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re: Texas A&M Basketball 2015-2016 - Sweet Sixteen Edition!!
Posted on 11/6/15 at 7:53 pm to WestCoastAg
Posted on 11/6/15 at 7:53 pm to WestCoastAg
I watched what I could while at work. We're going to have so much depth and different combinations to throw at people this year.
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Posted on 11/6/15 at 7:55 pm to Nguyening
Yep. Really going to be interesting to see how we fiddle with our rotations leading up to Atlantis
Danuel has had a rough start but the fish have played well
Danuel has had a rough start but the fish have played well
Posted on 11/6/15 at 7:57 pm to WestCoastAg
DJ hogg and Tyler Davis are both legit players right now. Two major recruitment wins for the program to go along with Danuel's transfer
Posted on 11/6/15 at 8:05 pm to WestCoastAg
Trocha looks like his confidence finally matches his body. Gilder is a stud too.
Posted on 11/6/15 at 8:07 pm to WestCoastAg
The Ags are up 41-19 at halftime. Jalen Jones leads all scorers with 12 points to go along with 5 boards.
Does anyone know if Alex Robinson and Elijah Thomas will be ready to play in time for next week's opener?
Does anyone know if Alex Robinson and Elijah Thomas will be ready to play in time for next week's opener?
Posted on 11/6/15 at 8:18 pm to ImperialPalace
I haven't seen anything about an exact return date. Just seen soon 
Posted on 11/6/15 at 8:44 pm to WestCoastAg
Did they just stop broadcasting this game midway through the half?
Posted on 11/6/15 at 8:45 pm to WestCoastAg
.
This post was edited on 11/7/15 at 5:13 am
Posted on 11/6/15 at 8:46 pm to Nguyening
quote:
He's been playing offense that way bc we haven't had good scorers, and he'd attempted to limit possessions. Think LSU or muschamp Florida.
His teams at MSU had scorers and shooters all over the court, AND played great defense.
He's also been essentially playing without a center.
The roster has been bad. No depth, and huge holes even in the starting lineup.
I'll answer both your points. First, you brought up style and pace. You're right that we've played slowly and milked the shot clock to limit possessions. There's nothing wrong with that. However, I was talking about offensive efficiency, which is a general measure of how a team performs on offense on any given possession. In other words, it takes pace into account and doesn't penalize teams for it. We've generally been legitimately horrible in offensive efficiency. Like one of the worst teams in the country (omitting teams like Grambling and Savannah State that would lose to some upper echelon high school teams).
Second, the roster. I get what you're saying and agree with you to an extent. Turgeon didn't take care of business on the recruiting trail and then losing Tobi made things considerably worse. I acknowledge that in years 2 & 3, our roster had major holes and that in year 1, we had horrible problems with injuries and then just emotional crap (Branch transferring, Parkinson's diagnosis, losing a few nail biters, etc). So I would have been fine if we'd lost to every top 50 team we'd played because I knew they were simply more talented than we were. Instead, it was the way we lost to the good teams (played really sloppy, stupid ball. Were frequently blown out by 15-20 point) and the fact that we lost to or barely beat a bunch of really shitty teams. Just off the top of my head: Rice, Sam Houston, Southern, Missouri State, North Texas (by 20 in our house!), Army (they were up with like 40 seconds left in the game), Illinois State, Mississippi State a couple times, Auburn, Alabama last year (once by 20 and when they were missing like 3 of their starters in our house), La Tech, Georgia (when they had lousy teams), Vanderbilt (same), South Carolina (we lost to them by maybe 30 once when they sucked arse), and on and on and on.
The idea that you can't judge a coach who doesn't have a perfect roster is ludicrous. You simply judge him in context. Kennedy didn't have a ton of talent, so I'll overlook losses to more talented teams. But you can pay attention when he's losing to teams like the ones above, because he definitely had enough talent to beat them. Kennedy didn't have a true center? Okay fine. But beat Illinois State who only had like one player over 6'5. And Army? Rice? We had enough talent to beat them by double digits.
This roster kicks arse and it's going to do well. But Kennedy is a well-below-average coach. We have enough data points to calculate that trend line.
