Bonham Lane Richard CJ CC Let’s get a perimeter stopper on the floor, and set an early tone. Then, sub in some offense. Something is up with Reeves, but Lane simply seems to be buried. And it’s too early in the season for that to be the case.
I still don't know why people are so bullish on Lane. He was very effective late last year as an on-ball defender and loose ball guy. But his turnover was the worst on the team, his defensive rebounding rate was poor, and his effective FG% and free throw rate decent, but not exceptional. Since those are the areas this staff values so much, it's hard for me to see a non-shooter who turns the ball getting on the floor when you have Richard on fire, Kugel threatening to make a big progression, and Bonham currently starting at the two. Personally, I would much rather see Reeves get going. IMO, he is the absolute key to our ceiling this year. His absence the last game and a half has been very concerning to me. Hoping for the best here.
I'm all for Lane if he helps our team defense, which I am not sure he does. I know one thing, he and Reeves are the most well rested of anyone around, so maybe they can help us late in the game when our starters start getting tired from playing a lot of minutes yesterday.
Yet, when he got on the floor late against FAU, his offense effectively negated his defense. I think that’s the rub. In the NBA, you can usually afford a one-dimensional defensive stopper because you have plenty of other guys who can get goals. But it’s real hard to put a guy on the floor who doesn’t contribute at all on the offensive end. I suspect that’s why two consecutive staffs have been hesitant to play him.
This team has a lot of good, individual pieces but they are hard to figure out. Like, which group of five players would be the best defensive/rebounding line-up? The best offensive/3-pt shooting lineup? & the best overall line up? There are also many nice pieces left over for a very good 2nd five unit too. Florida (3-2)needs to become a more cohesive team that is also better on defense. Against Xavier, Riley Kugel had an extremely effective game playing only 19 minutes. Could Kugel be inserted into the line-up? We also saw Myron Jones emerge from his slump making a couple of nice baskets but had a costly unforced, careless error before the half ended against Xavier. Alex Fudge had some spectaculiar minutes against FSU to give Florida a spark but was somewhat limited against Xavier. I would take a risk and go with the following lineup: PG: 6'0 Bonham SG: 6'5 Riley Kugel SF: 6'4 Richard PF: 6'7 Felder C: 6'11 Castleton 2nd five: For this game, would Reeves be available? PG: 6'3 Kyle Lofton SG: 6'3 Myron Jones SF: ?6'6 K.Reeve/or 6'5 N.Lane PF: 6'9 Alex Fudge C: 6'11 Jitoboh
i understand the rub… and agree. But he seems to be a player who can be modestly effective on offense when has some minutes, settles in and gets comfortable. I’m not call for 20mpg, but putting a perimeter defender in the game for a few minutes could have an impact for a team really struggling in that aspect.
I don't see any reason for Lofton to come off the bench. He shoot poorly yesterday, but defended better than Bonham and had six assists against one turnover. His assist/to ratio is 5:1 on the year. That's a guy you want on the court.
it wouldn’t be punitive, but Bonham gives you the ability to distribute minutes a bit more creatively. I just think Bonham provides more offensive explosiveness than Lofton… so he paring with Lane could maybe offset that deficiency on Neils. My suggestion wasn’t a permenant one, but a switch just to spark some defensive intensity.
Well, Lane needs to get off the bench before he enters the starting lineup. And if you bring Lofton off the bench, hard to see him getting the 25+ minutes you want for him. Plus, I will be surprised if Bonham keeps this torrid pace up. Teams will start focusing on him a little more and I'm not sure he has the game to overcome lots of attention.
Not necessarily… Lane gives some defensive juice for 5 minutes, and Lofton enters. My suggestion was less about minutes for Lane, than it was about injecting a defensive mindset from the jump.
Even better…. The opposition won’t expect it. Kidding aside- I’m sure it’s not an entirely novel idea to try to spark your team with a lineup change, even if deferring to your best 5 a pretty quickly into a game.
Yes- that would be unusual, though also unusual would be going from a starter to DNP, as we saw w Reeves. Anyway, I think Kruger started Clayton Bates once in a season during which he wasn’t playing. Anyway, I guess the larger point is that I think Lane should be playing. At least some.
Guys that are great defenders might not score much or have many assists but often their play generates an easy basket going the other way. I will give an example that was one of my intramural highlight plays. It was in the playoffs and we were playing the #1 seed. I played against these guys in noon time pickup at Florida Gym so I knew their tendancies. Anyway I was the lone guy back defending a three on one break. I knew exactly when the guy with the ball driving down the middle with a teammates filling lanes to either side was going to make his pass.Just before that I faked one way and hoped that he would pass the other way which he did. I intercepted the pass and threw it down court to a teammate that scored an easy layup. Maybe I got an assist on the play. And to the surpise of everyone we beat them. Golden is an analytics guru so I expect that he has evaluated the +/- with Lane's defense versus his offense to the extent that he can with limited data. Maybe with more data he plays it differently.
not that this is anything to sneeze at, but I think your figures are off on Lofton. The assist to turnover numbers is see are: Lofton- 25:9 Bonham- 12:6
Per ESPN, it is Lofton, 21:4; Bonham, 12:6. Maybe that was as of last night. Tonight was by far Lofton’s worst game, which is why I said upstream that he wasn’t exactly making my case for me tonight.
tonight, I think he had 4 assists without a turnover. I pulled the numbers from gatorzone. The discrepancy seems to be in turnovers. ESPN says 4; gatorzone reports 9. I’d actually guess espn is correct.
