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(03-28-2018 07:52 AM)Marcus Wrote:  

(03-27-2018 07:15 PM)rtaylor Wrote:  

(03-27-2018 06:57 PM)skyblade Wrote:  

(03-27-2018 06:22 PM)rtaylor Wrote:  

(03-27-2018 04:33 PM)skyblade Wrote:  I agree, I actually think we will be a better team next year if Evans comes back. Obviously losing Clark hurts (and losing Washington doesn't really hurt), but Scott is ready to be a starter and the year of development for all our players outweighs the losses of Clark/Washington.

Don't bet on no one questioning Cronin though. It seems like some people only care about NCAA tournament results and others only care about getting recruits who are 4* plus, regardless of how they play. Can't make everyone happy.

How in the heck can you say losing Washington will not hurt? I did not realize we had another big who can score 12 a game waiting in the wings. What team did you watch all year? Washington was extremely clutch, won us some games and was a leader. Not too many of those sitting on our bench.

He lost us some games too, he was a horrible passer and not a good one-on-one defender. The Nevada game he was the one they exposed on D down the stretch. His offensive rebounding was nothing close to our other bigs. Yes, he could shoot, but even then he took bad shots and didn't pass.

Per 40 minutes Washington averaged the fewest; Offensive rebounds, total rebounds, assists and steals of our 5 bigs who got significant playing time. Looking at advanced stats he didn't particularly seperate himself from Brooks or Nsoseme (and Scott was mostly better then him). Yes he made shots, but the bad shots he took, lack of passing and worse defense evened things out. Give Brooks/Nsoseme a year with significant playing time and they will be quite a bit superior to Washington.

Even with Washington getting the majority of minutes we were one of the best defensive teams in the nation, and that got us bounced in the second round as usual. This is not the 1950s anymore.

Could not have said it better. Fans need to quit trying overthink their way into totally unrealistic expectations as some fans clearly do with their advanced stats and BS like that. It's clear to anyone with a pair of eyes that Washington is a far better talent than any of the guys who will replace him. And his defense was not nearly as bad as some on here make it out to be. They've been Cronin-ized into thinking that is all that matters.

Honestly, how good was our defense or has our defense even been under Cronin? When I get more time, I'll have to dig through the numbers, but it it seemed to me every time we actually played a talented team with an offensive skillset, they scored pretty well, especially when they needed to. Xavier, Nevada, etc. I'll give them credit, for making adjustments from the first WSU game and limiting them on Rd. 2, but overall I've always felt like the really good teams just score anyways and our defense looks just like any other teams defense.

It's insane to think good teams are going to get held to 50 points and that's how we need to beat them. The only team in modern college basketball that has come close to being able to truly dominate good teams like that on defense was 2015 UK, and that was because they ran out 3- mobile 7Fters and two 6-6 long armed PGs and a sleu ot other athletic NBA type freaks. Even they met their match in a very good shooting Wisconsin team. In the end, they weren't able to score consistently enough and that did them in.