Memphis

[CaNOLEE]

Khalid, that has to happen in practice. I know we aren't deep enough right now to bench Rodney when he does something that isn't wise, but he did the same type things the last two years and he was not reprimanded.

Why would he change?

 

[andersonfro]

I had a buddy on the Kemba national championship team as a walk on, Peter Cochrane from Newtown. He was on the team the following year as well and he told me that in the gym that offseason, Nape and Lamb had a little power struggle as to who was going to be the goto guy. So for that, Ollie gets credit but at the same time, in '13 we needed Nape to take the majority of the shots/big shots. More credit goes to Boatright for deferring and playing amazing defense at the end of the year.

As for Ollie, a confident coach would say, "we have to coach them better, put them in better positions to succeed, help them play to their strengths and mask some of their weaknesses". Not just, "we need to make shots". That's obvious. But how do you go about doing that? You can't just say 'Rodney go make 8-15 instead of 5-15'. How do you equip Rodney with skillset to do that? That has to happen every minute of every day in practice. He's been here 4 years and he's going backward. That alarms me. I love what I see out of Facey right now, but the good stories are few and far between. No one is going to snap their fingers and make it better. It takes a lot of work and a lot of thought.

Maybe it came too easy, too fast?

The point is that Rodney has the skill set to make those shots. How is a coach going to get out there and say "sry you're not good enough that's my bad"? At some point they need to accept responsibility for missing wide open shots and not expect to be coddled with semantics. Coach showed you an open shot, make it.

 

[TripleDribbleMan]

Rodney is a somewhat perplexing player. And there has been some revisionist history. What I remember was that he was playing the best basketball of his career end of last season. And I remember all of you guys praising Ollie for making Rodney a team player and worthy of captaincy. He has had a terrible start to this season so now the coaches are at fault for his sudden regression from playing his best ball end of last season.

It doesn't appear to me he is hurt. He is a career 37-38% 3 point shooter who is 10 points below that, and a vast majority of that has been on makeable 3s. Last year he had some games where he hit a bunch of deep 3s.

To my eyes Rodney has a body of an All American player but his chief problems are a weak handle and an apparent lack of feel for or instincts for the game such that he has problems reading and reacting and making correct plays. In the past I saw guys like this under Calhoun and they were simply run off the team. Maybe that is what should have been done by KO. North Carolina State got him out of there and he was cut from the USA teams due to bad decision making. Ollie thought he could make Rodney a player. Who knows but it hasn't happened except in brief stretches. He has been really bad this year. The bad shooting 10% below his career norm not explainable. Also he was heavily criticized on FTs early in his career and then he pumped it up to 70% and there was much joy from everyone that he got out from being compared to Taliek Brown. Now he looks like Taliek again. Did Ollie cause the improvement and the regression? Or which one?

 

[CaNOLEE]

gents, If his(RP) ball handling improved over the course of his career, he'd get into better position for easier shots, ie at the rim. And the decision making and feel for the game are something that should improve with experience.

We all know Rodney was overrated coming out of HS. He's an undersized two guard that is a below average shooter, a dreadful ball handler, is a solid athlete, but not a freak and doesn't make anyone better. I just would expect his game to be more efficient in his fifth year. And Ollie hyped this guy in his RS year, so that is part of the problem. He should have been a WR.

I'm a little worried about Larrier for next year. He has great size and skills, but he might be more of a stat guy and less of a winning player. I saw only 5 games, so it's not a fair sample. I just hope he doesn't follow the Purvis model.

And I love Jalen, but he's going to have to really clean his game up as well. Smart plays, not just highlight type plays.

 

[andersonfro]

Stix & Dyson are a couple of guys who could have been something different if they were something more. Some guys have great potential but just never make that weakness into a strength, it's not terribly rare unfortunately.

I think once Jalen isn't the only ball handler his game is going to clean up.

 

[CaNOLEE]

Good examples Anderson and point about Jalen getting some help. I was a PG and it's a lot of responsibility/mentally exhausting. Qb/coach on the basketball court.

Dyson was good his frosh and junior years. Not so much the other years.

At least Stix became a dominant glass cleaner and finisher during the final four run and played to his strengths, but I get your point.

No one wants it to get turned around more than me, but I'm becoming more and more cynical. If you haven't noticed.

 

[andersonfro]

it's tough to have confidence when every victory is a moral victory and I'll admit that winning and losing can become culture without the right guidance. But I'm unwaveringly confident about a number of things.

1. The season was lost when Al went down, that's how important a scoring pg is to this team, next year they have 2 with Mal.

2. We'd be fortunate for every w when Terry went down.

3. Jalen is one of the best soph we've seen at Uconn. When he's allowed to take on his natural roll and with another year of development the kid is going to be a treat to watch.

4. Steve has the potential to explode & I think he will. He's still the youngest guy on the team. Honestly I'm less confident about this point but certainly I'm hopeful.

5. Call me crazy on this one but Vance is going to have an insane frosh to soph development. He's missing confidence & the game is a little fast for him. Everything else is there.

KO's 1st real class (sans sanctions) is as highly ranked as any Jim brought in. We've also demonstratively seen him grow as a coach. The 1st (idk exactly which game it was) few games he continued to run the same pick & roll offense he did all last year, at some point he began running the motion offense which leads to all of these open looks. I think what we're seeing to start halves is the team attempting to run a set play they have limited practice on which leads to everyone saying he's not prepared. He's apparently hardheaded & idk to what degree he listens to his assistants but I'm confident he'll grow as a coach in that regard.

 

[Ozzie3178]

Rodney was benched and came off the bench in the past for a few games!!