Looking at the KenPom top 25, just wanted to see what teams had legit size
*Virginia (Shedrick, Cafarro, Vander Plas)
*Duke (Lively, Filipowski, Mitchell, Ryan Young)
*Arkansas (Brazile, Mitchell and Graham)
*Connecticut (Sanogo, Clingan, Samson Johnson)
*Alabama (Bediako, Clowney, Gurley and Pringle)
*Arizona (Tubelis, Ballo, Veesaar)
Probably could include a few more
Size is nice yeah but really it’s what you do with it.
Catamount- I’ve heard that before ….
I don’t think height alone is problematic for us. Last year Chaney played well against Kofi Cockburn in the tournament (thought he was best defender vs Kofi) and Arizona’s 3 bigs were held in check.
IMO bigs that bring most of the following can be hard for us on the boards and/or at the rim
Most bigs that aren’t one and done like Duren only have a couple of above characteristics so we can outwork / outathlete them. And Duren made freshman mistakes with fouls.
Also keep in mind how bad we smoked Oregon last season and so I suspect some of them were fired up for revenge.
UH doubles big men in the paint when they get the ball. A big man who can get the ball out to a hot shooter may cause UH some problems.
Yes but our double is very aggressive so post needs to pass quickly and this years UH team is so athletic they recover faster than most teams are used to seeing. No doubt some team will shoot us out of gym from 3 pt line this season but that can happen to anyone.
I know J. Francis did not play very much last night, but I wonder what CKS thought about him vs. Oregon
It’s all about the motion to the ocean.
Sorry but I don’t think we can use last year as a reference with bigs because we had big Carlton as the equalizer.
It’s more useful to compare any other year in the last 4 years to this year.
In fact, I don’t think we ever had the challenges we are having this year - teams with multiple talented 5 star centers are playing us without a true center.
Our other facets have to make up for it - superior coaching, athleticism, shooting, coordination……
Do these big men have shoes on when they are big?
I’ve heard most of the height inflation is socks these days
I think if we were losing because of Dante then Francis would have guarded him and shut him down.
That’s always been the threat with our Monster defense, but most big men in college (even the elite ones) struggle with that since they tend to not have to rely on their passing skills most of the season. We pretty play the odds that more times than not they’ll not get it out or the shooter that does will miss/have our hand in his face if he hesitates. Seems like this year (at least so far; still plenty of time to develop) our Monster itself is a bit weaker since we don’t have a true dominant defensive big, but we also have guards/wings more likely to strip the ball or steal it on the pass. It will be interesting to see how it develops over the season and what the outcomes against bigs are.
What a good monster trap needs is strength to keep the center away from the basket and the ability to recover.
On top of that we are switching the passing lanes so it doesn’t always look the same.
We have all the ingredients. What can beat it is a team who can make an extra two plus passes while we recover.
Definitely scares me seeing Virginia and Alabama on this list knowing this was one of our only true potential weaknesses on paper going into this season (size in the front court) and how successful Dante was against us last game. 3 Things that give me comfort about this specifically though:
GO COOGS!
Virginia is that one bad matchup because they play alot like Villanova, Michigan St & us. Hard nosed defense, rebounding & (they make the most of their possessions) great coaching.
…but our depth & talent level is off the charts this season. Great battle later on.
“What a good monster trap needs is strength to keep the center away from the basket and the ability to recover.”
Exactly! Right now we’re better at the ability to recover part (at least the Veterans mostly are; the Freshmen are working on it) and struggling more at keeping the center away from the basket (at least in Oregon). I think the film from Oregon will really help our front court evaluate what they’re doing and give them immediate things to practice improve on.
“We have all the ingredients. What can beat it is a team who can make an extra two plus passes while we recover.” Totally agree! Our guards having such active hands and being great at stealing/disrupting passes will make this even harder for teams. There are very few teams that will be able to consistently make the extra 2 plus passes and make the shot (while playing against our aggressive, physical D) consistently enough throughout a game to truly break the system. If we ever do face them, I trust Coach Sampson to make some adjustments to disrupt them (or our O to get into a shootout with them).
I love it when the big tries to dribble out of the double team and turns the ball over.
Arizona can put a full court of 7’0" players out there, not just the front court.
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