We have many guys who shot 40% from three

[Blue till I die]

It just hit me that we have 4 guys we have shot 40%, and it's getting me pretty excited about the offense Pope can run with these guys.

McBride 40% last year
N'Diaye 40% in a FIBA league last year
Kam shot 40% at UAB as a freshman
Wilkins the last third of the year shot 40% (he shot like 25% his first 10 games that really pulled the season average down)
Milan one of the best shooters in college basketball last year


Plus potential with Hawthorne and Noah

The offensive potential for this team is extremely exciting

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

Going to be an extremely good shooting team. Other things are the question.

 

[BlueSince92]

Sure we do if you qualify the hell out of it. And that *could* mean one or more of them is going to make a jump and be another guy who can actually do that consistently in games when the pressure is on as opposed to having done it here and there in heavily qualified situations.

But that ‘s a derp thing to bet a season on when we have a little more money we could squeeze out and there are plenty of playable guards shooting 34% or more from outside when you include all of Europe.

And that’s a meaningful stat because right now outside Momcilovic we have exactly one guy, Jerone Morton, who has shown any strong indication he can shoot even 33% consistently in actual games against the kind of competition we face constantly in our league. And we haven’t seen any indication Morton will be a starter. So where does that leave us?

It leaves us writing fluff pieces and starting threads that are the basketball equivalent of “it could grip it by the husks.”

‘Scuse me if I haven’t been up for the circle jerk. I love Pope and I love an awful a lot of things about the players we’ve signed so far but I don’t love that in one critical sense, and it’s probably the most critical sense, they haven’t really been set up to succeed. Unless, as I also keep pointing out, we get lucky in terms of someone blooming.

We can hope someone blooms and gets to where they can ride a Big Kid bike without needing these kinds of qualifications as training wheels. Hope is a great thing.

It’s not what I call a plan.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

^ My recommendation is not to take the ragebait.

Current roster shot 38% from three, would have been top ten in the country. No one objectively would look at the current roster makeup and point to shooting as a primary concern.

 

[megablue]

It just hit me that we have 4 guys we have shot 40%, and it's getting me pretty excited about the offense Pope can run with these guys.

McBride 40% last year
N'Diaye 40% in a FIBA league last year
Kam shot 40% at UAB as a freshman
Wilkins the last third of the year shot 40% (he shot like 25% his first 10 games that really pulled the season average down)
Milan one of the best shooters in college basketball last year


Plus potential with Hawthorne and Noah

The offensive potential for this team is extremely exciting

Here are 3-point shooting percentages for Pope's players, ranked by OVERALL CAREER PERCENTAGE:

	20-21	21-22	22-23	23-24	24-25	25-26	Overall	Conference	Attempts
							Career	Career	Career
BREA	0.355	0.423	0.370	0.498	0.435		0.434	0.445	730
>>>>> MOMCILOVIC				0.359	0.396	0.487	0.428	0.395	608
>>>>> POTTER				0.455	0.367		0.398	0.431	93
CHANDLER					0.347	0.410	0.396	0.434	227
>>>>> K. WILLIAMS					0.412	0.359	0.394	0.394	231
ALMONOR		0.343	0.381	0.394	0.424		0.391	0.423	560
KRIISA	0.368	0.336	0.366	0.424	0.263	0.320	0.357	0.373	782
ROBINSON	0.286	0.326	0.343	0.354	0.376		0.351	0.354	643
ABERDEEN			0.000	0.353	0.350	0.363	0.351	0.333	313
OWEH			0.250	0.377	0.355	0.333	0.347	0.319	268
PERRY					0.321	0.353	0.344	0.389	192
>>>>> MORTON				0.167	0.377	0.388	0.342	0.403	193
JOHNSON						0.341	0.341	0.341	91
CARR	0.286	0.405	0.311	0.371	0.324		0.340	0.350	344
>>>>> NOAH					0.333	0.333	0.333	0.300	87
BUTLER	0.290	0.329	0.342	0.302	0.391		0.333	0.294	393
>>>>> McBRIDE				0.286	0.241	0.400	0.333	0.253	174
>>>>> WILKINS						0.328	0.328	0.317	198
A. WILLIAMS	0.00	0.500	0.267	0.333	0.250		0.300	0.333	30
>>>>> N'DIAYE				0.265	0.296	0.305	0.297	0.176	229
JELAVIC				0.287	0.321	0.276	0.294	0.359	248
DIOUBATE				0.091	0.462	0.214	0.292	0.185	65
LOWE				0.352	0.266	0.208	0.289	0.313	266
GARRISON					0.300	0.235	0.281	0.290	57
>>>>> DIALLO					0.182	0.315	0.274	0.257	106
QUAINTANCE					0.188		0.188	0.190	32
>>>>> MORENO						0.000	0.000	0.000	3
>>>>> KEPNANG				0.000		0.000	0.000	0.000	2
>>>>> B. HAWTHIORNE
>>>>> Z. HAWTHORNE
>>>>> M. WILLIAMS

 

[Doc4UK!]

