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Big Blue Madness takeaways...

theBlues

theBlues

All-Conference
Oct 18, 2025
1,881
4,231
113
N'Diaye is one of the most athletic seven footers I've seen at UK and his shot looks pure. I know his 3 point percentages weren't great last year in Europe but his highlights showed him shooting a lot of step back threes and contested ones. I have no doubt from his stroke that he'll shoot 40% on open corner threes.

Everybody knew McBride had offensive skills and could shoot but most of us assumed he was a below the rim player because of his chunky body. After seeing that he has hops, his ceiling seems a little higher.

Between McBride, N'Diaye, and Hawthorne the four spot doesn't look so shaky to me.

Wilkins is an elite shooter. I know it was without defense but not many players could ever get 31 points in one of those competitions and most of them were dead center.

I believe this will be an elite 3 point shooting team. I think the group of N'Diaye, Milan, McBride, Mason Williams, Kam Williams, Noah, and Potter will collectively shoot around 40% on threes.

If Noah ever gets over the mental hurdles he could help us in games. If not he'll still help in a fight; that boy has definitely been hitting the weights.

Defense will determine this team's ceiling. They've got the height and athleticism to be good defensively; if they are poor on defense that will all be on the coaching staff.
 
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KFuqua

KFuqua

All-Conference
Oct 24, 2001
2,215
2,685
113
theBlues said:
N'Diaye is one of the most athletic seven footers I've seen at UK and his shot looks pure. I know his 3 point percentages weren't great last year in Europe but his highlights showed him shooting a lot of step back threes and contested ones. I have no doubt from his stroke that he'll shoot 40% on open corner threes.

Everybody knew McBride had offensive skills and could shoot but most of us assumed he was a below the rim player because of his chunky body. After seeing that he has hops, his ceiling seems a little higher.

Between McBride, N'Diaye, and Hawthorne the four spot doesn't look so shaky to me.

Wilkins is an elite shooter. I know it was without defense but not many players could ever get 31 points in one of those competitions and most of them were dead center.

I believe this will be an elite 3 point shooting team. I think the group of N'Diaye, Milan, McBride, Mason Williams, Kam Williams, Noah, and Potter will collectively shoot around 40% on threes.

If Noah ever gets over the mental hurdles he could help us in games. If not he'll still help in a fight; that boy has definitely been hitting the weights.

Defense will determine this team's ceiling. They've got the height and athleticism to be good defensively; if they are poor on defense that will all be on the coaching staff.
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Good assessment! I expect a good season from this team!
 
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U

UKCowboys

All-American
Oct 14, 2019
5,192
9,885
113
theBlues said:
N'Diaye is one of the most athletic seven footers I've seen at UK and his shot looks pure. I know his 3 point percentages weren't great last year in Europe but his highlights showed him shooting a lot of step back threes and contested ones. I have no doubt from his stroke that he'll shoot 40% on open corner threes.

Everybody knew McBride had offensive skills and could shoot but most of us assumed he was a below the rim player because of his chunky body. After seeing that he has hops, his ceiling seems a little higher.

Between McBride, N'Diaye, and Hawthorne the four spot doesn't look so shaky to me.

Wilkins is an elite shooter. I know it was without defense but not many players could ever get 31 points in one of those competitions and most of them were dead center.

I believe this will be an elite 3 point shooting team. I think the group of N'Diaye, Milan, McBride, Mason Williams, Kam Williams, Noah, and Potter will collectively shoot around 40% on threes.

If Noah ever gets over the mental hurdles he could help us in games. If not he'll still help in a fight; that boy has definitely been hitting the weights.

Defense will determine this team's ceiling. They've got the height and athleticism to be good defensively; if they are poor on defense that will all be on the coaching staff.
Click to expand...
I think thats a fair assessment. Better shooting and a few guys that can penetrate and score should open it up for the shooters we have. I am not worried about the offense. As you said, defense will determine how far we go. We aren't going to be Ewing era Georgetown defensively, but if we can even be an average defense we should be a solid team
 
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C

Cats_2010

Heisman
Jan 8, 2010
11,971
20,572
103
I think this team could be capable of good enough defense if they had a coach who could scheme. That’s not pope, he’s a poor defensive coach and as a result I believe this will be his worst defensive team of the 3. Offensively they will be fine but I fear we are going to give up a lot of points and lose shootouts and the end result the same. 12-14 losses. Just not good enough..
 
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BBNinSCar

BBNinSCar

All-Conference
Apr 23, 2013
1,736
3,162
81
Cats_2010 said:
I think this team could be capable of good enough defense if they had a coach who could scheme. That’s not pope, he’s a poor defensive coach and as a result I believe this will be his worst defensive team of the 3. Offensively they will be fine but I fear we are going to give up a lot of points and lose shootouts and the end result the same. 12-14 losses. Just not good enough..
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This should be a defensive roster with our size. If the coaching staff can get anything out of them. But, I agree, we’ll see many 90-85 games this season.
 
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BBNinSCar

BBNinSCar

All-Conference
Apr 23, 2013
1,736
3,162
81
Has anyone ever seen anything from Hawthorne to make you believe he is a good player? If he was, we would have seen evidence of that by now. He’s an end of the bench player, nothing more.
 
