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Username Post: Harvard Starting Lineup Next Year
mrjames 
Professor
Posts: 6062

Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
03-17-18 10:05 AM - Post#253590    
    In response to digamma

My guess at a starting lineup (assuming Aiken and Towns can go from day one next season) would be:

Kirkwood, Aiken, Bassey, Towns, Lewis

Noah can flat out play. Much like Wes Saunders - it's okay to call him a small forward, but he's actually a point guard. At least in the sense that he could very easily lead the team in assist rate and could be the team's best playmaker for others.

I'm not as bullish on Freedman as others (and the recruiting rankings). Much like the Faulds comments last year - it's not that he's not a strong recruit... just that the Top 100/150/4-star rankings might be painting an overly ambitious picture of the impact that he'll have early on. That being said, for a team that had to squeeze everything possible out of Juzang, now Harvard will have an embarrassment of riches at that spot (Juzang will likely be the 5th-best point guard on the roster next year, as TMac will be back as well, and can be freed up to move back to a 3-and-D role that is far better suited to his skills).

The big question for me is what role Corey Johnson will have. It's not just the 34% shooting from three, but that he didn't really want to take shots (shot rate fell from 22% as a frosh to 15% this year) that scares me the most. For a team that will have better 3-and-D options (Bassey 43% from three, Juzang 39% and both WAY better on ball defenders than Johnson), Corey will need to go back to being a lights out, volume shooter to see the floor.

So, if I had to guess at the full-strength rotation in the 1-2-3 spots:

Kirkwood 30 mins
Aiken 30 mins
Bassey 30 mins
Freedman 10 mins
Juzang 10 mins
Towns 10 mins

The size on the floor could allow Harvard to avoid playing a small 4, in which case, Towns' 10 mins would likely go to whoever emerges from Rio, Corey, TMac and Kale (who had a strong senior year).

Then, you move to the 4-5. Towns (again, assuming the knee isn't serious) and Lewis are the lock starters there. Harvard's biggest weakness is that it still doesn't have another Lewis, so it's going to spend another season papering over the 5 spot when Lewis is on the bench with either the relatively immobile Welsh, the too-small-to-guard-true-p osts Djuricic, the inconsistent Baker or an intriguing, but raw and undersized prospect Mason Forbes. My guess is that all of these guys will see time depending on the matchup, much like Tommy did this year with the frontcourt rotation.

Towns 20 mins
Lewis 25 mins
Djuricic 20 mins
Welsh/Baker/Forbes 15 mins

Invariably, there will be injuries. The good news is that Harvard is incredibly deep now - both with the incoming class and the added experience that some of the returnees got that they might not have gotten if Harvard hadn't suffered through all the craziness this season. Harvard can survive an injury almost everywhere now except for Lewis.

It's probably best to temper expectations by thinking of this as a two-year build. Amaker is definitely going to tinker in November/December next year, and the schedule will probably be deceptively difficult but not worth very much in the Quad1/Quad2 sense. That will likely mean some frustrating losses before putting it together as the calendar turns.

The 2019-20 season though will be incredibly interesting. Should include an MTE. That's what this is all building toward.
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