Have heard from people who watched practices that Hawthorne may be the sleeper of this team that no one is including in the rotation. Has now grown to 6'9"

 

[ComplexTon]

Will Potter see any minutes?

 

[BlueSince92]

^ My recommendation is not to take the ragebait.

Current roster shot 38% from three, would have been top ten in the country. No one objectively would look at the current roster makeup and point to shooting as a primary concern.

^ My recommendation is think for yourself and don’t let this particular idiot dictate for you what is ragebait as opposed to someone’s relevant opinion supported with facts and figures and given as an objective analysis of what pitfalls from last year still loom for us this year, and how and why we can and should avoid them.

 

[ComplexTon]

Have heard from people who watched practices that Hawthorne may be the sleeper of this team that no one is including in the rotation. Has now grown to 6'9"

Huge growth spurt for Zion. Isn’t this like around 7 or 8 inches In only a few weeks?

Wonder if Braydon will get taller, too?

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

^ My recommendation is think for yourself and don’t let this particular idiot dictate for you what is ragebait as opposed to someone’s relevant opinion supported with facts and figures and given as an objective analysis of what pitfalls from last year still loom for us this year, and how and why we can and should avoid them.

Don’t know what happened to you. You used to be pretty chill. I’m just going to throw you on ignore. Insulting me for disagreeing with you yesterday was pretty eye opening.

I’m very sure you don’t remember it but when I was new to the board and was I was kind of hostile, you encouraged me to be kinder. And I took that advice. Now, you’ve become about as rude and brash as they come and I didn’t see that coming.

And you’re gonna keep doing you, as you should. I’m just saying it’s a plot twist I never saw coming.

 

[BlueSince92]

Don’t know what happened to you. You used to be pretty chill. I’m just going to throw you on ignore. Insulting me for disagreeing with you yesterday was pretty eye opening.

I’m very sure you don’t remember it but when I was new to the board and was I was kind of hostile, you encouraged me to be kinder. And I took that advice. Now, you’ve become about as rude and brash as they come and I didn’t see that coming.

And you’re gonna keep doing you, as you should. I’m just saying it’s a plot twist I never saw coming.

I would appreciate you throwing me on ignore. In reality, you yourself started out acting pretty chill but long, long ago you began throwing shade at me whenever I said anything that didn't fluff your feathers in the special way you apparently treasure—whatever that is on a particular day—with offhand comments like "why aren't you being your normal self?" I ignored it for a long time because I happen to value being a standup guy and not being reactionary myself. But honestly it's very petty and manipulative and you haven't at all limited yourself to only doing it to me. Peace

 

[Johnnie Africa]

Man, some of you take this MB REALLY seriously

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

Man, some of you take this MB REALLY seriously

I take it pretty seriously. Part of why I try to be respectful to people here.

Some of us take it a different kind of serious:

You’re smoking crack but thankfully you’re in a small crowd.

Also you don’t know spit about basketball. It has nothing to do without going after another great player. It’s the need for a viable guard with range to leverage the offense, improve spacing, and support substitutions.

Bullsh#t. Rainmaker is the biggest poser on this board and has busted clock skills at best.

He has a cult following that clearly includes your offended @SS and it’s f#cking annoying.

Pay attention poser. I didn’t call him a forward because he’s 6’8”; I called him a forward because he’s listed as a forward. And (though he’s hardly ever gotten any minutes at all so the whole point is silly) he may have been used a bit at 2 in a euro league where literally all the other positions are firing from outside, to take advantage of his height+handling combination, but with his woeful shooting percentages he is absolutely not going to be used as a shooting guard here with how much our whole offense collapses when we don’t have multiple real perimeter threats on the floor at once and LOL if you think he’s going to play point here.

And it never ocurred to your genius @SS there may have been a reason he was never used more than about six minutes a game in any of his Euro leagues games last year...

That was what he PLAYED, Einstein. But he wasn’t good enough to be used in the Euro league as a shooting guard. He hit a growth spurt around age 16 though, and then was good enough to be used situationally as a non-shooting forward and also some daft boards projected probably eventually his erstwhile okay shooting would eventually catch up to his body and after that, with his handling, he’d be a pretty good total package so they projected him high.

“Do some research.”

This kind of stuff is unnecessary for a board of people coming to talk about a team we are all a fan of. I’ve said my part about it.

 

[BlueSince92]

I take it pretty seriously. Part of why I try to be respectful to people here.

Some of us take it a different kind of serious:

Feel better now?

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

Feel better now?

No I don’t. For you this is another internet feud. For me, it’s the guy who asked me to be kind and stop calling anything that moves a troll. And to be understanding. And now you don’t do any of those things. Again, it is what it is.

