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2019-20 Season


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Johnson transferred for two reasons

He was 5th on the depth chart for bigs going into the season.

He wanted to be a guard and Ford said he couldn't.

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It's easy to forget that players are practicing every day with the team, both active and trasfer players.  They can figure out the pecking order.  They see the quality of incoming recruits at thier position and do the math. 

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1 hour ago, Quality Is Job 1 said:

Jalen Johnson's ballhandling was/is too poor to be a guard.  The fact that he was winning the rebound chain (not withstanding that Goodwin also does that) and near the top in blocked shots should have proven to him that he was/is a forward, not a guard.

I guess we'll see how he does at Louisiana Lafayette.

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3 hours ago, thetorch said:

He wanted to be a guard and Ford said he couldn't.

Crazy to me that after watching Golden State and the rest of the NBA go small-ball crazy in the playoffs that a guy like Jalen Johnson is mad about being a "forward".  I'm not saying Jalen Johnson will ever be an NBA player or even come close, but his best path to the NBA would be as a small-ball forward who can knock down a the 3 ball, defend bigger guys, and rebound.  He's never going to have the quickness / ball handling ability to be an NBA guard.

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4 hours ago, ACE said:

That is not correct. Johnson left a month before Isabell and Wiley. We would have gotten Isabell anyway, as we were desperate to land a starting guard. The addition of Wiley was more of a response to Johnson's departure, rather than Johnson departing because of Wiley.

I stand corrected. 

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4 hours ago, thetorch said:

Johnson transferred for two reasons

He was 5th on the depth chart for bigs going into the season.

He wanted to be a guard and Ford said he couldn't.

Looking back on the season, here in June, yes he would have gotten a lot of PT at a Power Slot with Santos and Gordon MIA.  So maybe he was right to leave, particularly if Ford in fact said he could not play guard.  (Why would he tell Johnson, a 38% 3 point shooter, that he couldn't play outside?)

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37 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:

Looking back on the season, here in June, yes he would have gotten a lot of PT at a Power Slot with Santos and Gordon MIA.  So maybe he was right to leave, particularly if Ford in fact said he could not play guard.  (Why would he tell Johnson, a 38% 3 point shooter, that he couldn't play outside?)

Johnson was too slow, zero handles, and couldn't pass.  His only outside ability was a spot up shooter.  He couldn't defend very well outside the paint especially against perimeter players.

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13 minutes ago, thetorch said:

Johnson was too slow, zero handles, and couldn't pass.  His only outside ability was a spot up shooter.  He couldn't defend very well outside the paint especially against perimeter players.

So Ford no I don’t want a 38% spot up shooter. You have to play inside. Okay. 

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16 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:

So Ford no I don’t want a 38% spot up shooter. You have to play inside. Okay. 

or, jalen, when we need a spark i can get you some time on the wing, but we really need another power forward and someone to rebound.   

no.  i am a shooting guard only.  i'm outta here.

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23 hours ago, HoosierPal said:

So Ford no I don’t want a 38% spot up shooter. You have to play inside. Okay. 

There is a difference between playing inside and playing the forward position.  Johnson couldn't handle the ball or defend opposing guards, so he couldn't play guard for us.  He could act as a stretch forward on offense, grab rebounds, and defend inside (although playing the zone helped because I don't think we was a very good inside defender either).

Johnson probably wanted to be more involved in the offense than being a spot up shooter, but his ball handling precluded that for us.  Playing at a lower level school, the offense will flow through him more as (likely) one of their best scoring options.

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On the subject of losing our top scorers from last year, I have a few thoughts. 

It isn’t that big of a metric to me for a few reasons

1. Players will step up 

2. We have players that can score but were not the primary target 

3. We have 3 scorers coming in 

I have big hopes for Perkins, Hargrove, Gibson, Thatch and Goodwin stepping up next year. French with some backup can be unstable, and with a pg like Yuri we have some options. 

With 2 scholarships for next year, I see we can have some options to play around with. Personally 2 sit out transfers would be nice 

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Kind of hard to predict where we'll end up with only 3 known out of conference games. Not getting invited to some tourney after an NCAA appearance is kind of discouraging, however. I'm sure we'll land in one of those buy game round robin deals and end up on a neutral court playing a P5 school or two. My guess is that the ACC deal is over for us giving them the Barkley Center. But we do have to schedule 10 more games and at this point I'm guessing we'll be none too impressed based on what Travis said about troubles w/ scheduling. I'd shoot for the best 3-4 mid majors he can get w/ about 4 buy games, and hopefully fill in w/ two more P5s.

Broy said he's expecting a .500 squad. I'll have to go along with that at this point. Not sure who CTAward was referring to when he said "we have players who can score but were not the primary target". I'll have to assume it was Jacobs and Hankton. I wouldn't say with any degree of certainty they can score if they are targeted. The guy I would expect to make a big leap in scoring would be Fred. He averaged 26 or so in HS and was said to have a decent 3 percentage. Here's hoping. JGood could get to 15 ppg just by improving his FT shooting. French could get to 12-13 for the same reason. But, hopefully, they're working on upping their point totals from the floor not the FT line, because they will be the go to guys at the start. Lots of hoping in this paragraph. We shall see.

