speaking to the Tip Off Club yesterday, and one point they made about the Razorbacks which I thought applied to UALR as well, is they need to stop recruiting athletes and start recruiting basketball players.

As LRTrojan has said in the past, basketball is not a two platoon game, although we sometimes try to make it that way. Every player should be able to score. We have had many players in the past who were completely one dimentional. They couldn't shoot. That's really something we need to concentrate on. Finding players first who can score, and then adding rebounding and defense. We've always done it the other way. And we seem to have a knack for running off our best scorers. That needs to stop.
I think sometimes we just take what we can get because we can't get the players that can do it all.

(02-04-2014 01:52 PM)outsideualr Wrote:  speaking to the Tip Off Club yesterday, and one point they made about the Razorbacks which I thought applied to UALR as well, is they need to stop recruiting athletes and start recruiting basketball players.

As LRTrojan has said in the past, basketball is not a two platoon game, although we sometimes try to make it that way. Every player should be able to score. We have had many players in the past who were completely one dimentional. They couldn't shoot. That's really something we need to concentrate on. Finding players first who can score, and then adding rebounding and defense. We've always done it the other way. And we seem to have a knack for running off our best scorers. That needs to stop.
I think sometimes we just take what we can get because we can't get the players that can do it all.

Never felt we had "great" athletes. ULL usually has great athletes. Will Neighbour, and even Derek Fisher, were not great athletes but are very good basketball players. I have always felt our players were solid basketball players, but not great athletes. Hard for me to come up with exception off the bat- Maybe Elijah Muldrow.

For about seven or eight years, we didn't have very many basketball players(or what I'd call all-around basketball players). We had some pretty good athletes, who could play pretty good defense, but couldn't shoot worth a ****. We generally had a pretty good shooter or maybe two, but most of them couldn't shoot their way out a paper bag with a machine gun.

(02-04-2014 05:10 PM)LRTrojan Wrote:  For about seven or eight years, we didn't have very many basketball players(or what I'd call all-around basketball players). We had some pretty good athletes, who could play pretty good defense, but couldn't shoot worth a ****. We generally had a pretty good shooter or maybe two, but most of them couldn't shoot their way out a paper bag with a machine gun.

That's what I was talking about. When I say athletic, I mean people who can run fast and jump high. By my definition, Larry Bird was not athletic.
But he had great basketball skills. Now obviously there are some great basketball players who also have great athletic ability. But the Labron James and Michael Jordans don't come around every day. I don't need to name names but we've had a lot of players who had no offense basketball skills, such as handling and shooting the ball. And many couldn't even shoot free throws.

I do see more basketball players on our roster now, and that's encouraging. And hopefully that will translate into more winning seasons.