Shane Power has a damn good article...

[dawgstudent]

on BulldawgJunction.com about why he transferred from Iowa State.

 

[dawgstudent]

on BulldawgJunction.com about why he transferred from Iowa State.

 

[AlCoDog]

Really good read. Some points I hadn't thought of in there. I especially like his view of these guys getting their minutes too easy and taking them for granted.

 

[JR]

Here is you money quotes

The only problem for the team was that he has such an unorthodox style from the point guard position that he is very difficult to play with.

AND

but other than Charles Rhodes, even when we were winning championships the other players games were declining.

Here is the full paragraph so I dont get accused of taking it out of context
Some of the on-the-court issues probably are connected with having such a demonstrative point guard the last two years. This point guard won MSU two SEC West Championships, and put up huge All-American type numbers. The only problem for the team was that he has such an unorthodox style from the point guard position that he is very difficult to play with. This led to not much chemistry between MSU's guards, which in turn led to a bunch of perimeter players standing around and constantly searching for their own shot. When you stand around the defense doesn't have to move and shift and you wind up taking contested three-pointers or trying to penetrate against a set defense. This happened all year for MSU and was the main reason scoring points down the stretch of the season was like pulling teeth. The numbers of MSU's two shooting guards definitely back this statement up, as they shot 35 and 36 percent from the three-point line and their two-point field goal percentages were also way down. These kids were capable of lighting it up, and when the offense comes to a screeching halt, and you're not playing anywhere close to your potential I can only imagine the frustration. It will never be said by any players or coaches publicly but I believe this was the reason for a lot of frustrations that led to transfers. It's a give and take because we certainly wouldn't have been any good at all the last three years without Mr. Gordon, but other than Charles Rhodes, even when we were winning championships the other players games were declining.

 

[Goat Holder]

Great article. And even better to hear from someone who knows what they are talking about. Could be that JR and his ilk have a point as well. Possible that everyone was right to an extent.

 

[gtowndawg]

I've had someone very close to the program tell my father and I for two years that Jamont is a great player, but a average to poor leader. This is starting to make sense now. Could Jamont have done something different knowing he's a "different" type player to help the others overcome their problems? Not sure what the answer is...guess it doesn't really matter now.

edited to add thoughts.</p>

 

[seshomoru]

Sometimes no one is at fault, sometimes both sides are at fault. Sometimes the situation just is what it is and you have to deal with it.

I will say this though, if Charles Rhodes found a way to check his ego and play with Jamont, which in turn made him 100 times a better player, then well... maybe some of these guys just aren't trying. Perhaps it's because of the minutes thing that the well-coiffed one wrote about. They figured they had already earned their minutes, and I guess at 33 minutes a game they figured they should be more involved in the offense. Well, Ben's job this year was to hit open threes when Jamont or Charles were slowed down. That situation could have changed next year, but it might not have. So, Ben took off for a place that was different. It is what it is. Oh well.

 

[MadDawg.sixpack]

and I thought at one time that was his goal. </p>

 

[GOPdog]

Great article....if they start turning out Premium info consistently on and above this level, i may join over there.

 

[mstateglfr]

and a funny rumor that has been around(and is still told at times) about why Power left ISU is that he left because he was nailing Eustachy's wife and the side activities were well known.

anyways, that article was very good. im suprised to see Power, a guy that is still in 'Vegas and has close ties to the program, be so blunt and forthcoming about Jamont's style of play. also, though he said it nicely, he heavily criticized the coaching staff for not benching players after making dumb mistakes and not trying hard enough.

 

[patdog]

I think he's spot on about the lack of depth not allowing Stans to pull players for bad play. It was also interesting to see how he alluded to Eustachy's problems being his reason for leaving Iowa St. without dragging him through the mud to do it.

 

[stateskills]

also, though he said it nicely, he heavily criticized the coaching staff for not benching players after making dumb mistakes and not trying hard enough.

Not really. He said the coaching staff didn't have any other options.