Lewis would have made us less scoring challenged, but that would have come at the expense of guys like Jacobs, Jimerson, Perkins, and Collins. I'll opt for the long term and pray our FR come thru like St. B's did last year.

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35 minutes ago, Clocktoweraccords2004 said:

On the subject of losing our top scorers from last year, I have a few thoughts. 

It isn’t that big of a metric to me for a few reasons

1. Players will step up 

2. We have players that can score but were not the primary target 

3. We have 3 scorers coming in 

I have big hopes for Perkins, Hargrove, Gibson, Thatch and Goodwin stepping up next year. French with some backup can be unstable, and with a pg like Yuri we have some options. 

With 2 scholarships for next year, I see we can have some options to play around with. Personally 2 sit out transfers would be nice 

what?

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1 hour ago, Clocktoweraccords2004 said:

On the subject of losing our top scorers from last year, I have a few thoughts. 

It isn’t that big of a metric to me for a few reasons

1. Players will step up 

2. We have players that can score but were not the primary target 

3. We have 3 scorers coming in 

I have big hopes for Perkins, Hargrove, Gibson, Thatch and Goodwin stepping up next year. French with some backup can be unstable, and with a pg like Yuri we have some options. 

With 2 scholarships for next year, I see we can have some options to play around with. Personally 2 sit out transfers would be nice 

Are you saying French is like a Weeble?

 

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2 hours ago, Clocktoweraccords2004 said:

On the subject of losing our top scorers from last year, I have a few thoughts. 

It isn’t that big of a metric to me for a few reasons

1. Players will step up 

2. We have players that can score but were not the primary target 

3. We have 3 scorers coming in 

I have big hopes for Perkins, Hargrove, Gibson, Thatch and Goodwin stepping up next year. French with some backup can be unstable, and with a pg like Yuri we have some options. 

With 2 scholarships for next year, I see we can have some options to play around with. Personally 2 sit out transfers would be nice 

Yeah...scoring...pfff...who needs that?! Are you serious with this?

We struggled to score all damn year, we lose our 2 top scorers (and probably our 2 best playmakers) and dis dude talkin bout it not being 'that big of a metric.' Okay, Frederick. But I guess Columbus wasn't looking for America either, and that turned out to be pretty okay for everyone. 

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I thought the Billikens had a reasonable shot at doing well this coming season if they landed a grad trasfer forward and guard with a proven history of scoring 12+ ppg.  Lewis fit the bill.  Now however a lot of things have to go right to have a chance at being a tournament quality team by A10 tournament time.  French has to have a big season and for that to happen he has to be playing the 4. He is a mismatch on both ends of the floor for the majority of 4s. For that to happen one or both of the freshman bigs have to play reasonably well at the 5.  That probably means more zone defense to keep the fouls down and the freshman on the floor.  A 6 10/11 player guarding the post in our zone would be tough. We need 2 shooters on the floor who can nail an open 3 and help open the lanes. Perkins is most likely to do that early at the 3, and Gibson could emerge if he can defend in the other end.  At the 2 we need Thatch to be much more productive and consistent with his scoring and outside shot. OR Jacobs or Yuri need to catch fire.  Goodwin will be most effective driving to the basket if we have can have a couple of shooters keep the defense honest.  Hargrove is our highest rated freshman.  He can play the 3 or 4, though, probably not the shooter that Perkins is.  He could easily share time with French at the 4. We will probably have a rough start in non conference ad conference play, but if we are lucky, start coming together by the conference tournament.  By then a couple of these new players will be up to speed.  So for us to have a chance, one of our freshman bigs and 2 shooters must emerge.

 

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19 minutes ago, Aquinas said:

I thought the Billikens had a reasonable shot at doing well this coming season if they landed a grad trasfer forward and guard with a proven history of scoring 12+ ppg.  Lewis fit the bill.  Now however a lot of things have to go right to have a chance at being a tournament quality team by A10 tournament time.  French has to have a big season and for that to happen he has to be playing the 4. He is a mismatch on both ends of the floor for the majority of 4s. For that to happen one or both of the freshman bigs have to play reasonably well at the 5.  That probably means more zone defense to keep the fouls down and the freshman on the floor.  A 6 10/11 player guarding the post in our zone would be tough. We need 2 shooters on the floor who can nail an open 3 and help open the lanes. Perkins is most likely to do that early at the 3, and Gibson could emerge if he can defend in the other end.  At the 2 we need Thatch to be much more productive and consistent with his scoring and outside shot. OR Jacobs or Yuri need to catch fire.  Goodwin will be most effective driving to the basket if we have can have a couple of shooters keep the defense honest.  Hargrove is our highest rated freshman.  He can play the 3 or 4, though, probably not the shooter that Perkins is.  He could easily share time with French at the 4. We will probably have a rough start in non conference ad conference play, but if we are lucky, start coming together by the conference tournament.  By then a couple of these new players will be up to speed.  So for us to have a chance, one of our freshman bigs and 2 shooters must emerge.

 

i agree, that is why i think ford is going to try to bring another shooter. if gibson can shoot well enough he will play a lot even if his defense is not good

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33 minutes ago, Clocktoweraccords2004 said:

Unstoppable* 

and my biggest problem with last years team was chemistry. We put it together at the end but we out-talented teams in the beginning. 

This team doesn’t appear to have any egos going in. 

Sounds like the auto-correct was unstable, unstoppable or both.

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