Tide Tipoff

The event is tonight. We need a good showing so anyone who can should attend. It starts at 7 for the scrimmage, but the players are there for autographs starting a 6.

Here is a deeper dive into the general impressions I took away from the team. I think we do have more depth than we've had since Wimp was roaming the sidelines. Almost every player from last year looked better from a year ago.
I think we can play faster this year, but the one problem, same as the old problem, was outside shooting. I didn't see us knock down many 3's. It simply may have been an off night though. I do think we will be much more balanced than last year which will make defending us more difficult if we can hit a few outside shots.

Herb Jones as usual filled up the stat column. He can just do about everything well. I was impressed with Giddens as well. If he can stay out of foul trouble, he'll simply be a force inside. The same goes for Galin Smith. He looks even stronger. He has the ability to own the glass and get tons of garbage buckets. Donta Hall looked good in spots. I still think he starts. I was impressed with Javion Fleming as well. He looks pretty skilled for a guy his size. He hit a 12 foot jumper which was enough to show me he has potential. He was very active on the both ends of the court. That bring us to Tevin Mack. He will start at the 4 and is probably the most skilled guy on the team. He can shoot from downtown and then dunk the ball on the next possession. I hope he can make up for the loss of Sexton's scoring.

I was impressed with Lewis as well. He is very talented and made several hustle plays, He seemed to be smart with the ball. The only issue may be his physical size. He is 17 so his so he is not fully developed physically yet, but there is zero doubt he'll contribute this year. AJ jr looked good and solid with the ball. We need him to be a calming factor for the other guys. He may even start at the point. I thought Petty would be more consistent, but he didn't show that to me last night. I was hoping he'd be deadly from outside, but I haven't seen that so far. Obviously it is too early to draw any real conclusions. Ingram was steady, but he needs to shoot more when he is open. He has always seemed to defer to his teammates a little to much. Norris still doesn't look healthy. He looked slow and his shooting was not good at all. We need him to open 3's to be better this year. Reese has lost weight and was much more active around the basket which is good news since he may be our best 3 point shooter. He'll pull their bigs away from the basket and still be able to rebound as well as score on the inside. He'll be a matchup nightmare for teams to defend.

Overall I do think we are better as a group, but there is no star on this team like there was last year. We are going to have to be more balanced and defend well. I think it will be harder to defend us at least inside. If we can get out outside shots to fall, we'll be really good. If not, not so much. This team has potential, but we are not Villanova when it comes to skilled players. This team may need to grind out wins. College teams want to be like Golden State, but we simply aren't there yet. Coach Johnson has us at least competing and if he continues to recruit at the level he has so far, we'll get there.


Edit: One more thing, I believe our season will depend on how our PG's play. Ball distribution will be the key.
RTR

imauafan said:

Good summary. By any chance do you write for the bamahoops blog? Your summary was very similar to the one they sent out this morning.

Click to expand...

Nope. It was just pretty much my thoughts from what I observed.