 

[Uncle Leo]

In Shane's words...

Many of those guys were able to play through mistakes and poor performances because there was no one else to compete for playing time with them. Any other year on any other team in the SEC, when you make a couple turnovers in a row, or take a couple bad shots, or give up offensive rebounds you are coming out of the game. That is the way it should be because making those mistakes is not winning basketball and the player needs to sit on the bench until they prove they can play efficient winning basketball. Unfortunately, the last three years there has been a lack of depth, which allowed players to stay on the floor even when they were not performing up to their potential or executing what the coaches wanted.

He's clearly pointing out the unfortunate situation in which players were allowed to play through mistakes because there was no one behind them competing with them for minutes.

 

[JR]

3 years.
Could we have gotten the same production in points and rebounds out of Jamont if we had someone else playing PG?
Jamont can bring the ball up the court, but once we got into the half court set, let someone else run the offense.
One of the Delks, Ben, Barry, anyone else.
Maybe that would have allowed us to get ....how did Shane put it in PC langauge...oh yeah, more ORTHODOX play from the point guard position.
According to Shane more ORTHODOX pg play that would have allowed further development of other guards over the last 3 years, and a better shooting percentage....
Thats not my opinion thats Shane's, my quesion is could we have had the best of both worlds, Jamoney points and rebounds from the 3 guard position and more ORTHODOX play from the Point.
I guess we will never know, because Stans decided that Jamoney was the best person to run the offense in the half court set....apparently just not everyone else on the team agreed.

 

[mstateglfr]

Not really. He said the coaching staff didn't have any other options.

like i said, i thought he said it nicely.
</p>

they had other options, they chose not to use em as much.
</p>

 

[mstateglfr]

He's clearly pointing out the unfortunate situation in which players were allowed to play through mistakes because there was no one behind them competing with them for minutes.

ok, 'heavily' should be taken out. sorry.
</p>

regardless, there were other players availible, and the coaches chose not to use them as much. it still looks critical to me, but i can see how it wouldnt be to you.
</p>

 

[DowntownDawg]

<span style="font-style: italic;">From my own experience, transfers take place due to basketball, not off the court, reasons. Playing time was obviously not a factor. Team success was obviously not a factor, and so that leaves the remaining factor of team chemistry. Because of the unique situation of having a player like Gordon playing point guard, Ben and Randy had to stand around a lot, and are/were unable to progress as basketball players, on the offensive end. In addition, when Gordon made mistakes, Stansbury had no way to pull him out of the game because there was no depth. So, even though the team was successful and Ben played plenty of minutes, he was unhappy with the WAY those minutes were played, and that the coach didn't do anything to remedy the situation.

</span>If that is the case, that is definitely a positive, in that the problem lies more in Gordon and the way Gordon has been coached/handled than an overarching deep program fissure with the coaching staff. As I've posted before, the only two common denominators between the Delks and Ben are Stansbury/coaching staff and Gordon, and we'd better hope it's Gordon, because he'll be gone (for better or for worse) after next year at the latest, and Rick is here to stay. There are a few unanswered questions, and Shane addresses the biggest. If this is the issue, next year, if Gordon is gone, it would be rectified, so why leave now? Was it that Ben couldn't take the risk of Gordon coming back and it being too late to transfer? And also, while all of the sane posters on this board agree that Jamont's positives outweigh his negatives, is that still the case if you add to the list of his negatives running off the Delks and Ben? Of course, I don't blame Jamont, he's just doing what his coach is telling him to do.<span style="font-style: italic;">
</span>

 

[hatfieldms]

GOPdog[/b]]Great article....if they start turning out Premium info consistently on and above this level, i may join over there.

