3star_recruit

That's really the formula for any guard near the bottom of the rotation to get on the floor.

The talent on St. Mary's was worse in Yuri Collins' senior year. Didn't stop him from being their best scorer AND great at point guard. Because he is what he is. I think BBE would have been better off this summer if they would have unleashed Zyree the scorer rather than being someone he's not.

I love Zyree Collins' game. But he plays more like Swope than a true point guard. Still a good thing but doesn't solve the point guard issue. Schertz is the same guy who put together's last year's Indiana State team. The two point guards he recruited for this team have had injury setbacks. Tough break. Hopefully he'll have better luck with the next point guard(s) he recruits.

The 6'6/6'7 guys with guard skills are still being recruited out of high school. That's why McCottrey is here. It's the smallish combo guards that are being neglected. That size player has to be top 150 to grab the attention of a high mid-major.

You replace Swope with an experienced guard from the portal. There are small high scoring guards out there every year who transfer from low major to mid major. The top mid-majors aren't recruiting them of high school anymore. That's how Swope ended up at Indiana State - Coach Schertz pulled him from Southern Indiana.

I've given up rating teams in November. Most teams are still trying to figure it out just like we are.

Six games into the season the offense and the defense are about what I expected. We can score on anybody but we also can't stop anybody. The guys who anchored ISU's defense are playing for Texas right now. The guys who are best suited for that role on this team are not healthy. Hopefully that changes in the next couple of weeks.

I think all SLU-level mid-majors are following similar logic. You can always get a proven 6-0 combo guard through the portal. Why roll the dice on that player as a freshman? How does he get on the floor? McCottry's size and disruptiveness on defense are the primary reasons he's seeing PT right now. If the portal didn't exist, I have no doubt that Zyree would be a priority right now. Smallish players have been the high school players most impacted by the new college basketball landscape.

Same problem he had last year.

I'm beginning to think there isn't much difference between a top 10 D2 team and a top 100 D1 team.

Dayton's Enoch Cheeks, a 6-3 guard who averaged 8.1 ppg and 4.7 rpg last year is playing out of mind. He's averaging 15.0 ppg and 8.3 rpg playing the same amount of minutes as last year. And he's turned into a ball hawk, racking up 3.3 steals per game. I guess the Conklin summer has expanded to Ohio.

Parker's coming off the bench because he's coming off of shoulder surgery and wasn't cleared to play until mid-September. Will Wade stated at the time that the plan was to limit his time early and ease him into play. He's 2nd in scoring on the team at only 20 min a game. I'll be surprised if he's not starting soon. Parker's a bonafide scorer who has had some bad luck with injuries. And our team defense was horrible, with or without him in the lineup. Good luck to him.

Gotta start somewhere.

Excellent points. Just because you're the best player on the floor doesn't mean you won't get outplayed occasionally by a lesser player. Sometimes it's just not your night.

Most schools recruit locally. Some of those players only become role players or don't make the rotation at all. If a player becomes disgruntled, that's the cost of doing business. Hughes has been a classy, team-first guy the whole time he has been here. In this case, there's no sign of a disgruntled player. We're just engaging in the normal message board chatter of who makes the rotation. I'm rooting for Hughes to develop into a glue guy. He has the right attitude for it.

Makes sense. Outside the obvious draw of when either Caitlyn Clark or Angel Reese is in town, St. Louisan Napheesa Collier is a perennial All-Star. I think an WNBA team would do decent numbers here, provided they draft well.

Yuri Collins wasn't recruited to be the man. He was a lightly recruited point guard from a small private school whose role was to be the distributor. He averaged about 5 ppg a game during the summer for Bradley Beal Elite and that's about what he averaged here his first two years. But I agree that Coach Ford required someone to be "the man". When Perkins got injured, Yuri was forced into that role. And when Perkins never returned to form, he was forced into the role again. It's not a role for which he was suited or recruited. That's why it didn't work.

I don't think his defense is exaggerated. I'd say he is an above average defender. Unfortunately last year was the worst defensive Billiken team I've ever seen so having at least 3 guys who were below average defenders more than cancelled that out.

If a person's main contribution is volume stationary three-point shooting, I don't see it how that person gets enough minutes as the 9th player in the rotation to have a meaningful contribution. The reason Coach Schertz mentioned that McCottrey has the potential to change our ceiling is because he's the best driver on the roster. He does something nobody else can do. If Hughes is in the rotation I suspect it's because he has developed into a glue guy. The streaky 3-point shooter we've seen thus far in his career won't cut it.

That would require genuine artificial intelligence. We ain't there yet.

I've noticed that when you dig deeper into work related around AI, it usually means automation. Which computer programmers have been doing forever by writing scripts in their computer language of choice. Now regular folk can just ask computers to run scripts by using human language instead of computer language.

I agree that if Coach Schertz deviates from his norm of an 8 player rotation it's because of McCottry's potential. As he stated in the Sunday radio interview, "if Amari can get to where he's able to play consistent minutes, it changes our ceiling as a team."

Some families will tell you early in the recruiting process by words and actions where they're leaning. This is a good thing. You don't waste time on recruits who aren't interested.

It's a different level of basketball but Coach Schertz's 13 years at Lincoln Memorial gives us insight into how he approaches depth. Most of the time he played eight guys. A typical minutes distribution was three guys that play 30+ minutes a game, two that play 25+, two that play about 15 and one that plays about 10.

If there are good solutions to the challenges faced by schools like SLU then why are so many schools not exercising them?