Not sure, but he was also quite good and made the SEC all defensive squad, like Hill. Wilbekin made it twice, and I like that comparison best because of size, strength, and physicality. Hill and Chiozza did it more with their athleticism.
At least at the college level, Wilbekin's footwork on defense was off the charts good. It surprised me when the 76'ers kept T.J. McConnell over Scottie based on T.J.'s defense.
It is a lot on Coach White, but not for the reasons you cite. Yes Chiozza would have been better on a fast breaking team, but he played on a team that had to defensively rebound by committee. That means that guards can't be leaking out on the shot. We didn't have stud defensive rebounders. Heck, sometimes it was a guard that was our leading rebounder. I would put that on White but for not recruiting well enough to get a well balanced team. We can argue about this forever, but it is pointless.
I was thinking more of the 1/2 court offense in which Cheese was backing his defender down into the post and trying to draw a second defender so he could find an open man. The same thing went on with Nembhard. There could have been more ball and player movement in the half-court offense. I don’t really have an opinion as to whether there could have been more of a fast break offense.
He did a little at BC, and when he signed with us he was really working on his shot and handle, as he wants to be a legit combo forward. But yeah, we didn't see this last year.
I see Lunardi has us as a 10 seed. Any comments? I think we are more talented than that but no one has seen us play together so it is all speculative at this point but ima gonna take the over (higher) on this one.
We have the potential to do better, we have the potential to do worse. On paper I would call us at least a 6 seed, but first year coach, lots of players who haven't played together. We won't know until they roll out the ball and start playing for real. I'm excited about this season. Really across the whole lineup, so many questions and so much potential. Men's and women's basketball have some great potential, volleyball has some good things going on but half the roster is new, soccer did what they were supposed to do in their exhibition matches but has the same issues as basketball and football with new coaches, football is also going to be fun to watch, with potential for a great season. I can't remember ever having this much turnover across all the teams, a tribute to Scott Stricklang if he hit home runs on all these hires, I may even start spelling his name right
Um, his "seeding" in August is right up there with the ranking of the 2024 signing class. It is pretty silly and feeds folks who have nothing better to do in the summer.
It's easy to rank crap teams and great teams from last season, based on what they have returning. And for a few programs based on whatever elite 5-stars they have coming in. For most teams, however, rankings and seedings mean little to nothing at this point. I think the Gators will be good, but how good remains to be seen. We'll know more after a few weeks of actual games.
Preseason ranking are not worth the paper they are printed on except that they are no longer printed on paper and now ARE worth what they are printed on. The 2006 Gator team was projected to finished 7th in the SEC IIRC. Not saying that our current tream will be anywhere near as good as them, but just a data point on how bad preseason predictions can be. In 1994 we had a great run and we lost Marti Kuisma. Lots was expected. Instead we barely made the NCAAs in 1995 and lost to Iowa State in Tally in the first round.
I think we also lost Craig Brown and his leadership and shooting from that 1994 Final Four team. That one piece lost made a big difference.
I also thought we would finish in the bottom half of the SEC that season. But after the first 4 or 5 games, I thought we were a legit top-12 team with a legit shot at winning it all. Noah and Green had taken huge steps forward, and Humpty-Dump showed right away that he was much better than a guy who was just filling a spot because there was no one else available. Never been happier to have been so wrong.
I saw it in the first few minutes of the very first game. Those guys were incredibly connected on D. Well, Noah sometimes got lost but he made up for it with his incredible athleticism.
Playing too many easy games for time to gel can make players careless because plays that seem easy against lesser talent do not work against good teams. A lazy pass may work against a lesser team but against a talented team could be a dunk against us.
