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Grade the Freshmen

cnbuff410 said:
I was watching uva game tonight and I couldn't help thinking what if we have a pg like the freshman kid in uva team. Man, this kid is so calm and played smart. No TO if I remember correctly.

CVilleBuff, you have watched a lot of uva games, and I know Collier hasn't even played any game in this level yet, but how do you compare him with that kid? I feel like they may have similar style.
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Funny you mentioned him. I was raving about him earlier in the year, but I stopped because I was annoying people with my constant reminders that he's from Los Angeles and Arizona State and Wazzu were the only Pac schools to offer. His game would have been textbook for our style. Selfless kid, loves defense, phenomenal passer but isn't afraid to step up and use his silky smooth jumper when he senses that's needed. Being in VA, I'm not extremely familiar with Dom outside of keeping up with him on the sites and the limited film I've seen. However, I think the comparison is fair. Collier seems to have that smooth style you want in a PG, and that's exactly how I'd describe Perrantes's game as well. Seems Collier has a nice jumper like Perrantes along with finishing ability. If he turns out to be of that caliber, it will go a long, long way towards improving our offense. Virginia is not a 1 seed right now without Perrantes. In fact, things were pretty ugly until Perrantes broke out at the start of January.
 
I really hope Collier is as good as him. I'm not saying I don't like the guys in our team right now but Perrantes is just playing at another level. So good.
 
cnbuff410 said:
I really hope Collier is as good as him. I'm not saying I don't like the guys in our team right now but Perrantes is just playing at another level. So good.
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His poise is unreal for a true freshman. Absolutely nothing phases him. If Dom is of that caliber we will be in for a hell of a ride these next few years. Perrantes was decently rated but not as high as Dom, FWIW. He was overlooked in the West and had interest in being closer to home had a good fit presented itself.
 
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CVilleBuff said:
It hurts the defense assuming said player fits the mold of not being a great defender, but how much? If it's a spark guy who comes in during droughts and is our 8th guy, I don't think our whole defense goes to ****.
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As I said, it might well be worth it. In fact, I think it most likely would be.

I was just pointing out that snarking about the idea that a guy like that could possibly hurt us defensively was probably a bit misplaced.
 
I really hope we get to the point where freshmen don't have to be heavy contributors for us unless they are special....none of this year's freshman would be what I consider special. I would give the class overall a C. Individually, Gordon and Hopkins showed me the most potential, Thomas, in my opinion, will have a Dufault-like career (which ain't bad), Fletcher is unknown really because the injury robbed him of almost half his season and King will need to show more than he did in limited time this year.
 
Thomas will have a much better career than Dufault did, he's got a lot more skill. Couple questions...

1. Wasn't Jenkins and then Thomas recruited to be shooters for us?

2. How much would shooters help when we run a cluster **** offense?


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None were superstars this year.

Defensively, I thought that J-Hop especially showed a lot, Fletch impressed me, and Dustin steadily improved (also his rebounding) as the year progressed.

J-Hop improved his shooting stroke, demonstrated some clutch shooting, and was doing a nice job in a lot of ways.

Fletch is going to be an excellent all-around player.

Dustin showed a very impressive high- and mid- post game. He needs to get stronger and find his jump shot, but could be a scoring machine if he puts in the work.

I didn't see much for King. Looked like he is happy to have a scholarship and expects things to come easily to him. Either the light bulb goes on and he realizes what it takes to be a player at this level or we're looking at a guy who will ride the pine for 4 years or transfer.
 
mattrob said:
One last point. To those stating there is no room for a Heslip on the roster, how soon we forget that he's basically responsible for keeping us out of the Sweet 16 in Albuquerque. Sure, there are nights where the shot isn't falling and he'll hurt you defensively, but his shooting will keep you in, or win, a few games you otherwise wouldn't. As long as the kid realizes he isn't getting 30 minutes per night and Tad can manage situationally, it's a net positive, in my opinion.
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I have not forgotten this, and probably never will.

In terms of ranking freshmen, I'd say that fletch probably had the potential for the most minutes when spencer went down, and the potential experience lost when he got hurt really hurt him (and the team). They all showed flashes of why they were offered, but with the limited minutes king played, maybe a Red shirt would have been a better option for him and to thin the class out (down to 4 people)

They all have off season to get better, and like XJ & jelly last year, they'll have nothing but a bad taste in their mouth from this game (and the way they lost).
 
