Back from the Red - White Scrimmage

[MacabreMob]

Good thing Bradley didn't do an exhibition tour to somewhere like say Canada and maybe lose a game or have to go to extra periods to win. Yikes!

[romar]

To start the "2nd half", the one team consisted of Ruff, Warren, Salley, Wilson, and Crouch. I have a feeling JL had them together (subject to change of course) as they are the starting 5.

I thought the exact same thing MR. They also traded SM to that team in the timed game situations.

[brocks]

Good thing Bradley didn't do an exhibition tour to somewhere like say Canada and maybe lose a game or have to go to extra periods to win. Yikes!

Meaning? I certainly don't like to see how negative this evening turned out. Hard to tell for those of us who live far away, but the tone here suggests that these guys are not at all as talented as advertised.

[BUFAN]

OK whats next

Reviewed all the raves and pans, didn't make it to the scrimage. Sounds like JL has a lot of guys that can make DR look like an AA. No replacement for ZA and NO inside game. 450, 500, 600, or better or worse? I'll go 20 and 10.

[BradleyBrave]

People............everyone needs to realize this a just a practice against player's who know your every move and what plays you are trying to run! Every year after the red/white a panic hits the board where no-one new showed anything.......PLEASE.....calm down....it is just an intense practice in front of the fans.........this team showed me a lot of hustle and deflected more passes than any team I can remember.......all is fine! The next team they play will not know all the plays and everything the player across from them is doing!DC is very mobile for a 7 footer........TW is an athelete and TCS is fast enough to start at point if needed......very quick.......SS moved faster and jumped higher than any time on the hilltop!Give these new player's time to get used to things and everyone on here will be very happy!

Amen! Jeez everyone, what did you expect? 7 newcomers in their first action in front of fans, and in a scrimmage no less. What were people expecting? I saw our new big men being very athletic, trying to fit in, and perhaps a little shell-shocked with the crowd, the lights, and the speed and intensity of the game. I saw the veterans play like veterans, and the new guys play like new guys. I saw some very big, very athletic, very talented big men trying to get their feel. I can and will probably get more specific later, as I did notice some things from our new guys, but I will discuss them later.

Everyone - We are still a guard team. We will still go as far as our guards go. We now just have a front line to go with those guards. If JC and Ruff play like they did last year, and Warren, Cole-Scott, and Sam can come close to matching what DA, JJ, and Will Franklin contributed, we will be fine. We have more than a 1-2 capable bigs to rebound and defend this year, which is a good thing.

Things will become clearer Thursday, and also Sunday. Believe me, things will look different and better against real competition, not guys we've been playing against for the last 4-5 months. Everything's fine. The kids are great. Jimmy's doing a great job.

[shaunguth]

Things will become clearer Thursday, and also Sunday. Believe me, things will look different and better against real competition, not guys we've been playing against for the last 4-5 months. Everything's fine. The kids are great. Jimmy's doing a great job.

I won't be able to make Thursday's game, but do plan on making it Sunday. My own personal hype about this team has only been kept in check after tonight. I refuse to make a judgement, good or bad, after one 20-minute scrimmage. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the team looks with only five guys on the floor at a time and not near the number of substitutions as you see in a scrimmage. I certainly hope the walk-ons do not get as much time as they did tonight!

[it's boogie time]

What a turnout for a scrimmage. It was very clear to see which guys had played before and which ones hadn't. The new guys still had to think instead of just playing.

One positive I took was that there was a lot of passing. This unselfishness thing has caught on.

[shaunguth]

Just to further my reasoning to not "downgrade" this team after one 20-minute scrimmage. Let's take a look at some of the minutes that were played tonight. Three walk-ons nearly matched the minutes that were played by three guys expected to be contributors this season.

13 - Lavin
14 - Cole-Scott

10 - Phillips
11 - Collins

9 - Thornton
8 - Austin

That alone tells me that the results are skewed. I just feel the need to hold judgement until I see more stability in the lineups that are put on the floor and that just isn't possible in this type of scrimmage.