 

[UK67KU59]

The offensive potential is there. I do worry about defense and rebounding. Time will tell.

Might have to start this lineup. We’ll see what we have in N’diaye and McBride - I hesitate to put either in a starting lineup until we see what they can do.

Zoom
Wilkins
Williams
Momcilovic
Moreno

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

The offensive potential is there. I do worry about defense and rebounding. Time will tell.

Might have to start this lineup. We’ll see what we have in N’diaye and McBride - I hesitate to put either in a starting lineup until we see what they can do.

Zoom
Wilkins
Williams
Momcilovic
Moreno

Defense and rebounding is what keeps us up at night. I can see us being moderate-good defensive team due to length in a best-case scenario but I don’t see where the rebounds are coming from.

 

[Runt#1969]

The offensive potential is there. I do worry about defense and rebounding. Time will tell.

Might have to start this lineup. We’ll see what we have in N’diaye and McBride - I hesitate to put either in a starting lineup until we see what they can do.

Zoom
Wilkins
Williams
Momcilovic
Moreno

I feel like this is the starting 5 I would go with, based on what I know and have seen.

Hawthorn may be the sleeper on this team. I would definitely be in favor of having 2 or even 3 players REALLY step up thier games and simply by playing within themselves, make this team especially good.

I think we need at least a couple of our players to show improvement in how they mesh and make this team goooooo ! I truly believe that Diallo and Wilkins are the two guys that are keys to how this year will play out. If they are better than advertised, we're in good shape. If they are altogether better on the floor and the chemistry is right, then I think they will be a dual straw to stir the drink, so to speak.

Let's hope we get the very best out of each and every one of our Cats !

 

[KyKevin]

Have heard from people who watched practices that Hawthorne may be the sleeper of this team that no one is including in the rotation. Has now grown to 6'9"

He's had a year of growing and good competition, it's his time to shine

 

[BlueSince92]

No I don’t. For you this is another internet feud. For me, it’s the guy who asked me to be kind and stop calling anything that moves a troll. And to be understanding. And now you don’t do any of those things. Again, it is what it is.

This is not a fued for me. This is you jumped on me today and called my post ragebaiting when I had only shared my honest concerns about the team I love, backed up with facts and figures. ...and then I guess a liberal helping of you doing whatever you need to do emotionally to deal with my response to that. Which is cool, you do you.

BTW I never told you to be kinder. I'm pretty laissez-faire unless people get in my face directly with unsupported statements or strawman arguments bending what I said to be, as Kipling put it, "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools." Kipling advised being more chill about that than I tend to be, but I'm not a finished product: I am what I am and it's cool if some people don't like that. That's a combination of me not being where I want to be yet in terms of maturity, on one hand, and a lot of people having their own nasty social indulgences, on the other hand.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

This is not a fued for me. This is you jumped on me today and called my post ragebaiting when I had only shared my honest concerns about the team I love, backed up with facts and figures. ...and then I guess a liberal helping of you doing whatever you need to do emotionally to deal with my response to that. Which is cool, you do you.

BTW I never told you to be kinder. I'm pretty laissez-faire unless people get in my face directly with unsupported statements or strawman arguments bending what I said to be, as Kipling put it, "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools." Kipling advised being more chill about that than I tend to be, but I'm not a finished product: I am what I am and it's cool if some people don't like that. That's a combination of me not being where I want to be yet in terms of maturity, on one hand, and a lot of people having their own nasty social indulgences, on the other hand.

You absolutely did tell me to be kinder. It’s all good though. I’m not a finished product either.

 

[BBN9]

Sure we do if you qualify the hell out of it. And that *could* mean one or more of them is going to make a jump and be another guy who can actually do that consistently in games when the pressure is on as opposed to having done it here and there in heavily qualified situations.

But that ‘s a derp thing to bet a season on when we have a little more money we could squeeze out and there are plenty of playable guards shooting 34% or more from outside when you include all of Europe.

And that’s a meaningful stat because right now outside Momcilovic we have exactly one guy, Jerone Morton, who has shown any strong indication he can shoot even 33% consistently in actual games against the kind of competition we face constantly in our league. And we haven’t seen any indication Morton will be a starter. So where does that leave us?

It leaves us writing fluff pieces and starting threads that are the basketball equivalent of “it could grip it by the husks.”

‘Scuse me if I haven’t been up for the circle jerk. I love Pope and I love an awful a lot of things about the players we’ve signed so far but I don’t love that in one critical sense, and it’s probably the most critical sense, they haven’t really been set up to succeed. Unless, as I also keep pointing out, we get lucky in terms of someone blooming.

We can hope someone blooms and gets to where they can ride a Big Kid bike without needing these kinds of qualifications as training wheels. Hope is a great thing.

