KITNooga wrote:harv,
solid thoughts. just wondering though: how, what is key to getting teams (this team) to play with more consistency? Is it to have players who think a bit more?
for instance: miss a shot, get the rebound, maybe take it back out and work the offense for another, better shot? vs taking a contested shot at the moment?
is it discipline of the players? is that discipline needing to come from the coaches? it is running an offense with patience EVEN with a shot clock?
just thinking, asking?
I think the key word is experience. The seven first-year players have played some minutes in a grand total of 10 D1 games, and several of those games were against low-level competition. KSU cannot reach its potential without significant contributions from some of those first-year players.
Mawdo Sallah does have DI experience, but even he has to make the major step up to playing high major teams on a regular basis. His game appears to have some limitations, but he has to play some role in the group effort to give KSU viable post play. He is very dedicated and intelligent, so it is definitely possible that he will improve as the season progresses and he masters his offensive and defensive assignments.
Makol Mawien is obviously talented, but he is totally new to DI play, let alone high major play. Unfortunately he is a typical newbie mix of really nice plays and hair-pulling plays. How quickly he can make progress at this level will be a key to KSU's season. He is one of the players with the most "work to do" because he appears to have a high ceiling if he can master the fundamentals of his role.
Levi Stockard, Nigel Shadd, and James Love (if he is healthy) are a mixed bag of physical size and basketball talent, but they are all freshmen. KSU has to hope it can get some useful minutes out of this group this season, but it seems doubtful at this point to me that any of them will step up into leading roles on the KSU front line. Even limited help from these players could be crucial though in Big 12 play because of foul trouble.
Cartier Diarra is clearly a potential key to KSU's season. Some had him replacing KSU's third-year starters at guard right out of the gate, but that was wildly optimistic as I noted at the time. That said, Cartier appears to have the talent to be a major positive factor on this team. It appears to me that the game is still moving too quickly for him (hardly a shocker at this point), but like Mawien this is a player KSU really needs to step up. Again, this is another "lots of work to do" player, but he could be a big plus before this season is over.
Amaad Wainright is a pleasant surprise in many ways, but he is still putting it all together. As with Cartier, he is not ready yet to replace any starters, but he seems tantalizingly close to being a really nice player off the bench. HIs athleticism at times seems to be right up there with Xavier and Cartier, which is saying a lot. I look for him to be a very significant contributor sooner rather than later. He already has a Big 12 body.
I am a bit disappointed in the play of Brian Patrick, and I am sure he is frustrated as well. We saw last season that he has some potential, but so far this season he does not seem to have progressed much at all. Maybe if his shot comes around the rest of his game will follow. We'll see.
Mike McGuirl is very much in the tantalizing department, but his injuries have made him a non-factor so far. We'll just have to see what happens, but the few snippets of action we have seen keep me from writing him off completely for this season. Who knows.
All four returning starters (Xavier did start two games last season) have made progress this season, but they all need to keep making progress. When they are playing well, they make KSU a truly competitive team at the high major level as the game against ASU showed, but they have to keep improving both individually and as a unit. I think they will, but again, we'll have to see if it happens.
That is my take on where the players are at. The coaches are to some extent dependent on what happens with the individual players. but as the players develop, the coaches will also have to continue to adjust the schemes to match the various player combinations. As has been pointed out, for example, several of the big men appear to have nice midrange jumpers, but it seems that was not used as much as it might have been against Tulsa when the threes were not dropping. Many argue that the 16-19 foot jumper is the worst shot in college basketball statistically, but if your threes are not dropping and your midrange jumpers are, that theory breaks down in practice. Lots of work to do, but there is also a lot of potential in this squad in my opinion. That's my overview at the moment. We'll just have to stay tuned to see what happens.