I joined over there and I like what I see so far. Hopefully they will keep it up
</p>

I think it was also a good idea to give out free premium memberships to any scout or rivals customers until their current subscriptions run out. It gives those people a chance to look at something else besides rivals and scout and make a decision then

 

[Stormrider81]

Ben and the Delks aren't good enough players offensively to run our offense through, or even give more opportunities to. Everybody on this board knows how much I liked the Delks and wanted them to stay around, and I feel the same way about Ben. These are experienced players that we needed/need. They played defense and gave good effort, and we at least solid players out there. But, none of these guys were good enough to be highly counted on offense. If they could have hit a reasonable number of open outside shots how many more games could we have won? The roles they played in our offense were pretty much spot on. Jamont and Rhodes should have been the key options with some shots going to V, Barry, Ben, Delks, Bailey, Johnson, etc. If Ben and the Delks left because they weren't getting enough focus on offense, there really wasn't anything else we could have done without doing a disservice to the team. I don't blame Stans or Jamont, we were doing what gave us the best chance to win each individual game. If that isn't good enough for those players then they made the right decision to leave.

 

[GOPdog]

[No message]

 

[Goat Holder]

that the bulk of the transfers have come during the Jamoney Era. Another coincidence is that the other high-profile transfer, the Thriving One, was also a, umm, point guard.

Is it fair to say that Stansbury has a whacked out view of what a point guard should be capable of? Probably a little of both sides as usual, and truth is somewhere in the middle.

I'll take Rick's way myself. The thing Rick has to do is recruit players that see things his way.

 

[fishwater99]

Ding Ding...

We have a winner..
I guess Shane does not want to work on Stans staff anytime soon.

As I said yesterday...

http://sixpackspeak.yuku.com/sreply/23746/t/About-Jamont-and-the-cheating-accusations.html

I think he is a great player and I hope he gets his *** back to Starkville soon.
We won more games this year with him than he cost us with his selfish play at the end of games.
I just wish he would become more of a team player and use all of his abilities to further help our basketball team.
Your number one priority as a point guard should be to get your teammates involved via assists, not scoring yourself and looking to make ESPN highlights.

 

[Temple of the Dawg]

that the bulk of the transfers have come during the Jamoney Era. Another coincidence is that the other high-profile transfer, the Thriving One, was also a, umm, point guard.

Is it fair to say that Stansbury has a whacked out view of what a point guard should be capable of? Probably a little of both sides as usual, and truth is somewhere in the middle.

I think the two situations are probably more different than they are similar. Ervin's problem seemed to be that he did not want to play as a PG. He wanted to be the man, not the guy dishing to the man. In a strange twist of fate, that seems to be people's primary beef with the Gordon/Stans setup. Stans now wants his PG to be the man and other players seem to feel that they are left out of the offense as a result.

That said, Ervin was surrounded by players that were much more reliable at generating offense than Gordon has been surrounded with. Also, Ervin did not have the same ability to drive the lane and make shots that Gordon has. Ervin was fast as ****, but he routinely got blocked when he went into the lane. However, when Ervin was looking to pass first when driving, he seemed to be slightly better at finding the open man on the kickout. The problem with Ervin was you never knew which player you were going to get on a given night. Of course, the same argument could reasonably be made with Gordon.

The bottom line though is that Stans seems to have had different expectations for Ervin and Gordon, so it is hard to make a conclusion on what Stans expects from his PG based on these two players.

 

[DowntownDawg]

...we've had one guard since 2005 that could create a shot: Jamont. Neither the Delks, nor Ben, nor Randy is able to do that consistently. Could we have run a different/better offense that would've gotten everybody involved more? Probably. But as it was, the only way any of those other guys were getting open looks is if Jamont created the shot for them. We had a pretty good group of guards in here before these guys. Timmy could create, and Winsome, and Power was not just a spot up guy either. These guards are/were role players, and for whatever reason they chose not to accept their role.

 

[Eureka Dog]

have been saying for the past 2 seasons about JG's "unorthodox" point guard play affecting the offensive flow of the team. When we dared mention the subject, we were flamed. It's good to be reminded that those of us who have mentioned this "situation" in the past do have a little knowledge about basketball... and that you can't make solid judgments by reading the box score alone.