Posted on 11/6/15 at 9:24 pm to Ash'sProstheticHand
what sets can you run without a point or center that will be efficient? His data points all trend positive, everywhere he's been.
Posted on 11/6/15 at 10:12 pm to Nguyening
Offensively, I didn't see a trend from year 1 to year 4, other than when Turner and House carried things. When House went out with his injury last year, our offense looked just like it did in year 3 (i.e. awful). That's Kennedy's offense. He rolls the ball out and the players do what they can do (and they aren't even that coached to do things that improve the iso match-ups like have good spacing). There is never, ever any progress from the team unless its makeup changes. If we're bad against the press or zone or whatever in game 1, we will be in the last game of the year too.
Again, the "no center" thing holds water against the good teams. I agree Roberson was outgunned against Florida and Kentucky and I agree that with the program he inherited + his diagnosis and its impacts on recruiting, we weren't going to be able to make serious noise until year 4 or 5. But that line of thinking doesn't hold water against the myriad awful teams I listed above like Rice and Southern. Roberson at center is fine for those opponents. Also, you'll disagree with this, but Caruso was a fine PG. Not an all star, but he can dish out assists and drive a bit. Finally, I'm not talking about a good or even average offense. If your roster is kinda meh, just get the team to below average, like perhaps around 100 in offensive efficiency.
I don't much feel like arguing about it because it's kind of pointless at this stage. It's in the past and we're going to be good this year. But the notion that he built up to this point is just kind of silly. His teams looked abominable on offense for 3 straight years and then he lucked into the Stansbury hire (totally a right place at the right time situation for Kennedy), which started a chain reaction of program-changing events for Kennedy that have him looking at an NCAA berth instead of his 3rd straight trip to the CBI.
Again, the "no center" thing holds water against the good teams. I agree Roberson was outgunned against Florida and Kentucky and I agree that with the program he inherited + his diagnosis and its impacts on recruiting, we weren't going to be able to make serious noise until year 4 or 5. But that line of thinking doesn't hold water against the myriad awful teams I listed above like Rice and Southern. Roberson at center is fine for those opponents. Also, you'll disagree with this, but Caruso was a fine PG. Not an all star, but he can dish out assists and drive a bit. Finally, I'm not talking about a good or even average offense. If your roster is kinda meh, just get the team to below average, like perhaps around 100 in offensive efficiency.
I don't much feel like arguing about it because it's kind of pointless at this stage. It's in the past and we're going to be good this year. But the notion that he built up to this point is just kind of silly. His teams looked abominable on offense for 3 straight years and then he lucked into the Stansbury hire (totally a right place at the right time situation for Kennedy), which started a chain reaction of program-changing events for Kennedy that have him looking at an NCAA berth instead of his 3rd straight trip to the CBI.
This post was edited on 11/6/15 at 10:14 pm
Posted on 11/7/15 at 5:25 pm to Ash'sProstheticHand
@BrentZwerneman: A&M’s Jalen Jones on physicality of freshman C Tyler Davis: You should see him in practice. He’ll break your jaw if you try to guard him.
Posted on 11/7/15 at 5:28 pm to Projectpat
You can see it. In reality you can see it everywere. Really aggressive team across the board
This post was edited on 11/7/15 at 5:28 pm
Posted on 11/7/15 at 5:30 pm to Ash'sProstheticHand
No matter how much the players and recruits talk up Kennedy, any success always falls on Stansbury somehow for you Kennedy haters. The denial is just sad at this point. I get it, Kennedy has no personality and the offense isn't exciting. But he deserves credit, despite whatever straws you all grasp at to deny him it.
Posted on 11/7/15 at 7:18 pm to Projectpat
Kennedy and Keller worked their asses off with last year's recruiting class and definitely deserve a ton of credit for landing them. Absolutely no denying that. But Stansbury was the big reason we landed House, and then the recruits later said that Stansbury and House made them more comfortable with A&M. Perhaps we would have landed them anyway, but there's a good chance we would have ended up in second place. Still, thinking about it you can file that under "we'll never know," so I'll rescind my what-if bitching because it is pointless speculation.
