Wessler's take on Les

[BradleyBrave]

The 4 (and sometimes 5) guard offense rebounded just fine against Providence, didn't it?

Mississippi St runs practically the same offense as we do. They didn't pound us inside, they bombed 3's and got out in transition. Yes, the rebounding disparity didn't help, but the 4-guard offense isn't the culprit. It's the lack of any true inside depth, and our guards being poor fundamentally at boxing out. Rebounding is more about position and desire than heigth. We have a 6'5" guard who doesn't even average 3 rebounds a game. That's bad. Yes, it will help to have some bigger guards next year and some bigger bodies inside. However, if those players box out as poorly as this year's players did, we'll continue to get beaten on the glass.

JJ Tauai rebounded fine against Providence anyway

It's all a matter of degree on the boxing out issue... a 5'10" guard with heart and good box out skills just generally isn't going to have much of a chance against a 6'8+ player. You're right though, I think Zach could have pulled in a lot more rebounds this year if his positioning had been better. In a lot of situations I liked having Salley out there more because I think he generally did do a better job in that area.

Back to post defense and JJ in particular. JJ played a LOT of the "power forward" type position this year. He did a great job, and a lot better than I thought a 6'3" guard would be able to do. I'd, like, though, to see what the FG % against him was deep in the low post. He played strong and played great defense on the ball, but anytime he was defending a post player who managed to get near the basket he pretty much got scored on... It's not his fault, he just was not big enough down there to defend that kind of post play.

So... when I talk about 4-guard offense and criticize the defense, I'm talking as much, or even more, about the ability to defend in the low post as I am about rebounding.

Valid points, but consider that BU should have had Ray Brown playing in the 'power wing' spot. Ray Brown is 6'7" 215, i.e. the same size as Matt Salley. We'll have Ray next year, as well as DeAaron Williams (6'4", 40" vertical leap, think Lawrence Wright), a bulked-up Andrew Warren (6'5"), and perhaps even Will Egolf (6'9" versatile F) playing that 'power wing' spot. I don't foresee defending the post and rebounding being as much of an issue as perhaps it was this year from the 'power wing' spot.

Basically what I am trying to say is that I don't think this will be as much of an issue in the future as it was this year. This year, guys like Tauai and Adams were forced into those situations because of unexpected departures and suspensions. Now that we have a system in place, I believe BU will recruit accordingly, and it looks like they already have with the size of our wing players next year (6'4" Williams, 6'5" Crouch, 6'5" Warren, 6'7" Brown). The heighth will be there. Position and desire will determine whether or not those guys want to defend and rebound.

[Grassman]

It seems to me Ray Brown keeps growing! He has gone from 6'4" to 6'5" to 6'6" and now, on the prior post he's 6'7".
Gees, my next October he should be 6'9"!

[BradleyBrave]

It seems to me Ray Brown keeps growing! He has gone from 6'4" to 6'5" to 6'6" and now, on the prior post he's 6'7".
Gees, my next October he should be 6'9"!

As far as I know he's always been at least 6'6". He's got a good inch on JC and is eye-to-eye with Matt Salley. His height is legit.

BTW - Fish, wasn't trying to be adversarial or anything. I think we kind of have the same opinion on the matter, but are just stating it differently.

[Bravesfan]

I have to respectively disagree with KW in regards to our team underachieving last season. It took two-thirds of last season for Les to learn the "new" system under Chuck Buescher. I think this season shows that Les now has the tools to know how to adjust to different styles of offense depending on the types of players he has to work with. He will be a great coach for years to come, and while this season definately reinforced his status, it did not take this season for me to realize how good Les can be. I already knew that based on last year's results.

Sorry KW. You're a day late and a dollar short as usual!

With the talent on last year's team, a 5th place MVC finish was underachieving. It wasn't until March when they finally realized their potential. At 13-9 last year, I don't think anyone would have said that BU was playing to their potential. If anyone did, they must have had very low expectations for that group.

I didn't actually mean he worked under him, I meant that Buescher tutored him on various coaching points that helped Les mature as coach. While some of the problems with last years team probably did have to do with underachievment of the team, Les was not as experienced as the assistants and they helped him out on certain things. I at the time though did have all the confidence that Les would be a great coach, and since that turning point last season, he has been exactly that, a great coach who just concluded his best coaching job this season. I look for greater achievements from this team in the years to come with Les at the helm.

[dogsrus]

It seems to me Ray Brown keeps growing! He has gone from 6'4" to 6'5" to 6'6" and now, on the prior post he's 6'7".
Gees, my next October he should be 6'9"!

Don't want to get into a height argument but if Brown is 6'7" I'll stand on my head as long as I can for BU's home opener.

I guess I'll have to stand next to him at the Itoo supper. I'm 6"4" and we were very close. Maybe I'm growing

[real fan]

The 4 guard offense was fine this season as that is what we were stuck with but we will not beat any of the elite teams without a good post player and size does matter when rebounding and trying to guard players down low; a 3 guard offense with Ruffin, Fears, and Crouch and Salley and a true center would make for a start to a pretty good team as we would have so much depth coming off the bench.

[thefish7]

BTW - Fish, wasn't trying to be adversarial or anything. I think we kind of have the same opinion on the matter, but are just stating it differently.

I was enjoying the discussion and with your last post, I think we are maybe saying the same thing... I prefer the 1-5 terminology to the more traditional basketball positions (PG, SF, C, etc) as I really have a lot of trouble distinguishing between a SG and a SF, especially in college-- the role seems largely the same. I do think size is important for certain roles... and for example, I'd really like to see another big man playing alongside Matt Salley (who would be playing "PF" or the 4) or a player like him. Lot of discussion about Ray Brown here, and I agree he's about the same size as Salley, but having come up as a guard I don't know (and maybe just haven't seen) if he has "post skills." He's certainly large enough, but there is a lot of technique near the basket on both offense and defense.

For me, I would like to see a depth chart/rotation like the following (first player is the "starter"):
1 - Ruffin, Fears, Cole-Scott, Maniscalco
2 - Fears, Warren, Cole-Scott, Crouch, Maniscalco
3 - Crouch, Warren, Brown, Williams
4 - Williams, Brown, Egolf
5 - Salley, Thompson, Egolf, Singh

This is using only players currently on the roster/recruited officially. I'd really like to be able to put a JUCO center in there to start at 5 and start Salley at the 4, but we'll have to wait for additional news for that to make sense.