 

[MadDawg.sixpack]

"If Ben and the Delks left because they weren't getting enough focus on offense, there really wasn't anything else we could have done without doing a disservice to the team."

Interesting. Kind of puts a new spin on the whole subject of who was not playing "team ball".

 

[DowntownDawg]

an athletic guard that has some height and can rebound and defend. Zimmerman was the first, then didn't Bowers play the point after Z left? Gordon fits the mold, but he's also been the best player on the floor most of his time at MSU. Only in the second half of the this season did Rhodes start playing like he was capable of, and that's when we became extremely dangerous.

So my point is that Stansbury likes the idea of having a big physical guard back there (as opposed to Edmonson and Ervin) that can rebound and take a charge, etc. However, when your point guard is also your biggest offensive threat, you end up with one guy with the ball a good bit of the time. As good as Z and Bowers were, our main offense was with Austin and Roberts. They complimented each other. And Rhodes just never stepped up to be an Austin/Roberts caliber player until January 2008. By then, an 8 was about as good as we could do. Had Rhodes played like that all season, we're probably at least a 5 or 6.

 

[Goat Holder]

I agree with that. I never said the situations were similar, just that they revolved around the PG position, a position that is oh so important. I think Stans puts the best players in the best positions to win games. There's no doubt in my mind about that.

Of course the players egos don't want to handle that. And maybe that goes back to the way Stans recruits. I would imagine he promises these guys the world because let's face it, he does routinely get higher calibur players than you would expect MSU to normally land. Then they get upset when reality sets in.

I don't know why Ben H is so upset though. It wasn't like anyone knew who the 17 he was in high school, other than Tyler's brother.

 

[seshomoru]

and I don't think Shane was tactfully blaming Jamont. It's very much a two way street.

Most all college coaches can get the one or two guys into the program that the offense will be centered around. Now, in no way comparing the actual levels of talent, look at Memphis and MSU. Rose and Gordon are point guards who are heavily involved in scoring points. CDR and Rhodes are forwards who the team leaned on for major points and points in clutch situations. Now, it's getting the role players into the system that is the hard part. How do you convince a guy that could be scoring 20 a game somewhere else to come in and take a back seat. Play defense and only score when needed. To play within the framework of the two 'stars' offense.

That is hard to do. Antonio Anderson and Dozier would have been the leading scorers on a hell of a lot of DI teams. They took the backseat to CDR and Rose, accepted that they wouldn't be scoring a lot of points and were not a focal point, but were happy with the minutes and the wins. Ben, Reggie, and Richard didn't feel like being the role players. And so be it. If a player wants to be in a program where more of the focus is on him, then by all means go for it. It's getting harder and harder for a DI coach to find guys who will accept the role of the fourth or fifth option and actually have some talent. Well, it's getting tougher at places without the "name" on the jersey.

I tend to err on the side of the star players. Afterall, you're only going as far as they take you. In other words, you win more games relying on Charles and Jamont than you do if you're trying to keep Ben or Randy involved in the offense.

 

[Temple of the Dawg]

that Stans seems to like bigger more physical guards. What doesn't make sense along that line of thinking though is that he went after Ervin so hard. Edmonson was more of an afterthought and a filler if I remember correctly, but Ervin was a first choice recruit.</p>

I agree that in the past we have had a dominant low post guy to go along with the big guards and we have not had that consistently since Roberts left until around January of this season.</p>

 

[DowntownDawg]

....unless Jarvis really steps up his offensive game. Which is why I think we were going to be hard pressed to be dancing next year even if $$ and Ben were coming back.

 

[fishwater99]

CDR and Rhodes are forwards who the team leaned on for major points and points in clutch situations.

Pretty good post, but CDR is and always will be a guard, not a forward...

 

[muddawgs33]

I think Brian Johnson will step up next year and be a dependable scorer for us. He showed flashes of it this year and with a full year to train and get his knee strengthened in the offseason, I think he will be a lot better player for us next year.