[BradleyBrave]

What a turnout for a scrimmage. It was very clear to see which guys had played before and which ones hadn't. The new guys still had to think instead of just playing.

One positive I took was that there was a lot of passing. This unselfishness thing has caught on.

Ding! The kids were almost passing too much, which is a surefire sign of guys playing tentatively and trying not to make mistakes. As the new guys become more familiar with their role in the system, things will start clicking much easier.

On a side note, I especially liked seeing Coach Merf get right back into the mix. It's got to be very enjoyable for him to be back with a winning program without necessarily having the pressures of being the head coach.

[shaunguth]

Speaking of the coaches, I was a little disappointed JL didn't introduce the staff. Also, was Brooks in the house?

[BradleyBrave]

Speaking of the coaches, I was a little disappointed JL didn't introduce the staff. Also, was Brooks in the house?

Agreed. The staff deserved an intro, but perhaps JL was waiting for the whole staff to be there. Alvin Brooks was NOT in attendance.

[ER3]

I simply refuse to make any type of blanket judgement on this team based on what tonight was...1 ten minute half, a second ten minute half with a running clock and 3 and a half minutes of situational sets...
Here's what I saw...
From the returning guys...
- Ruffin is an absolute monster, plain and simple.
- Crouch looked fine...appeared to be fully healthy...knocked down a couple threes...I don't have any concerns about him.
- Salley looked bigger and stronger to me this year...he hit a shot or two...he looked fine to me.
- Warren didn't shoot well. It happens.
- Singh ran the floor a bit better than he did last year...I think he will be much more capable of giving us 5 to 8 decent minutes per game in the post this year.

From the new guys. And I will say that overall, as a group, these guys didn't impress much in terms of the box score...but these are impressive, impressive, athletic guys....all of them...and I am not going to label any of these guys based on their performance in less than half of an actual game of action tonight. They will become what they will become, but I will not grade them based on a scrimmage where Saihou Jassey was the unquestioned 'can't miss kid' from last year's Red-White game.

Sam M. - had a tough assignement tonight as it seemed that Ruffin or Cole-Scott were pressuring him everywhere he went on the floor...but he looked like he handled it as well as could be expected...I thought he looked really good once he was running the point for the '2nd string' in the last half of the scrimmage. He hit a three and had a couple of other hoops.

Cole-Scott - quick, quick, quick. He will be fine. If he and Ruffin are on the court at the same time, they will simply terrorize the guards from other teams.

To me, all of the new big guys really didn't stand out in the game action...but these are all impressive athletes. Collins, Egolf, Thompson, Wilson (more of a wing...not really a big...)and Austin certainly looked the part...they ran the floor well, they jumped well, and had an unbelievable amount of athleticism...so I am very excited about their potential. It just didn't seem to me that there were many plays being run for the post players in this limited scrimmage. It was a sloppy game that the defense dominated...so I'll give these guys an incomplete and wait until I can see them play 15 minutes or so in some of these exhibition games before proclaiming that someone 'looks lost' or 'certainly won't contribute much of anything this year'...

It was a good time, and I was happy to be able to put names to faces...It wasn't great basketball, but so what. 7 scholarship players that have never played a minute in D-I....I think it would be crazy for us to assume that they would have come out tonight and looked like world beaters.

We need 3 or 4 of these new guys to get ahead of the curve and contribute this year...and I am confident that will happen...who those 3 or 4 guys will be, I don't know...after the St. Ambrose and Quincy games, I think we will have a better idea.

Patience, Daniel-san. This will be a deep, talented team by the time the meaningful games roll around.

[BradleyBrave]

I simply refuse to make any type of blanket judgement on this team based on what tonight was...1 ten minute half, a second ten minute half with a running clock and 3 and a half minutes of situational sets...
Here's what I saw...
From the returning guys...
- Ruffin is an absolute monster, plain and simple.
- Crouch looked fine...appeared to be fully healthy...knocked down a couple threes...I don't have any concerns about him.
- Salley looked bigger and stronger to me this year...he hit a shot or two...he looked fine to me.
- Warren didn't shoot well. It happens.
- Singh ran the floor a bit better than he did last year...I think he will be much more capable of giving us 5 to 8 decent minutes per game in the post this year.

