jimmy two times

Jolly's look on the bench shows he is aware he has no chance of getting in a 30 point blowout. My dreams for this game were shattered. I wanted at least one Jolly hand grenade to laugh at. Damn you, Crews. You suck and you're no fun.

David Kaplan, he's on ESPN Chicago and CSN Chicago - was an assistant at Northern Illinois at one time and did some NBA scouting. He probably doesn't want to rip Crews because he's part of the coaching fraternity, but to gush on him like this when things or so obviously going badly and the team has zero life is a bit irresponsible.

Yeah and Milik reminds me of Larry Hughes...just has to put the ball in the basket more, shoot better from the line and be way more athletic and talented. Other than that, pretty much same guy.

Get Jolly in there!

I agree with you on this. Picking Jolly is on Crews. However, Jolly's lack of development and overall attitude is on him. So are the injuries he causes to people in the first few rows of the seats with his shots. That's on him too.

Wouldn't you say in a way, it kinda is his fault?

I really wish Crews would resort to playing Jolly 30 minutes a night for comic relief purposes. He owes me that much. It is really hard for me to enjoy myself without Jolly's "efforts" out there. In many ways, I should thank Jolly, as he is the MVP of this season for me. He provided the most enjoyable moment by far, a hilarious "baby hook" against Louisville that he launched over the backboard with the kind of form that I would expect from someone doing the Shot Put in the decathlon. Since this has been appropriately memorialized by the internet, I can watch this clip anytime I want (just did 10 times) and it will inspire badly needed laughter and invigorate my love for sports. Jolly is as equipped to play at this level as much as Crews is to coach. They might as well expose and embarrass themselves together for my benefit. To anyone writing May, please ask that he fire Crews at the end of the season, but include the demand that Crews coach this season out, with Jolly as the starting center and focal point of the offense. I can't wait to see what he can do with the ball in his hands 20 times per game. He makes John Manning look like Hakeem Olajuwon in the post.

How, by nailing a cheerleader in the head with one of his hook shots?

Lighten up.

In a strange way, that's kind of what I meant by Manning 2.0. Like a new evolution of stiffness. Maybe I should have said Manning 0.5? I saw that play live too, the best part was during live action, the play by play guy thought it was deflected, then the color guy cuts in and says something to the effect of "I don't think it did!". So funny that he was that baffled, as was I, because the trajectory required to put the ball on top of the backboard from that angle was absurd and could have only happened if the ball was deflected...or if it left the hands of Jolly. Not even sure Manning could have pulled that off.

It is amazing how much whining goes on about the officiating after every game. It played no role at all, we lost by 20. I was proud of the game we played and this was a nice indication that we're headed in the right direction. You have to like what you saw out of a lot of our guys, especially Crawford. He's a pure shooter and shot the ball with confidence last night. Very efficient. You also have to concede that were were completely dominated in the paint and on the boards. Louisville is in a different class than we are and we didn't have the size to match, unless you want to put Jolly and AG in, but after five games they still both look tentative, weak and don't have much court sense between them. Hopefully they aren't on the Manning development plan.

Jolly looks like Manning 2.0 thus far. Huge stiff.

It is supposed to be, but I haven't seen any official game watch dates posted yet. If you follow the Chicago Alumni page on FB, they usually will post it there a few weeks in advance.

None of that is a big deal. The worst thing he did was draft Kwame Brown and Adam Morrison.

I'd say our team rebounding ranking would be a bit better, simply because that is the one skill GG has - he is an above average rebounder for sure (though I wouldn't touch the word "talented" when it comes to him, his ball handling and court sense rivals Agbeko's; he does bust his ass out there and has a lot of heart, more than I can say for JM, so I'll give him that). I think though, it is wishful thinking that the rest of our big men (Agbeko not included) are collectively harmless on the boards because they are adjusting to Grandy not being out there. If anything, I'd think their rates would improve because there are more shots available for them to grab.

100%. He doesn't deserve to be out there. Our big men are awful and he's worse than any of them. Let's develop the big guys we do have that will actually be here so they can get better.

Wonder if Manning could walk on there.

True, but we're 350th in the NCAA in rebounding, not to mention, you would expect the largest percentage of any team's rebounds to be concentrated among their big men. It is circuitous...we're a terrible rebounding team and other than Agbeko, the rebounding rates from our big men are terrible.

^ Good analysis and your stats do make a good case for Agbeko to get more minutes. He's certainly looked like he has more of a clue lately anyways. Unfortunately, what really stood out at me more than anything when I looked at that list was the fact that our big men are terrible. Am I reading that right? All five of them combined average less than 1 point and 1 rebound per minute? You've got to be kidding me.

I sure do, but I don't think that is a good comparison. Objectively, the numbers say they aren't a good match. Subjectively, I saw a basketball player in Brian Conklin while Reggie seems far from that. RA looks like he needs to be taught the rules and is so incredibly awkward out there, it scares me how far he would have to come to be effective on even a marginal team. People keep mentioning Conklin and his "summer" in mythical terms like everybody on our roster can all of the sudden morph into a completely different player over the course of a few months. Conklin was special in that he had some ability already, decent fundamentals, good basketball acumen and most of all clearly had a will and desire to get better and put the effort in on his own when nobody was standing there watching him. How many players would and could make that kind of transformation? 1 out of 50? 1 out of 100? He's an outlier. Manning has had the chance for a Conklin summer three years in a row and never cashed in. RA looks like he puts in the effort and has the raw ability, but isn't anywhere near comfortable enough on the basketball court to make a contribution and I don't think he'll get there. TL looks like he'd need a Conklin decade just to get in shape. The bottom line is, for most Division I NCAA basketball players, when you are 1.5 years into your college career and you are ineffective and show no signs of improvement, past precedence overwhelmingly suggests that you will not develop into much of a player.

I can't remember the exact thread, but when Reggie signed people on this board were incessantly raving about his "raw ability" so much they were conjuring up images of Neon Boudeaux from Blue Chips. Wonder if that's the problem...maybe we need Nick Nolte to fly down and teach him how to play. Regardless, we sure as hell didn't get Neon...hopefully we didn't give Reggie a fully loaded Lexus. Whoever scouted him had to have thought they were looking at someone else. His lack of court sense would have been apparent whether he was playing against 8th graders or top tier high school talent. But, people enjoy projects I guess and maybe in our recruiting predicament we have to take risks. This one was a bust.

Totally agree. I liked TL for a bit last year, but all the sudden he looks insanely soft and moreover, cannot compensate for it with the outside stroke he was supposed to have. He's pretty useless out there if he can't knock down perimeter shots because he isn't interested in rebounding and defense and more troubling, shows no sign of improvement, which scares me because I've seen how this movie ends before when someone doesn't improve after one year and in fact, regresses (see Manning, John) Agbeko has a different problem. He isn't soft, but he reminds me way too much of Glaze. Agbeko isn't a basketball player (where the hell do we keep getting these guys?). He wasn't when he got here and it doesn't look like he ever will be. You could put part of this as an indictment on Crews and the coaching staff as he in fact, looks far worse than last year. He runs like he has a load in his pants and handles the ball like its a propane tank or something. I think his true calling is being one hell of a tandem with Glaze...bouncing at Humphrey's. Get these guys and Manning (plus McBroom for that matter) out of the way and let's let the kids who are part of our real future play and develop. I don't care if we get blown out.

You are right and I know that he did, but think for a second about how low the bar is when we have people on this board organizing a circle jerk because he put up 6 points and 6 boards against SIUE? He's a senior. I'd rather watch our other guys play.

Sorry I posted my opinion.