensity on defense is mostly on the coach, for not sitting people down when they make a lazy mistake. You don't have to yell, and you don't have to be mean - but you DO have to coach them.
On offense, when the guys moved without the ball, sometimes we looked great. But we never sustained that kind of offense for more than 5 minutes at a time, if that.
We focused on fast breaks and turnovers to generate offense. And that's great when guys are playing hard and it works.
But we didn't focus enough on the hard work of half-court offense and defense. That's on the coach. Pride, and effort is on the players.
But if they don't try, and you don't take them out immediately, that's when you lose the respect of a team.
