re: Dawgs Basketball Season Thread // 3-0 // Next: Friday vs Ga tech

Full court pressure and definitely playing at a faster pace. Shooting will definitely be the do or die for this team. Pretty active defensively so far.

Smurf looks good and can handle the ball well. Not as good as Silas on defense though.

Dawgs lead Troy 40-22 at the half. Pretty good performance so far. Definitely gonna be an interesting team. The lack of an SEC caliber PG is gonna hurt us this year. Our front court looks solid AF though. Cyril definitely changes the post every shot. He might be the best defender/shot blocking forwards in the league.

Dawgs win 81-65

Oh yes. Much better effort. Here are my thoughts as to what I saw against a really bad Troy team:

1. The Catchings-Wilkinson duo is very electric. Catchings looks like an NBA-caliber player he’s long, has great handles and skills at 6'9", and can jump out of the gym. Wilkinson has a quick release and will remind a lot of people of Frazier in terms of form and style of play. I’m not saying he is JJ Frazier, but he can definitely have “one of those games” where he goes off for seven threes. I expect these two guys to lead the team in scoring this year. Both are more than ready to be SEC-level players. We’re in good shape here.

2. Depth / Athleticism: We went really deep into the bench today, as expected when playing a weaker opponent. Everyone got minutes, and everyone passed the eye test. I honestly can’t remember a UGA team where there wasn’t much separation between Group 1 and Group 3.
Wilkins is as advertised... he had a big put-back dunk with his head at rim height. He’s going to end up on a few posters this year… bookmark that.
Justin Bailey was probably the most consistent player from start to finish. Early on, he was the only one really scoring. He’s pretty athletic and can finish at the rim.

3. Defense/Press: We pressed a lot and forced a ton of turnovers. If we can do this against good teams, we’re going to win a lot of games this year. This team actually reminds me of White’s Louisiana Tech squad that came into Athens and beat us in the NIT. If you can picture that game at all that’s what our press looked like today. We created a bunch of dunks and layups off turnovers, and we also drew several fouls in transition, which will be huge all season.

4. Our Bigs: Look out... these guys have serious potential. Somto Cyril CHANGES THE GAME. He’s a dominant defensive presence and is clearly developing offensively. He didn’t score a ton today, but he drew a lot of fouls and knocked down 4 of 6 from the free-throw line. You can tell he worked on his shooting this offseason.Kareem Stagg looked good as well he’s a rebounding machine and always seems to be around the ball. Justin Abson’s game is just beautiful, honestly. When he’s in, the offense settles into a great rhythm. He didn’t miss when he was around the rim today and showed a solid variety of finishes. It also looks like he slimmed down a bit in the offseason, quicker off his feet and more mobile overall. I think he’s going to impress a lot of people this year.

5. Do we have an SEC caliber PG? I’m not sure we have a clear answer yet. It might end up being point guard by committee, and that’s not always ideal when the game gets tight. Today, we mainly saw Smurf Milender and Jordan Ross both transfers, both in their first year in White’s system and it definitely showed today against a bad Troy team. Hard to imagine how uncomfortable it could get against a team with a pulse. We’ve got to get that figured out. Smurf is solid and has good handles, but he’s nowhere near Silas. Ross is the bigger of the two and the better defender, but he may be limited offensively. It feels like we’ll have to live and die by transition and the three-point game this year.

Overall Assessment:I think this team has real potential. In a way, we might be similar to last year almost like we split Asa into Catchings and Wilkinson. Catchings is a legit pro prospect and we need him to play like it. I honestly believe we’ll go as far as those two can take us. Blue Cain struggled badly today from three and missed several wide-open looks. It’s Year 3 for him he should be an All-SEC type guard by now, but he’s not there yet. If he can somehow elevate his game closer to the Wilkinson/Catchings level, then we might actually have a shot at getting back to the dance this year. There’s definitely more good than bad right now and that’s always a positive.

Catching looking good

Yeah… you’re gonna see like 4 different lineups. This team is extremely deep.

We haven’t got to see any Abson magic yet. It’s coming later

My starting 5 right now would be Wilkinson, Cain, Catchings, Stagg and Cyril. Catchings is longer and taller but i would play him at the 3. He has that Durant look. His ball handling. passing and shooting makes me think Durant when I watch him. Im super excited to watch this team this year. I would like to see Stagg and Cyril get good at switching up. Cyril is too slow to come outside the paint too far. He has got burned a couple of times.

This teams defense looks so much better this year. These guys are aggressive.