re: UA Basketball (16-15, 8-10)

The most Bama basketball thing to do now would be to win 3 straight to suck us all back in only to get curb stomped on Sunday.

quote:

---

Bamafan, you’re a great poster but I think you are a jinx when you start season threads.

---

Is Bamafan that fat guy in the student section?

Outside of the general program issues, I saw 3 main problems with the 2020 team that persisted throughout most of the season

(1) Athleticism - It's strange to type that as we've almost always been a program with long, athletic, rangy guys, but we didn't have very much of it this year. We especially didn't have it from our wings or bigs outside of Herb. This leads to points #2 and #3......

(2) Defense - We just weren't a very good defensive club, and a lot of it has to do with #1. When Herb and Petty were 100% they helped cover up a lot of issues, but when they were either hurt and/or playing less than 100% we were just a miserable defensive team. We only had a couple of above average individual defenders (Herb, Petty) and a couple more who were above average or at least had good sense when it came to team defense concepts (Shack as the year went on, Beetle was a poor on ball defender but a pretty good team defender).

(3) Big men, all around - The big guys issues on offense are well documented. Their inability to provide either (a) catch and dunk or (b) pick and pop basically cut our offensive system down by 1/3 and put a ton more pressure on our guards and wings. Teams learned pretty quickly that they did not need to respect Davis or Galin off the initial pick, and focused all their energy on the ball-handler and the wing pass. To Nate's credit he tried to find ways to work around it - primarily with Herb as a roving screener and guy who probed and penetrated. That worked very well for the first half of SEC play as a replacement..........then Herb broke him hand and his ability to dribble with both hands, make tough passes and shoot was basically eliminated. At that point we were back to square 1 with no ability to do anything inside the lane.



The good news is, if Petty and Shack return we will return 2 guys who can score. The transfer market is full of athletic wings/bigs who can defend and rebound and do 1 offensive thing (finish, pick and pop, etc). It is a much bigger challenge to be forced to find offensive playmakers on the transfer market, and I think we should retain a few of those and hopefully add one in JQ.


Be interesting to see what we do. Pretty big off-season for Oats with a lot of big decisions.

I don't know who is truly considered an insider for the basketball team, but there are already a lot of hints and stuff being dropped that big changes are coming to the roster this off season.

Has to be . Cecil been saying something about 4 new players ? Got to be in the portal or Juco I guess? We not on that many players

If Oats is able to address key areas of need via the transfer market, it will be great for the upcoming season.
Any bigs we get will be a step up.
Hope & pray no key player goes down before the season tips off.
You got to have quality bench depth especially with our style of play.

The worse collection of bigs we've ever had.
Teams could play small with no worries of our bigs scoring or dominating the glass.
Not sure what clueless Avery saw in those guys wasting scholarships.

I'm excited about Rojas next year, he has a chance to be one of our best players. We really could've used him this year.

quote:

---

The Blue Dragon forward carried the Blue Dragons all the way to the Region VI Tournament championship game. In the last 14 games of the season Rojas averaged 21.4 points and 7.4 rebounds per game. He shot 51.6 percent overall and 48.6 percent from 3-point range and 81.0 percent from the foul line over that span of games. Rojas was also second on the Blue Dragons in assists over that span with 39 assists and led the team with 22 blocks.

Rojas scored 30 points in a Region VI Tournament victory over No. 3 Coffeyville on March 4. He had a 28-point game against NOC-Enid on November 6. Rojas finished the season with 15 games of 20 points or more.

---

\



He is listed at at 6'8 215 this year, I wonder if the plan is to get him up to about 230 and let him play the five, or keep him this weight and make have his main position be the 4. Either way he is regarded as a really tough player.

quote:

---

“We’ve been watching James since he was early in high school,” Oats said. “He came to our team camps, and he was up at individual camps and whatnot. A really skilled, tough, hard-nosed winner is what he is.


"He’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in a player starting with the fact that he’s one of the toughest players I’ve ever seen. He’s the ultimate competitor and cares about the team winning first and foremost."

---

Yep I think so too. He was a late bloomer and we were one of the few recruiting him before he blew up.

Pettway is a good recruiter and a good talent evaluator. He has signed Sexton, Petty, Herb, Kira, Jared Butler, he also is the one that spotted Shack while he was at a game watching a different player and was like who is this shackelford kid that's lighting it up?

He noticed Sexton's talent before most anyone else did.