Is It Dawning On Us That Our 2022 Team

These are direct quotes from Sampson, Kellen also said similar, so did McLean… and right before last season I made townson highlight reel for Justin, Galen commented on it with “if you guys only knew how good he was”…
Me and tj had debated about this in the off-season (he didn’t think Gorham was very good) … I kept telling him Gorham was going to be major this year … everyone wasnt making up the same thing if it wasn’t true

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This will be a different team. We will have more guys capable of running the offense. I think we will look a lot better offensively in 2021 season. We won’t have as many guys standing around waiting for Deeky to do something, we probably won’t have as good as of play maker as Deeky. But more guys who can make plays which is just as valuable

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Again our bigs are our biggest weakness. If Justin was that good last year he would have got way more minutes. It’s just that plan and simple. Sampson would have been playing him and Fabian together a lot more. But we can agree to disagree

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I was told by Kellen in the fall of Justin’s redshirt season that he was going to be a major contributor at UH. I don’t see what’s so hard to understand that he got caught behind Fabian. One poster stated he should have played more because our bigs were a “problem”. He wasn’t going to take Chris Harris’ or Brison’s minutes. He wasn’t recruited to be a 5

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bigs werent a weakness in 2020, shootng was… harris and fabian were very good, did their roles well…

also sampson LOVES fabian and said he wanted him on the court as much as possible… noted the fabian had a 18pt double double vs precious achiuwa…that you cant put that on the bench…
also you are acting like sampson gasses players for no reason…name a situation where samspon says someone is really good when they arent… he also said after gorham broke out, that none of this is a surprise to anyone

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I didn’t say Sampson gassed up for reason. Fact of the matter is anyone who understands basketball knows if a player is really that good the coach will find a way to get him on the court. It’s just that simple

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No, it’s not always that “simple”

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semi ojeyele was an all American caliber/ future nba player, who couldn’t get any rotation minutes at duke… and was instantly unstoppable at smu and put statistically arguably the best season of any aac player ever immediately after arriving…in the offseason between duke and smu did he become magically that much better… or that duke had depth and he was good all along…same with juzang and UCLA/UK

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It took that final four squad two seasons to jell and acquire their identity. Dejon’s leadership will really tough to replace. Grimes was a rare talent in Houston. Frankly , this upcoming season will be a rebuilding season. We may get some really solid transfers, but it will take time for team to jell together. Looking at 2022-2023 season for a probable run in the tournament .

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Gorham this year was better than Fabian last year so if he was this good he would have been on the court. You are acting like we have some crazy depth at bigs :joy::joy:

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I’ll give you your rightful dub on Gorham but you are again sort of misconstruing our positions. I said I like him playing ~15 minutes a night as an 8th man but didn’t foresee he’d make a massive leap to feel confident he’d break out playing 30 minutes a night.

Some of the individual things we argued about (would he show a bunch of post game) and his shooting numbers I think I was actually more right about. At one point early in the season you said he could shoot 40% from 3 on 5 attempts and I think I nearly exactly called him shooting 35% on ~1-2 attempts a game.

I think I even said before the season I could see him putting up around 8.5 and 6.5 on a decent percentage scoring mostly on putbacks and dump offs with an open 3 here or there which is really not that far off from what he did. Those extra two rebounds are legit but it’s not like I was all that far off.

We need better parameters on a future disagreement I guess. If you would have predicted Gorham would put up 8.5 and 8.5 I’d have said that’s probably possible but I wouldn’t have fathomed that would get second team all AAC and I’ll admit those numbers feel bigger watching the games than they seem on paper.

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again as a fan i think gorham was better than fabian… but i dont think sampson thinks that…sampson has already said fabian will be a top 5 big in all of college basketball next year… you are looking at it from a fan perspective, who dont see fabian as this monster…sampson the one who decides the minutes, sees fabian as this monster… look at the quotes he made after our international trip last season… he said fabian was the teams best player and a man among boys…he has made it clear fabian wont lose minutes to anyone

