Totally agree on how you felt about our defense. Granted I only seen limited footage of the 5 games and I know Crean said that their time practicing defensive things had been limited, but even with those things considered I grimaced a few times when we were playing defense.

LOL!

I hope they can maintain their confidence in front of 17,000+. The crowds in Canada were way smaller than most high school games in Indiana.

Trying to come up with a game plan to defend Troy Williams is going to cause a lot of coaches to lose sleep this coming season. The fact that he acknowledges that his on and off the ball defense needs to be improved is a major breakthrough in his development. I think those same coachers are going to find out that Max Hoetzel will become another “load” to deal with in time. Delighted to see that every one of these players took a moment to look for an open teammate before shooting–and often passed up an open look to pass to someone who was in better/closer position to make a basket.

That out-of-bounds play may work once this coming season…when Tim Priller set the screen (nicely done by the way) to free up Rob Johnson, if the guy guarding Priller had switched off to take Johnson, the ball ends up in the cheap seats instead of the basket

That out-of-bounds play may work once this coming season…when Tim Priller set the screen (nicely done by the way) to free up Rob Johnson, if the guy guarding Priller had switched off to take Johnson, the ball ends up in the cheap seats instead of the basket.

Post of the summer.

Yeah I mean if you look at all the freshman in these games in Canada, they weren’t afraid to take their shot when they had the opportunity. Hoetzel struggled a bit knocking them down but he was confident. Even Tim Priller let the game come to him and showed that he can knock down jumpers as well. Then flashback to last year with Etherington and a freshman Hartman. Any moment that they got the ball, they seem panicked and scared and passed the ball off as soon as they got it. I know Hartman didn’t play a lot but comparing him as a freshman to this years freshman is a big difference in confidence

Let’s say he returns to 100% by November (I have no idea how realistic that assumption would be) and let’s also assume he wouldn’t see any minutes at anything besides SF or stretch 4…he’s definitely behind Troy Williams, he’s definitely behind Devin Davis. So, he’d be competing with Max Hoetzel and Tim Priller for minutes. Is he ahead or behind them? I really have no idea.

More damaging for his prospects is the probability that we will be playing in a 3 guard lineup most of the time (which means more minutes for Stan and Robert Johnson…which I think everyone can agree with). Throw in the possibility that another PF is signed (Kasongo) in the next couple of weeks and the minutes certainly don’t look plentiful for Hartman.

With this injury and the way most of the guys are playing, I don’t see him getting much playing time

Forgot about the injury since it happened postseason. Thanks

Collin Hartman hasn’t played at all due to his continued recovery from a torn ACL. He is participating in non-contact warm-up drills but we don’t know when he’ll be able to fully participate again. The hope is that he is ready for the season opener.

Pretty much captures the Canada tour. Well stated. Defense will be a big question and unfortunately we get zero look at front court product. Not taking away from Davis. He had some solid overall showings, but didn’t really have to compete against any guys larger than him (I think one team did have a 6’9, 250 guy). Probably the bigger take away from Davis was his ability to switch to smaller players on defense and score efficiently with some back cuts, put backs and ball handling penetration work.

The ah ha of this reel is that after seeing the under basket out if bounds play to RJ, I realized we should be near the top of the league in this stat this year and it’s been a source of pain for a lot of us that our conversion has been not as high as we would like.

Something as simple as having people that can in bound the ball shouldn’t even be a worry and sadly it was last year.