 

[DowntownDawg]

...except, instead of putting it on the "spoiled players who don't want to accept their role," some (and an increasing amount ) of the blame has to go to the coach. The fact is, we'd all understand it if we had some elite player sitting on the bench, or getting a limited number of minutes. But what you've got is role players coming in and not accepting their roles, which is very troubling. You can't win anything with a team full of these guys, but at the same time, you have to have them to win. If Calipari can get All American thugs to accept playing less minutes and getting less touches for the good of the team, then we ought to be able to get role players to be happy with playing a lot of minutes and helping the team.

 

[DowntownDawg]

...but I think it's extremely optimistic to think that he will be somebody we run our offense through in the vein of Roberts, Austin, and 2008 Rhodes.

 

[seshomoru]

...except, instead of putting it on the "spoiled players who don't want to accept their role," some (and an increasing amount ) of the blame has to go to the coach. The fact is, we'd all understand it if we had some elite player sitting on the bench, or getting a limited number of minutes. But what you've got is role players coming in and not accepting their roles, which is very troubling. You can't win anything with a team full of these guys, but at the same time, you have to have them to win. If Calipari can get All American thugs to accept playing less minutes and getting less touches for the good of the team, then we ought to be able to get role players to be happy with playing a lot of minutes and helping the team.

Well, to be fair, I would almost consider Memphis a "name on the jersey" basketball school now. Two consecutive elite eights, then the championship game. Thirty plus wins three seasons in a row, and they play in an NBA arena. Hell, they may be the best team that plays in that arena. A role player at a program with that visibility and success will still have their talent noticed and at the very least get invited to an NBA camp somewhere. They may even get drafted. If Ben wants to even sniff an invite at an NBA camp, he better go score 20+ a game somewhere because the role playing guard at MSU is not on any NBA scout's radar screen.

Stansbury does have a bigger challenge in trying to get and keep talented 'non-stars.' Please note, that is not an excuse for all the transfers, but it is a very tangible issue that he faces. I'd obviously like to see a little more success in dealing with it.</p>

 

[Coach34]

why cant Ricky and staff make the offensive adjustments? EVERYBODY that watched saw all the standing around. Some type of system should have been installed to take advantage of the match-up problems Gordon presents and as well as the shooting strengths of Delk, Hans, and Stewart.

We do the same thing in football. We all see what the problems are. Why arent steps being taken to fix them?

Attention Crooms and Ricky- you dont wait till you get the right people for your system- you adapt your 17'ing system to the people you have.</p>

 

[DowntownDawg]

....and I know no answer. Rick's been here for 10 years. Not much has changed. I'm not like you, I'd rather have him than not, but I don't look for us to actually run any kind of creative offensive scheme, or play any other kind of defense than man, the 2-3, and the occasional 1-3-1. I don't think I've ever seen us run a real full court press.

In his favor, he gets his guys to play defense, and they play it well. It's almost like he has the philosophy of teaching them to do a few things really well, instead of being average and doing a lot of different things. Overall, I think that is the more successful approach, but it definitely holds us back when we need to adapt to a player's strengths or a game situation.

 

[DowntownDawg]

...but what about UT? What about a team like Pitt, who is not a traditional basketball power? If you look at the top 24 seeds in the NCAA tournament, there will be some traditional powers there,and some not so traditional powers, but the one thing that they all had in common, at least for this year, is that they were (apparently) a collection of stars and role players that accepted their roles. I agree that Stansbury is disadvantaged compared to Calipari, but Hans ain't Robert Dozier either. It's almost becoming the line that separates average/good coaches from great coaches. I realize that it's much easier to do if you're Roy Williams, Cal, Self, or Howland, but who can do the best combination of bringing in talent and keeping everybody happy? We fail miserably at the latter.

 

[Coach34]

and the same for him and Crooms- talk with other offensive people, make changes, and adapt your system to your personnel. We can still play solid defense, that doesnt have to change. Just need to make some adjustments on the offensive side to improve.