CVilleBuff said:
Funny you mentioned him. I was raving about him earlier in the year, but I stopped because I was annoying people with my constant reminders that he's from Los Angeles and Arizona State and Wazzu were the only Pac schools to offer. His game would have been textbook for our style. Selfless kid, loves defense, phenomenal passer but isn't afraid to step up and use his silky smooth jumper when he senses that's needed. Being in VA, I'm not extremely familiar with Dom outside of keeping up with him on the sites and the limited film I've seen. However, I think the comparison is fair. Collier seems to have that smooth style you want in a PG, and that's exactly how I'd describe Perrantes's game as well. Seems Collier has a nice jumper like Perrantes along with finishing ability. If he turns out to be of that caliber, it will go a long, long way towards improving our offense. Virginia is not a 1 seed right now without Perrantes. In fact, things were pretty ugly until Perrantes broke out at the start of January.
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you weren't annoying me as much as you were making me cry...... a lot.
 
'Tini said:
He was skilled, but DT is also extremely skilled, more so than AD was.
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Yeah, but DT's gotta get his head on straight if he's going to surpass Dufault. AD is one of the more underrated players in CU history for what he provided the team.
 
Going back and re-reading this thread (I stupidly looked at it on my phone and was too lazy to comment over the weekend), but I am genuinely befuddled by the criticisms of Gordon not only here but from people I've seen on twitter. Very rarely do I say anything definitive because we're all wrong, and we're human and everything is subjective, but on this one I can say with 100% certainty the following:

If you think Wes Gordon had a bad year, you're either wrong or your expectations are way out of whack.

We're talking about a player who is a top two defender on the team (with the other being Spencer) and whose versatility kept us in numerous games. A guy who was forced to guard the second best player in the P12 this year who was also the MOP of the P12 tourney (Kyle Anderson) and held him to 6 points (on 2-of-7 shooting) and 5 rebounds. Along with guarding UCLA's PG, he also had to go against the big nasties of the conference as well to save Josh for the offensive side of the court. He had a 5.8% block rating (1st on the team and 157th in the nation) and hit the offensive boards harder than anyone else on the team (11.7% OR%, 139th in the nation). He turned the ball over more than I would have liked, but his numbers are still better than DT and two PG's on the team - Talton and Eli. If you're upset that he only averaged 5.9 points a game, I'm curious where you think he was supposed to get more points. For the first half of the season, he was the ONLY starter in the lineup that didn't need the ball to be successful. This is something that 'Nik has pointed out before, but we had Ski, XJ and Josh who all needed the ball to do work, and Spencer was trying to balance all of that while still keeping teams honest and getting his. If we were running designed plays for Wes, people here would rightfully freak out. It'd be insane. So where are the points supposed to come from? And let's not ignore the fact that dude was playing hurt for the last month or so of the season.

Wes is going to be a guy who gives you All-Pac-12 defensive team effort every night. He's going to grab boards. He's going to do the dirty work. And we'll give him a few shots every game just to keep him happy. Basically, we're looking at Kenyon Martin on the Nuggets - which is a damn good thing to have.
 
Goose said:
Yeah, but DT's gotta get his head on straight if he's going to surpass Dufault. AD is one of the more underrated players in CU history for what he provided the team.
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No doubt, that's DT's #1 obstacle at this point


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'Tini said:
No doubt, that's DT's #1 obstacle at this point


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Hopefully he sticks around this summer and works with Josh & Wes. Kid has all the talent there, but you can tell that the adjustment to the P12 was shocking to him. And part of the "unrealized expectations" are on the fans - including myself. It's HARD to come in as a frosh big and contribute quality numbers. We were spoiled by Josh. Josh isn't human. Look at the numbers I ran two summers ago on "Top 50 Big Men" in their freshman year. The Top 50 guys as a whole only averaged 6.6 ppg in 2009, 9.0 ppg in 2010 and 8.8 ppg in 2011. Some of us (myself included) thought DT would give us around 6 ppg - which is about what McAdoo did at UNC (and he's probably going to be a first round pick someday).
 
Goose said:
Going back and re-reading this thread (I stupidly looked at it on my phone and was too lazy to comment over the weekend), but I am genuinely befuddled by the criticisms of Gordon not only here but from people I've seen on twitter. Very rarely do I say anything definitive because we're all wrong, and we're human and everything is subjective, but on this one I can say with 100% certainty the following:

If you think Wes Gordon had a bad year, you're either wrong or your expectations are way out of whack.
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Where are you seeing criticisms of Gordon in this thread? I re-read the entire thing and I don't see anybody critisizing him.
 
sackman said:
Where are you seeing criticisms of Gordon in this thread? I re-read the entire thing and I don't see anybody critisizing him.
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Saw a C on the first page and a few other comments. Honestly, most are on twitter.
 
