mobrien
Masters Student
Posts: 403
Loc: New York
Reg: 04-18-17
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03-04-24 05:15 PM - Post#364492
In response to digamma
A lot is riding on our next two recruiting classes.
I like the freshmen we have coming in next year. Hinton is a top 100 kid coming from an absolutely loaded Harvard-Westlake squad—two of his teammates were top 50 guys—so college shouldn't be too much of a jump up, competition-wise, for him. He might start as a freshman.
Dowdell, Barbour, and Hunt should give us the shooting depth we need. I'm not sure how much any of them will be ready to contribute next year, but if one of them is, I could see us playing small with Mack (assuming he returns...), Hinton, one of these three, Lesmond, and Okpara. That'd be a lot of shooting to put around Mack, should open up some actual driving lanes for him. It would also let Simon and Pigge anchor a second unit that would have some actual punch to it. (It's hard enough for pro athletes to come back from an Achilles in just a year and have anything close to their old explosiveness; for a college kid who doesn't have as much time to rehab ... I'm not counting on much from Nelson next year, and hoping to be pleasantly surprised).
2025 is the big one though. We're supposedly the favorites to land Elzie Harrington, a 6'3" combo guard who, depending on the scouting service, is at the worst an easy top 100 player, and at best a legit NBA prospect. Amaker is good friends with his dad, and Xavier Nesbitt is his godbrother. He'd be a program changer.
We're also supposed to have a good chance at landing a 6'10" top 50-ish center, Eric Reibe. He'd also instantly improve our prospects. He's probably more of a longshot than Harrington, but maybe getting Harrington would help out there.
Even if we hit a recruiting home run, though, the offensive system needs to get better. We need to move the ball. We need to cut. We need to get defenses out of position other than just off our drives. We can do all this and keep the basic structure the same; we just need to run it with a purpose, along with a few more wrinkles to make defenses worry about more things.
Most of all, the ball can't stick. We were really bad at that this weekend.
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