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Postdoc
Posts: 4919
Reg: 02-04-06
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03-08-17 07:43 PM - Post#225719
In response to SomeDartmouthStudent
My sample of Aiken's games is limited--I saw him against Stanford, Houston, Princeton twice, Penn once, some of Yale once. My sample of the other contenders was also limited. Based on those games and the reported counting and efficiency stats, I have a hard time putting Aiken on the first team.
I see the statistical rationale--he effectively used a lot of possessions on the second-place team in the league. But it seemed to me that he also did a lot of things to help his team lose, once he got scouted in conference, taking bad shots, throwing bad passes, getting toasted on D, dribbling into traffic for hopeless off-balance attempts against rotating shot blockers with time on the shot clock, losing his cool, etc. There was a downward trend to his performance as the season wore on, as far as I could tell. I would rather have Mike Smith as my PG than Aiken right now, although by next year the picture may look very different. (Announcers' comparisons of Aiken to his mentor/buddy Kyrie Irving seemed laughable--I watched Irving in college, and he was on a different level. The Ivy player with the game closest to Irving's, offensively, that I saw is Alex Copeland.)
Boudreaux occasionally would matador D a guy when he was tired or in foul trouble, but generally was a super-steady force on the offensive end, surrounded by defenses geared to shut him down. He showed good shooting range from outside to go with his drives and post-up moves, and he tirelessly vacuumed up rebounds. He was a steadying influence on a team that desperately needed him to play very well just to compete.
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