Oso planning to go pro
TAMUI do know, Newsie is right on you knowing ball.
A look back:22-23: 5 point loss @ #23 Purdue21-22: N/A20-21: N/A19-20: 16 point loss @ #22 Wisconsin18-19: 23 point loss @ #52 Indiana17-18: N/A16-17: N/A15-16: N/A14-15: 11 point loss @ #19 Ohio State13-14: 2 point loss @ #39 Arizona State12-13: 33 point loss @ #2 Florida11-12: N/A10-11: 3 point win @#138 UW-Milwaukee
Moral victories are fun.
And that UWM game at the MECCA .. when we had future NBA players Jimmy Butler, Jae Crowder, (and DJO) .. MU was up 18, collapsed to a 2 point game with seconds to play. Ouch.Moral of the story .. never play road games in November?
If that's the terminology you're comfortable with go for it. For me, it's about being able to differentiate between a loss and a bad loss. Yesterday was a loss.
There is context to every win and loss. Yesterday we had outplayed Purdue for 30 mins before collapsing down the stretch. On paper yes, it's a loss as opposed to a bad loss. But you can't completely disregard what specifically happens during the course of the game. We also have no idea how good Purdue will be this season.
Dwight Buycks was also on that team.
Visions of @ Louisville dancing in my head....
TAMULast night showed me a bit of where we are as a program. We are short on having big time talent, but a lot of good players that have still have upside potential. Shaka has a system and he is sticking with it and we will see how guys progress. That being said, I think we have upgraded overall talent over last year and I think the incoming recruits for next year will be an additional upgrade.There will not be many nights that we are outworked by the opponent, and they really have to go all out every night, especially against better teams. I am optimistic that this team will have better success than last year and hopefully that trend continues next year. Shaka is betting a lot on system and type of players he is bringing into the program and I am 100% all in on trusting Shaka with the future of the program.
And all of those pie-in-the-sky flowery thoughts mean nothing when MU's players are throwing up brick after brick after brick after brick.Their ceiling is low because Shaka recruits guys that cannot shoot.
Very funny to think all this pessimism from you stems from still being butthurt about Wojo being canned, which was of course the right decision, regardless of who his successor is.
I was actually a lot higher on the team going into last season than most people around here were. I thought we would be a bubble team and liked that we had an elite defender at the point of attack in Morsell and elite rim protector in Kuath. I thought that was a solid starting point. The team outperformed my (modestly more optimistic) expectations going into last year, so hopefully they outperform my expectations this year. I like Shaka a lot, and was thrilled when we thought we were getting him the first time around.The pessimism this year comes from us losing our (by far) two best players from a team that had one really hot month and otherwise was just meh, and replaced them with two three stars, an NAIA transfer, and an international recruit. I saw (and still see) guys who can play one side of the ball but struggle on the other side. Stevie and OMax are hounds defensively. Kolek can control the pace of the game and manipulate the defense. Oso is performing much better than expected and is one guy who performs well both offensively and defensively. But I have 0 confidence at all in any of those guy's perimeter shooting. And basketball at all levels now is about shooting. When 4 of your 5 starters are not threats to shoot at all, that's a problem. And off the bench we have one guy who is a threat. Maybe Ben Gold or Sean Jones can be a second guy off the bench, but I'm not counting on it this year.I don't see the talent. You need All Conference level talent to compete with the top of a conference. Jop and Kam could have the offensive numbers, but they're as bad on defense as they are good on offense. Kolek and Oso could maybe get there, but when you can't score from more than 5 feet from the rim it'll be difficult to get the scoring numbers.We'll see. I'd love to be wrong, but the only guy playing better than what I expected so far this year is Oso.
WadesI think you are missing the boat on Kolek. I see a much better version of Kolek already this season, both physically and on the defensive side of the ball. If he a team of shooters around him, he would average 10+ assists a game. IMO, he a better player than he was a year ago.