(01-09-2017 11:25 AM)dannyb73 Wrote: You folks ranting on Jimmy Hall are laughable. Big deal. The guy hates to lose or occasionally has bad body language. Ben Simmons LY averaged 19 ppg and 11.8 rpg. and Jimmy averages 17.4 and 11.1 --- he is everything we need and an ambassador for Kent State. Any other thoughts are extremely short sighted IMO.
Also, keep in mind, Jimmy could have left last year and stayed out of loyalty. Temple and Seton Hall wanted him....among others. Then also, some of our fans heckle him at home games. That is sad. He is a kid and might be extremely frustrated, so it might be time to pump the brakes on your criticisms.
I know you realize how hard it is for me to leave this comment alone... I'll save you the stats and just assume you aren't actually trying to say Hall and Simmons are comparable on the court. To your point, I would say Campbell is a better comp. Like it or not, he's kind of the gold standard for MAC big men right now as the returning MAC POY. Campbell is ahead of Hall, but they're comparable.
As far as off the court, my perception is that Hall is not similar to Simmons in this regard either... but that's a good thing. Simmons is a diva that was filming a documentary on himself during his freshman year that included a lot of things that I viewed as disrespectful to LSU and his coaches. So I'm hoping they're not similar off the court :)
To your actual point about the level of appreciation Hall receives, since I might've started this by my criticism of our defensive centered around pairing him and De La Rosa, I'll say this. Hall frustrates me often, as does the rest of this team, but I actually feel bad for him. I think this team was poorly built to take full advantage of his skill set and it's often resulted in him forcing bad shots and getting turnovers. I detailed earlier how we need to pair him with an athletic, defensive minded big but let's look at the offensive end too. He's shown the ability to find open shooters when he's doubled. He's also proven to be a very capable post-to-post passer when doubled (see most of Spicer's dunks last year). These two facts should make it dangerous for teams to double team him. However, De La Rosa is very slow getting the ball up when he receives a pass, so his post-to-post passing ability doesn't scare teams. From what I've seen Walker is the best post we have at catching and going immediately up, but at 6'5" it's tough for that to be his roll. Also, we don't have shooters so teams don't need to respect his ability to find open shooters. We brought in one shooter to try to remedy this but he was a defensive liability. Since Hall has limited mobility defensively, in my opinion, we couldn't afford to try to play DeBerry with Hall. He could easily be averaging around 5 assists a game right now if this team was built to take advantage of his strengths. Imagine what this team could look like if we replaced DeBerry with a true 3 and D guy and Spicer or a player with his skill set was starting next to Hall. It almost makes me wonder if they actually expected him to leave after last year.
As for the handshake, Hall didn't push anyone in the back on a fast break layup, he didn't get a technical for flopping, and to my knowledge he didn't hit anyone in the groin (still not convinced we're guilty of that claim). So whatever, might not be a good look, but whatever.