Goose said:
Hopefully he sticks around this summer and works with Josh & Wes. Kid has all the talent there, but you can tell that the adjustment to the P12 was shocking to him. And part of the "unrealized expectations" are on the fans - including myself. It's HARD to come in as a frosh big and contribute quality numbers. We were spoiled by Josh. Josh isn't human. Look at the numbers I ran two summers ago on "Top 50 Big Men" in their freshman year. The Top 50 guys as a whole only averaged 6.6 ppg in 2009, 9.0 ppg in 2010 and 8.8 ppg in 2011. Some of us (myself included) thought DT would give us around 6 ppg - which is about what McAdoo did at UNC (and he's probably going to be a first round pick someday).
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I think we also got spoiled with how XJ picked it up during conference play as well. Tad's comments in the offseason didn't help either.


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so can anyone fill me in on how things go down in the summer. Does the team usually stick around and workout together? How does the basketball offseason stuff compare to what happens with football?
 
Goose said:
Saw a C on the first page and a few other comments. Honestly, most are on twitter.
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OK. I don't think anybody is really disappointed in the year Gordon had. I think a lot of the growth we saw in Scott can be attributed to having Gordon in the lineup with him. I wasn't even counting him as a Freshman, even though technically that's what he is.

Maybe the rest of the Freshmen were forced to grow up too fast as a result of Spencer's injury. We were spoiled with Scott's Freshman year last year. Dude came in and started from day one. That's a lot to expect from an incoming kid. Maybe our collective expectations were put out of perspective because of that.

Still, I would hope to see guys like Thomas, Fletcher and Hopkins contribute major minutes next year. At least 15 a game from each of them. Unless King turns it on in a big way, I will stick with my opinion that the scholarship could have been used better elsewhere. That's two "throw-away" scholarships that Tad has given out. Now, I don't know what kind of lockerroom presence guys like King and Stalzer are, but they're not doing much on the floor. Stalzer still makes me cringe every time he has the ball in his hands.
 
wyobuff said:
They all showed flashes of why they were offered, but with the limited minutes king played, maybe a Red shirt would have been a better option for him and to thin the class out (down to 4 people).
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Maybe Tad decided that he didn't want (or King didn't want) to redshirt King because that would possibly keep him around for 5 years and tie up a scholarship for an extra year. Plus, in past years, Tad has been very clear that it's been the player's decision to redshirt, and maybe this wasn't something King would even consider.
 
I think a lot of you have been losing touch with reality. These are 18 year old kids less than 8 months removed from high school. Sure there are always the 5 star kids like UNC Parker and Wiggins at KU.... but for the most part frosh don't step in and dominate. They are smaller, less confident and this whole system is totally new to them. I think Fletcher and Hopkins looked pretty good for true frosh, they will only improve. Thomas has skills but look at him! He is 30 pounds underweight to play forward with the big boys. Give him a year or two and then judge him. King we all knew was raw, only time will tell. Bottom line unless you're getting the one and done 5 star kids you gotta expect they will go through some growing pains. And if "growing pains" means 23-10 for the season I'd say we are probably gonna be ok.
 
absinthe said:
TZISKIN on Twitter - "he's not even worth a scholarship"
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Tyler has never exaggerated before on Twitter. If he said it during a game, I think he's more venting than anything else. The funniest thing he ever said, forget which game it was (paraphrasing), "I hope we lose this game."
 
cubuffs85 said:
Tyler has never exaggerated before on Twitter. If he said it during a game, I think he's more venting than anything else. The funniest thing he ever said, forget which game it was (paraphrasing), "I hope we lose this game."
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So because he's venting he gets a pass for saying it? what if a player (josh scott) sees it?

Either say it and own it, or shut up.
 
absinthe said:
So because he's venting he gets a pass for saying it? what if a player (josh scott) sees it?

Either say it and own it, or shut up.
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Sorry if I gave you the impression he's not accountable for his actions, just saying I'd take what he says sometimes with a grain of salt like many other "fans."
 
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absinthe said:
TZISKIN on Twitter - "he's not even worth a scholarship"
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Tyler wears his emotions on his sleeve. He's out of line here, though. Gordon is a very solid contributor. If I were going to make a list of guys who aren't worth a scholarship, Gordon's name isn't going to be on it. I CAN think of a few who would, though.
 
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