Regardless, I've got news for you: if a coach spends 4 years going to the CBI with a decent number of 3 & 4 star recruits, then a bunch of new players who haven't received his instruction show up, and the team suddenly morphs to NCAA-level, the coach isn't good.
Oh, and the problem with his offense isn't that it's slow and unexciting, it's that every statistic says it doesn't work. On a per possession basis, it's much worse at generating points than pretty much every other offense in the NCAA, which has nothing to do with pace.
Regardless, I've got news for you: if a coach spends 4 years going to the CBI with a decent number of 3 & 4 star recruits, then a bunch of new players who haven't received his instruction show up, and the team suddenly morphs to NCAA-level, the coach isn't good.
Oh, and the problem with his offense isn't that it's slow and unexciting, it's that every statistic says it doesn't work. On a per possession basis, it's much worse at generating points than pretty much every other offense in the NCAA, which has nothing to do with pace.
This post was edited on 11/7/15 at 9:51 pm
Posted on 11/7/15 at 11:44 pm to Ash'sProstheticHand
The offense being bad is the reason for the pace. No true point. No true center. No shooters. he's been trying to piece together a team with a roster hand picked from the island of misfit toys.
Last year he had some pieces but not all so the puzzle started to take shape but wasn't complete.
Last year he had some pieces but not all so the puzzle started to take shape but wasn't complete.
Posted on 11/8/15 at 10:00 pm to Nguyening
quote:
The offense being bad is the reason for the pace. No true point. No true center. No shooters. he's been trying to piece together a team with a roster hand picked from the island of misfit toys.
Last year he had some pieces but not all so the puzzle started to take shape but wasn't complete.
So your overall point is that he didn't have all the pieces needed for a good roster, so we can't judge him at all. I agree with the 1st half (that we had a roster with flaws), but instead of the 2nd half I would instead suggest you compare him to other coaches in similar situations instead of judging him by his W-L record against Florida and Kentucky and teams of that caliber.
And the truth is we routinely got thumped by coaches in similarly flawed rosters and even had coaches with worse rosters rise up and beat us. I mean do you really want to argue that Kennedy didn't have the shooters + PG + C to thump Army instead of needing a comeback in the last minute to get the W? To stay within 20 of UNT at home or 30 of USC a year and a half ago when they freaking sucked?
We didn't have the guys to look like the 2014 Spurs on offense, but it could have and should have been a hell of a lot better than it was. If Brad Stevens took 10 random posters off of this board and coached us for a year... we would still be a really, really crappy basketball team. But we wouldn't have poor spacing on offense. We wouldn't make stupid passes. We wouldn't set lazy half-arse picks and screens. We wouldn't be sloppy with the ball and turn it over by making the same dumb decisions every game. We wouldn't stand around on offense and watch the guy with the ball. And we wouldn't go into the fetal position every time we saw a press. Those are skills that are completely independent of player athleticism and ability. Teams with good coaches develop them. Teams with poor coaches do not. That's why Brett Brown (the 76ers coach) still has a job after several awful seasons. The guys in charge have said "you know what? Your teams play smart, fundamentally sound basketball, but we just gave you a crap-tastic roster, so you're losing a ton." We have had really bad fundamentals for four straight years. And that's on Kennedy, and it can't be explained away by the fact that he didn't have a true PG or C or whatever.
Posted on 11/8/15 at 10:34 pm to Ash'sProstheticHand
If Jake Spavital and Mark Snyder coached basketball together, their collective name would be Billy Kennedy
Posted on 11/9/15 at 1:49 am to CGSC Lobotomy
quote:
If Jake Spavital and Mark Snyder coached basketball together, their collective name would be Billy Kennedy
But seriously, this board is getting ahead of itself. With us sucking in football and Spavital still having a job, I don't think I have any room to melt about Kennedy. One can only melt so much
. Sweet 16 or bust for me. Its year 5.
Posted on 11/9/15 at 9:49 am to greenbastard
quote:
But seriously, this board is getting ahead of itself. With us sucking in football and Spavital still having a job, I don't think I have any room to melt about Kennedy. One can only melt so much .
I'm done with A&M Football for the year. This team blows, there's way too much "don't give a shite" spread around, and our offensive coaching staff seems to be clueless.
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