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theBlues

theBlues

All-Conference
Oct 18, 2025
1,881
4,231
113
BBNinSCar said:
Has anyone ever seen anything from Hawthorne to make you believe he is a good player? If he was, we would have seen evidence of that by now. He’s an end of the bench player, nothing more.
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Well, I have him as 3rd string at the four spot. Want to give me a list of 3rd string players we've had at the four that tower over him in talent?
 
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W

Wildcat_in_DC

All-Conference
Nov 25, 2025
1,157
1,966
113
theBlues said:
Well, I mentioned his physique and didn't even imply that he'd be one of our top 10 players. What about the bulk of the post? I respect your posts and I like a lot of them but this one just seems nitpicky.
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trent is a glorified walk on. why people keep talking about him in any capacity is beyond me.
 
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theBlues

theBlues

All-Conference
Oct 18, 2025
1,881
4,231
113
Wildcat_in_DC said:
trent is a glorified walk on. why people keep talking about him in any capacity is beyond me.
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You must be too young to remember multiple years of Sheray Thomas as starting power forward. I've never expected players 10-11 deep on the roster to be top flight SEC ready players. I don't see why anybody would expect that since we've never had that before, and nobody else has either.
 
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K

KYAnywhereEverywhere

Junior
Oct 13, 2025
181
253
43
I tuned in late and tuned out early. What I did watch was boring and poorly produced. The sound system was glitching and those player introductions were a disorganized mess. The songs got out of sync with the players entering. Each individual introduction took a random amount of time instead of nice smooth flowing consistent introductions. There was that one weird cutaway for the one player rolling up in a supercar. Not only did that particular introduction not have the impact that it was probably meant to, it kinda rubbed in the fans faces how much money these kids are making. Production quality suffered all night. The announcers were bad. The cutting from camera angle to camera angle was random and bad. The whole event took entirely too long. I tuned out early, because I couldn't care less about dunk contests. Dunk contests have been around so long that they are stale. There's nothing new to see. I had also already saw that there was going to be no 5v5. The 5v5 has always been the most anticipated event of the night outside of the men's player introductions and cutting it was such a bad idea.

All of this said, Pope is not the reason I have less enthusiasm for bbm. The event got stale under Cal. That's when it became apparent that there's only so much you can do with the event. It's basically the same thing year after year. The second year that Cal did his mic drop gimmick instead of a speech, Wheeler's 2nd year, pretty much sealed my lack of enthusiasm for BBM. Cal wanted us to believe that team would be something like as good as the '14-'15 Cats and we saw how that turned out. Also, returning to the same gimmick and being out of speech material made me realize there's really only so much that could be done and said.
 
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R

Runnin'Ramel

Heisman
Jan 19, 2005
35,677
13,559
113
theBlues said:
N'Diaye is one of the most athletic seven footers I've seen at UK and his shot looks pure. I know his 3 point percentages weren't great last year in Europe but his highlights showed him shooting a lot of step back threes and contested ones. I have no doubt from his stroke that he'll shoot 40% on open corner threes.

Everybody knew McBride had offensive skills and could shoot but most of us assumed he was a below the rim player because of his chunky body. After seeing that he has hops, his ceiling seems a little higher.

Between McBride, N'Diaye, and Hawthorne the four spot doesn't look so shaky to me.

Wilkins is an elite shooter. I know it was without defense but not many players could ever get 31 points in one of those competitions and most of them were dead center.

I believe this will be an elite 3 point shooting team. I think the group of N'Diaye, Milan, McBride, Mason Williams, Kam Williams, Noah, and Potter will collectively shoot around 40% on threes.

If Noah ever gets over the mental hurdles he could help us in games. If not he'll still help in a fight; that boy has definitely been hitting the weights.

Defense will determine this team's ceiling. They've got the height and athleticism to be good defensively; if they are poor on defense that will all be on the coaching staff.
Click to expand...
My son looked it up while we were there, to put it in perspective, the most points in an NBA 3-pt contest was 31 by Steph Curry. Unguarded, it's *really* difficult to score that many points. (Granted, Madness offered the bonus ball.)
 
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sefus12

sefus12

Heisman
Dec 22, 2007
7,279
19,328
103
chattanogawildcat said:
Op, prepare yourself!
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Yea, can’t have optimism around here. Only dom and gloom is allowed.

I didn’t watch BBN, but I think this roster, at least on paper, looks better than last year. Pope knows his job is on the line, so I think he’s doing what he thinks he has to do in order to succeed (no matter what some on here say). If he doesn‘t have a much better season, he will probably be looking for another job. I’m excited for the season, as always.
 
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AllBall

AllBall

All-American
May 5, 2015
4,931
6,498
93
Defense, rebounding, and overall physicality will determine this team's success rate. Shooting is a great equalizer but can they get stops when it matters most?
 
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NociHTTP

NociHTTP

Heisman
Mar 8, 2023
13,161
20,551
113
Bluesbrother said:
Pope on a pedestal ... that was special.
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Troll Dancing GIF
 
JwUKFan11

JwUKFan11

Heisman
Nov 11, 2011
7,661
15,925
113
The biggest takeaway is that anyone spending their night, or god forbid their money, to go to BBM is insane.
 
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