Lost Caruso for understandable reasons at an understandable time.
Lost 2 forwards at a terrible time for not as easy to understand reasons.
Sendek is certainly not averse to playing 4 guards, but can scu pull it off with their personnel?
The 1,2,3 guards are definitely there. No fewer than 5 for 3. Justice is a sturdy guy but can he rebound well enough to play the 4? And can vrankic rebound as well at the 5 and defend (not that most teams post anymore)?
I don’t love the idea of the last part but it may still be worth trying.
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They’d be better offensively for it, but I don’t think this team can rebound by committee. Defending the post would likely get crushed as well.
Then again if you make the game about speed, force your opponent to go fast with constant full court press or half court traps, maybe it would even out (assuming you have a stable of reserves to run in and out of the game).
As it stands SCU doesn’t excel on the glass or defending the post so I think it’s well worth experimenting with.
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Well you cannot press if you cannot rebound bc rarely in a press are you going to have 5 guys in position to crash defensive glass in a press. It is just an invitation to be aggressive on the offensive glass. Maybe you pressure the first pass and then fall back. But that is not usually too effective. But if we agree defensive rebounding is going to be challenge then we should agree that having people in position to rebound will also be important.
The way I’m thinking about it is basically that unless he has drastically improved, bediako is like playing 4 on 5 on offense. Braun might not be but the 3rd guard (whoever it is) might be better for the team than playing bediako.
But you have be able to defensive rebound well enough.
At least we kind of found something we could agree on. I disagree concerning pressing and rebounding. There is certainly a way to press and fare decently in the rebounding category even if you’re undersized (I don’t feel like expanding on that, mostly because I don’t think Herb has what it takes to get creative anyway… he’s been so predictable in his 5 years at SCU that it’s hard to expect anything different)
From what I’ve seen there is about zero chance Sendek plays small ball.
Well tbh what you have seen is a pretty small subset of his career. I am pretty sure I have been through the list of styles, systems and innovations before.
I don’t think there will be much pressing, though, for reasons having nothing to do with creativity. But the small ball question will basically come down to who is best fit between guard #3, bediako, and braun.
Yes, and that small subset (the last 5 years @ SCU) is all that I care about. Concerning the rest of his years I couldn’t care if he won a national title or anything else.
Then you probably shouldn’t talk as if what you personally have seen is the totality of relevant information, especially if you admit you are not even interested in knowing more.
What Sendek has done in past years at past institutions is meaningless in terms of the current SCU squad.
What he’s done in 5 years at SCU has been very vanilla in terms of style of play, not to mention the results.
This is what you said. Proving or disproving this necessarily requires looking at the totality of evidence, not just the part that is interesting to you.
Vanilla is your opinion.
Creativity in sports is usually driven by the component parts of the team. When nc state started running the Princeton/Muskingum offense and introduced major collegebasketball to its concepts which now are part of practically every offensive system, Bill Carmody observed that “they have the perfect players for it.” Indeed, it wasn’t a random choice. It fit their team and their program.
The same went for Arizona state. The style and system changed with personnel bc at asu, you aren’t going to be able to recruit just whoever you want.
And at scu, necessity has come from first who you inherit and then who you have that can and will play. Playing wertz as a primary ball handler wasn’t the original plan. A less creative coach would have made some bench warmer the point guard after the two veteran point guards were out for the year.
This year will certainly see some changes resulting from new personnel capabilities as well as things they might not be as good at. It’s an open question right now what those will be.
But to judge someone that has been in a profession since the 80s on ~15% of his experience just doesn’t seem like you’ve dug very deep to make your judgment.
Blah, blah. None of Sendek’s time pre-SCU bears any relevance concerning what he’s done @ SCU (which isn’t much in terms of accomplishments).
You must make an interesting co worker.
“We have a problem we have never had before. How do we solve it?”
“Well, we had something like this happen where I worked before, but that isn’t relevant bc I’m here now.”
To quote the philosophical troupe Depeche Mode, everything counts.
Or, after 5 years on the job you get called into the bosses office.
Boss: Noob, we hired you 5 years ago with the expectation that you’d meet these specific performance goals. You haven’t.
Noob: But I did a decent job working for another business 10 years ago, and a really good job at yet another company 20 years ago. On top of that I was the assistant manager at a McD’s when I was a teenager.
- You don’t know what those goals were or if they have or have not been reached.
- You don’t know what conversations have or have not been happening.
I would expect that there are periodic reviews for everyone in the department and probably everyone in a non tenured salaried position at the university. Additionally, the scu athletic department isn’t very large and Sendek is an important part of it. It would surprise me if there aren’t frequent conversations with the athletic department leadership apart from periodic evaluations of performance.
Back to the topic, it is still pretty poor analysis to take only the most recent 15% or so of data and apply it to make statements about the totality of the topic of interest, especially when the other 85% of the data contains information that argues against your recency bias.
Oh for God’s sake.
We all know that is just you knowing I’m right but not being able to admit it.
None of this matters. I just thought I would ask a question, you miraculously were civil in response for about two posts before resuming normal service (read: completely insane).
I’ve been away from the Board for awhile, but I’ll take Martin Gore’s favorite “Enjoy the Silence” If you need an album ref, “Violator” is really good. With the loss of the three
bigs, IDK who can rise up another level and make this team competitive. But we’re still undefeated and have some guys coming back who are solid players, I think we’ll be better than last year, but not as good as a few of us would have thought a few months ago.
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