Since we traded for Amari I've yet to see Dak play well without Amari on the field. I dont know if it's juju or some type of schematic advantage, but whatever it is Dak needs Amari on the field to be at his best.
Penders offense was just jack a lot of threes with a top of the key 3-man weave interspersed in there every now and then. 25 years ago that made for an exotic approach to basketball but in today's era we'd complain more about him than we did about Shaka if we weren't hitting from outside.
I dont know. I think we have enough to be well within the top 20 or top 15 by the end of the season. Bears is too good a coach to have us remain stagnant for the entire season. As long as we don't have any serious chemistry issues arise due to the number of capable players on the roster I see us being much more decisive on the offensive end later in the season.
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We were missing our best interior offensive player. Mitchell would've helped with consistent scoring in a game where we struggled in that particular area.
From a 30,000 ft view I actually prefer Shaka's open floor, wide spacing approach to offense over Beard's old school approach with Knight's Indiana motion, but in order to do what Shaka attempted to do your players have to actually be exceptional with their shot selection, headiness, and fundamentals. And of course Shaka didn't incorporate enough movement or any other details to be consistent with what he wanted to do so it looked like shit more often than not in the end. Also that pretty approach to the game is analogous to what you often see with spread teams in football. There's a tendency to be less mentally tough and gritty when the games devolve into slugfest as often happens in college basketball.
He's really a poor fit for what Beard wants to do, but in fairness there wasn't much in the way of options. What we really need for Beard's offense is a PG who can penetrate and also consistently hit 17ft jumpers off of 1 dribble pull-ups and curl cuts. In all honestly kids today don't really work on the midrange stuff that makes the old Indiana offense efficient. Beard's first choice was a high school recruit named TyTy Washington who ended up at Kentucky. Regardless, I agree Carr was overrated as the #1 transfer.
Tech fans actually used to complain about Beard in 50/50 games I didn't watch them close enough to know one way over the other, but the resiliency his teams consistently displayed gives me more confidence than I had with Shaka who always seemed to have our guys on the brink of disaster.
College basketball isn't really a smooth and efficient deal. Fans need to lower their expectations. Good and successful teams more often than not just grind wins out.
In fairness to those of us who haven't been fans of Askew he's never demonstrated a willingness to even shoot much less look at the basket prior to today.
Carr's not a good enough shooter and lack of spacing in our offense does him no favors for his dribble drive game. He's sort of a poor fit for what Beard wants to do. If Ramey had Carr's handle and savvy he'd be perfect for Beard.
I agree on Ramey, not so much on Askew but I understand why people prefer his mistake free play. Ramey gets way too much flack from our fanbase. Dude is athletically limited, but he plays with a determination unmatched by any other guard on the roster.