SteveDanley
Sophomore
Posts: 102
Age: 39
Reg: 02-25-12
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03-14-17 01:10 PM - Post#226961
In response to palestra38
But you appear to keep looking at it from the offensive side only---the huge difference when Goodman was inserted was on defense. The guy is very very hard to beat off the dribble. We were getting hurt badly off the dribble earlier in the year. I think that, more than anything else, was why Goodman was playing 30 minutes a game over the push to the playoff.
I'm not as convinced as you are that Silpe is a poor defender. And I have a really hard time evaluating defense without knowing scheme, etc, but I'll give it a bit of a shot.
Hard to have these discussions in a nuanced way in college, where sample sizes are so small and players are gone so fast, but my understanding of research on defense is that rate stats for steals and rebounding do a decent job of measuring athleticism. And Silpe's rate states (St/Rb/dRat 3.9/3.9/101.5 in limited minutes this year, 2.5/6.7/105.6 last year) compare ok to Goodman's (2.8/6.2/103.7). [all stats from sports-reference].
I agree that Goodman looks a little quicker and with better fast twitch change of direction. My eyes say Silpe is a little stronger (he certainly added some strength going into this year). Would want to know more about the scheme to understand the context of gambles / pnr coverages and beyond. But my eye-test of Silpe was never that he was the problem as a defender -- perhaps not an elite defender (and maybe Goodman is elite at keeping guards in front of him, I certainly hope so) -- but that Silpe is a competent defender at this level.
That said, I certainly agree that the cocktail Donahue mixed (shorter rotation, more Goodman, whatever they did to adjust to the double team fiasco) worked. Kudos for figuring out a path to winning more games. A quick look at the final scores over our winning streak shows that we saw about a +5 increase in scoring over that stretch and -4 in what we gave up -- a HUGE 9 point swing that includes improvements in both areas (none of that is pace adjusted).
Where I disagree is with the initial assessment of Silpe: "he simply doesn't have the quickness to guard the elite guards in this league".
Just not sure it's what my eye-test, or the stats I've seen say. More importantly, the fact that elite quickness may be super helpful to us (a team with limited athleticism) doesn't mean that in other contexts (say a team with a lot of athletes, that needs a facilitator) that Silpe wouldn't be super valuable, and very playable. Context is king, and guys only get so many chances. Silpe hasn't figured out a way to produce in the opportunities he's had -- but I see him as a mid-level defender, a good distributor, and a guy who hasn't figured out how to make his offensive game work at the college level in the context of the system we're running. Maybe he doesn't get another shot with a good class coming in, and I understand if the staff goes another direction.
But was always hard to see guys like that get lost in the shuffle when I played; guys who know they can play and just don't fit the moment/team/system or, for whatever reason, it just doesn't work when they get their chance. I think it's a better way of thinking about the guys that get passed over than thinking of them as fundamentally flawed and unplayable.
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