From the new guys. And I will say that overall, as a group, these guys didn't impress much in terms of the box score...but these are impressive, impressive, athletic guys....all of them...and I am not going to label any of these guys based on their performance in less than half of an actual game of action tonight. They will become what they will become, but I will not grade them based on a scrimmage where Saihou Jassey was the unquestioned 'can't miss kid' from last year's Red-White game.

Sam M. - had a tough assignement tonight as it seemed that Ruffin or Cole-Scott were pressuring him everywhere he went on the floor...but he looked like he handled it as well as could be expected...I thought he looked really good once he was running the point for the '2nd string' in the last half of the scrimmage. He hit a three and had a couple of other hoops.

Cole-Scott - quick, quick, quick. He will be fine. If he and Ruffin are on the court at the same time, they will simply terrorize the guards from other teams.

To me, all of the new big guys really didn't stand out in the game action...but these are all impressive athletes. Collins, Egolf, Thompson, Wilson (more of a wing...not really a big...)and Austin certainly looked the part...they ran the floor well, they jumped well, and had an unbelievable amount of athleticism...so I am very excited about their potential. It just didn't seem to me that there were many plays being run for the post players in this limited scrimmage. It was a sloppy game that the defense dominated...so I'll give these guys an incomplete and wait until I can see them play 15 minutes or so in some of these exhibition games before proclaiming that someone 'looks lost' or 'certainly won't contribute much of anything this year'...

It was a good time, and I was happy to be able to put names to faces...It wasn't great basketball, but so what. 7 scholarship players that have never played a minute in D-I....I think it would be crazy for us to assume that they would have come out tonight and looked like world beaters.

We need 3 or 4 of these new guys to get ahead of the curve and contribute this year...and I am confident that will happen...who those 3 or 4 guys will be, I don't know...after the St. Ambrose and Quincy games, I think we will have a better idea.

Patience, Daniel-san. This will be a deep, talented team by the time the meaningful games roll around.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Perfect assessment. Couldn't have said it better.

[ph]

I wish someone would tell the players that fans are most impressed with dunks that show hang-time, "grace" and/or power. (i.e free-throw line, jumping over someone, windmils, or rim-shaking power type dunks..) Degree of difficulty with touch and release neven wins many fan points...

Found it kinda odd, that Jim Les still said nothing about Cameron, despite giviing every other player at least one personality sentance during the intro...

Will Egolf was an offensive-only sub on the red teams "offence/defence" during the end of game siituations...

Philips was an offensive force?

DR, Crouch, and Salley are absolute starters. I could see adding Theron and Warren. Since Collins did not win the opening tip (vs Will), nor hugely impress, I do not believe he would be an immediate starter. (POB always won the tip)

[audacious_aficionado]

first off, i love that shaunguth kept the minutes for each player! that's pretty funny. you actually made a good point with it though.

i thought the refs called a lot of fouls.

they all played tough defense.

salley has good moves now and is a presence inside.

tcs is fast and definitely a little slasher.

i was disappointed that warren didn't bring his excitement and enthusiasm from off the court to the game. he didn't seem to be there on offense.

i wanted to see theron wilson drive to the basket a few times but he never did. like warren, he wasn't there on the offensive side.

i was impressed with wilson's defense. he consistently guarded bigger guys, mostly egolf, and did fine. i think he will be a valuable piece to the team in that respect.

obviously the walk-ons played too much for a realistic game but it is a scrimmage for the fans to see the team so they had to play them. i had no problem with that.

i agree also that the coaches should have gotten an introduction. thinking back about it, i'm shocked that les didn't do that. i wouldn't be surprised if he forgot or something because it's hard to believe they didn't plan that.