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gorham was shooting at over 40% from 3 at about 2 per game prior to Fabian’s return, which was 75% of the season, in which after his offensive role on the team decreased… he only took forced end of shot clock type 3s after Fabian returned…2 made 3s in the last 8 games after fabian…that shows that gorham was “capable” of shooting over 40% at about 3 per game (never said he should shoot 5 a game lol)… i said we could find him 3 or 4 open shots a game (when he was playing 28mins a game)… there a direct correlation and explanation to why his offensive production decreased… and doesn’t affect the answer of “capable”…

also im making a draft reel for gorham right now (his entire season is in front of me), a tiny fraction of his points were put backs, and i mean tiny fraction, maybe 1 every 2 games… the majority of his 2 pointers were post moves and short midranges/short drives (where he catches the ball at the freethrow line)… your put back point is wrong

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He’d made something like 10-15 three pointers the entire season up to that point which is not enough to draw any sort of conclusion and several of those would have been before teams scouted him hitting those. If he could shoot 40% on ~4 attempts per game that we could reasonably get him in the flow of a game that would have happened. He played plenty of minutes without Fabian so I don’t know why Fabian coming back changes that aspect of his game completely.

What are you classifying as a post move? If someone gets an offensive rebound and swings it to him with his man slightly out of position or someone drives and Gorham’s man shades off of him and in either case he takes one dribble, then does an up and under or something like that, I’m considering that a dump off and I remember him scoring a decent bit on stuff like that. I don’t know if you are calling that a post score. In terms of putting someone on his back and getting an entry pass from the wing then scoring (which is what I consider a post move) I know there were a few times he scored like that but I don’t remember many.

He only scored 2.4 two point field goals a game so if .5 of those are put backs and 1-1.5 of those are what I’m calling dump offs, that would not be that different.

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gorham got almost none of the offensive rebound points, none of our bigs did, it was always kicked back out to the guards (The way we rebounded, and how teams tried to prevent our rebounds played into that tho)… gorham was normally always fighting for the rebound himself to be set up for offense…

post move- back to the basket and work your way to the post with a variety of moves, justin loved to finish it with a hook shot, but sometimes he’d finsh with a layup if he could get a look… putbacks weren’t a thing did often (nromally becuase the post was crowded). dejon dump offs were a thing, but they were rarely catch and put up (some were but they were few)… a would often catch it away from the rim and would have to use some sort of move to score and get to the rim, like a reverse layup or something …dumpoff were a big portion but not the majority, the majority were post moves/short drives …most of his 2 point offense is this; he catches the ball roughly around 15 feet from the rim facing the rim, if you were 6’8 or under you are getting posted up, if you were a big giving him room he is taking the mid range, if you are a big playing close, he will doing some pump fakes then try ton drive on you… rewatch the temple game, the announcers were just in marvel how gorham was posting up at will… you are again undervaluing what Gorham did trying to portray it like he was just doing putbacks and easy layup dropoffs… we can revist this when im done with the reel

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Did I miss something !! I thought White missed almost all of the season due to injury.

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I look forward to the reel independent of this discussion. I missed a few games this year and Temple was one of them so maybe there’s some happenstance where I missed some of his better offensive showcases.

I’m not trying to undervalue him. He made second team all AAC which is extremely good and I think he deserved it. He had a massive impact and I think the energy he brought really spread throughout and energized the team so it goes beyond stats, which I wasn’t really accounting for when prognosticating what he would provide and also acknowledge that even at 8.5 boards a game having to account for his relentlessness and some of his tips allowed others to grab boards at times too. So his 8.5 boards don’t fully tell the whole story of his rebounding impact.

His offensive contribution was better than I envisioned but I also don’t think I was all that far off. And I agree with you that just a straight dump off where he goes straight up and scores wasn’t all that common but I’m still considering something where he gets the ball with his man in help position and take a dribble or maybe two to weave his way in for a score a dump off. Maybe semi-dump off or something is a more accurate description. But I’ll watch the reel and evaluate further.

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Just to add, in a weird way I think we actually sort of agree that a lot of what he did this year he could have done last year.

One thing is I think he needed more regular minutes for his confidence/energy/flow and that’s part of why he was much more effective on the glass this year. Also, Sampson talks about how competing with the other guys on the team to grab the board is kind of hard too so maybe with Harris and Nate gone Justin got some boards this year that those guys would have grabbed.

I also definitely underestimated the impact peak Gorham would provide to the team even if I don’t think I was all that far off on what a peak Gorham could sort of look like.

I said Gorham this year was better than Fabian last year. Not just Fabian this year

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Fabian last year

Reading :books: is your friend.

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