Concern about Ousmane Barro

[MU Avenue]

   While he has moments when he looks solid, Ousmane Barro, in his senior season, is still far from what Marquette needs up front.

   He misses shots that should be automatic and fouls often and at times when those fouls are costly.

   Yes, he hustles. Yes, he plays with determination and a desire to win. But I still have great trouble having much confidence in him.

   I hope he goes on to have a terrific final season at MU.

[downtown85]

I think Ooze has reached his ceiling.  He is what he is and I do not expect much improvement from him this season.  That being said, if he just plays consistently and can help neutralize the other teams' bigs, our team will go a long way.  If he can get 8-10 points per night and 8-10 rebounds in 28-30 minutes, our team should win a lot of games. 

[MU Avenue]

   Downtown, I suspect you are correct: Ousmane Barro is the player he will be. Hard to think he will have a breakout senior season.

   You and I do not agree, however, on what we should or can expect from him. You have written that "if he just plays consistently and can help neutralize the other teams' bigs, our team will go a long way.  If he can get 8-10 points per night and 8-10 rebounds in 28-30 minutes, our team should win a lot of games."

   Those would be outstanding numbers from Barro or from most other players. Unfortunately, none of us can rely on Barro to contribute close to 10 points and 10 rebounds every game. And we all know his greatest shortcoming is the consistency of his play and his ability to cover other teams' "bigs."

   To me, Barro looks like a guy who is still learning his job. By this point, I would have thought he would be much further along in his progress.

   I would love to see him do really well. I am not relying on it.

[1990Warrior]

I am not worried at all about Ooze.  I thought that he played great against Ok st, returning to last seasons form.  This is all I expect from him and with the improved play of Burke, we will be getting more from the center position than we got last year.  This seems like a real positive to me.  As for some of the shots not dropping that were put up close to the rim against Duke; this was due entirely to the fatigue factor.  Someone mentioned that he was in Senegal this summer and not practicing with the team.  I think he shook the rust off in Maui and will meet everyones expectations for his senior season.

[Murffieus]

Barro is mechanically OK, but too slow reacting and has bad hands-----probably too late to strengthen his hands-----but a slow guy with decent mechanics just needs more practice reps than the next guy!

[Nukem2]

Hard to call Ooze slow per se as he can run the floor well.  The problem is that his actions are not intuitive.  Thats the result of learning to play basketball so late.  Too much thinking going on there.  But, he does pretty well otherwise.  The big thing now is for Ooze to not committ silly fouls and to use his body to defend instead of over-reaching as well as to take the ball to the hoop aggressively (just dunk the darn ball..!).

[77ncaachamps]

Maybe the "reached the ceiling" comments are correlated to a previous thread which cited the lack of recruitment and development of big men. Since Dwayne Stephens (and Bo Ellis) left, we haven't had a coach who worked well with the big men.

[bma725]

Maybe the "reached the ceiling" comments are correlated to a previous thread which cited the lack of recruitment and development of big men. Since Dwayne Stephens (and Bo Ellis) left, we haven't had a coach who worked well with the big men.

I don't know about that, yes both those guys were big men as players, but there have been coaches here since then that are noted for their work with big men.  Panaggio, while he was only here a year, is recognized throughout the basketball community as one of the best big man coaches in the business.  When Rab was at Oklahoma under Sampson, he was the main coach for the big men there.