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Username Post: Any news out there?
Dr. V 
PhD Student
Posts: 1536

Reg: 11-21-04
08-16-17 12:03 PM - Post#232064    
    In response to cc66


That's a good way of putting it, i.e., a competitive lineup. Fortunately or unfortunately, as Mr. James has been reminding us all, the league is much stronger than perhaps ever. H, P and Y are loaded and the rest all have good parts.

What's good about our situation is that we have good experience returning and a strong class of first years who will be pushing them daily in practice. But, as always, the key question is whether we can improve on D. And we need to shoot better.

Positionally I think we're strong at the 1 with Smith (with Adlesh or one of the first years backing him up when needed) and, surprisingly for us, at the 5. We have two athletic bigs, Tape and Faulds, who can rebound and block shots, and having two is huge because young bigs who rebound and block shots tend to pick up fouls.

The rest is more or less a blank slate, but it's nice that Engles and the staff will have options. Castlin has demonstrated his many strengths, but his long range shooting is not as consistent as one would like. Can he improve that by November? Meisner has at times looked great moving without the ball, on the O boards, rebounding and sometimes shooting, but for some reason he tends to get nicked up so playing time has been somewhat limited. Hickman started very strong, then faded last year. Adlesh will be very valuable off the bench with his experience, shooting and passing, but because of size on D, I don't think we can have both him and Smith starting together. Then there are the first years. There is a lot of talent there. Question is, who can play the best D the earliest? It's hard to predict such things, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or even two broke into the starting lineup by the time we play the Ivies.

We probably need to have two more classes like the one coming in, like it it in terms of quality, not its size, to match the top teams in our league. But then Engles showed at NJIT that he can be a magician, so it's going to be fun to see how we play this and the next several years.
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