re: **Official Midnight Madness Thread**

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The one thing I'm curious about with Oriaki, and I say this having seen him in his fair share of Big East games, is how he's going to adjust to the officiating. The Big East will damn near let you hack until you murder someone on the court. Will be able to break that habit in the post? I think he can but I also think the adjustment may be a little bit tougher for him as a result.

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It's an issue, and lets face it Mizzou last year that anyone watching us at all could tell was sort of the ultimate finesse team. We were all about offensive efficiency and pretty plays and our inside game with Ratliffe was about having soft hands and good passing. How does all that mesh with Oriakhi who is a classical, bruising, relatively unskilled but good rebounder shot blocker type? I don't know. We looked solid on our Europe tour this summer but I will say that some of our backup new big men, Tony Criswell in particular, were taking to this offense a little quicker than Oriakhi. Haith will of course change his style somewhat to accomodate the new group we have, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if against lots of teams you still see Mizzou "go small" with Oriakhi sitting for long stretches to maintain the more finesse, passing and outside shooting style of play that defined us last year.