It’s not what I call a plan.

ChatGPT is a helluva drug man.

 

[BlueSince92]

ChatGPT is a helluva drug man.

I'd love to hear what part of that you fantasized I got from AI.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

ChatGPT is a helluva drug man.

I’ve never seen ChatGPT use the phrase “derp.” I don’t think the post was AI. It’s just well-written.

 

[Blue till I die]

I forgot Morton also shot 39% from three


If Pope can't make a Sweet Sixteen with this roster, it's not ever going to happen and we should move on

 

[BlueSince92]

I forgot Morton also shot 39% from three


If Pope can't make a Sweet Sixteen with this roster, it's not ever going to happen and we should move on

He can absolutely make a Sweet Sixteen with this roster if everybody stays healthy, potentially an Elite Eight. But I'd like to see our realistic ceiling be higher than that, which in my opinion would require another sharpshooting guard we can consistently give at least 25 minutes a game. ...Which is why I keep bitching and pissing everyone off without primarily intending to.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

He can absolutely make a Sweet Sixteen with this roster if everybody stays healthy, potentially an Elite Eight. But I'd like to see our realistic ceiling be higher than that, which in my opinion would require another sharpshooting guard we can consistently give at least 25 minutes a game. ...Which is why I keep bitching and pissing everyone off without primarily intending to.

I shouldn’t have called your post ragebait. I apologize for that.

I think what will prevent us from being an elite team is I don’t see:

One defensive stopper that can absolutely shut things down.

One elite rebounder.

I think this team likely ends up close to or slightly better than the 2025 team.

 

[BlueSince92]

You absolutely did tell me to be kinder.

Well then I should probably take my own damn advice.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

Well then I should probably take my own damn advice.

No one is 100% consistent and I’m not either.

But it’s all good. I get a little sanctimonious for my britches. Lord knows it’s a character flaw of mine.

 

[BlueSince92]

I shouldn’t have called your post ragebait. I apologize for that.

I definitely shouldn't have called you an idiot. But come on, you know how tempting that was for me.

 

[BlueSince92]

No one is 100% consistent and I’m not either.

But it’s all good. I get a little sanctimonious for my britches. Lord knows it’s a character flaw of mine.

Something we share.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

I definitely shouldn't have called you an idiot. But come on, you know how tempting that was for me.

No complaints there. I chose the name wisely lol

 

[Son_Of_Saul]

He can absolutely make a Sweet Sixteen with this roster if everybody stays healthy, potentially an Elite Eight. But I'd like to see our realistic ceiling be higher than that, which in my opinion would require another sharpshooting guard we can consistently give at least 25 minutes a game. ...Which is why I keep bitching and pissing everyone off without primarily intending to.

Chandler would have been the missing piece. It's a shame he let his wife's homesickness dictate his choices. Having him in fold would have allowed for Wilkins to provide a 6th man of the year type of role and given us another elite perimeter threat.

Diallo - Wilkins - Morton
Chandler - Wilkins - Morton - Noah
Williams - Milan - Hawthorne - Noah
Milan - McBride - N'Diaye
Moreno - Kepnang - Potter

Yes, that team gets creamed on the glass, but they more than make up for it by hitting 10 to 11 threes/game.

That's a true Final Four contender and probably the best offense in America if Chandler stays.

 

[PeePeePooPoo]

How many kids do the players have? That'll tell ya how good of shooters they are.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

How many kids do the players have? That'll tell ya how good of shooters they are.

That’s why Brandon Garrison was the best shooter on the team last year

It all makes so much sense.

Now, Milan has no kids but with a nickname like Mommy, the argument can be made he has many, many kids. Therefore, elite shooting?

 

[BBN9]

No one is 100% consistent and I’m not either.

But it’s all good. I get a little sanctimonious for my britches. Lord knows it’s a character flaw of mine.

Something we share.

Aww they made up.

 

[Im The Village Idiot]

Aww they made up.

 

[megablue]

Defense and rebounding is what keeps us up at night. I can see us being moderate-good defensive team due to length in a best-case scenario but I don’t see where the rebounds are coming from.

Most here, being realistic, have the same questions and concerns about defense and rebounding. No one can be SURE that these may be significant weaknesses, but prior performance statistics simply SUGGEST that the "perceived" substitute players may be the better rebounders and perhaps defenders, but weaker offensively. All of us are hoping for the best and to be proven wrong, of course. We'll know when we know ... in time. GO CATS !!

 

[Dingleberry]

Really don't see anyone beating us. Gonna call it: 40-0!

 

[Dingleberry]

I take it pretty seriously. Part of why I try to be respectful to people here.

Some of us take it a different kind of serious:
















This kind of stuff is unnecessary for a board of people coming to talk about a team we are all a fan of. I’ve said my part about it.

This board seems to be your life