The Point Guard Debate

Amaseinyourface said:
2 of the Michigan break downs came on ghost screens. Neither time we looked like we were on the same page with what the ghost screen defender was doing. Darling is not gonna be a guy who switches like the rest of the group, so that’s a whole other level of figuring out that Darling and everyone else playing with him will need to sort out. But I agree on his ability to get over the high ball screen.
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And as you know, it's more important for him to fight over those screens at 6'2 than anyone else in our rotation. If I'm an opposing coach, I don't like the prospect of a high ball screen on him come January. He's going to be a very annoying player to opposing guards with screens and drawing charges.
 
Redenbacher said:
As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, Darling was brought in after the staff swung and missed on 4 other targets.

But more importantly, Pitino himself positioned Darling from Day One as a backup PG. He very publicly announced that Jackson was SJU's next great PG. When that didn't work out, he again publicly stated that Sellers would be the starting PG. So Pitino was choosing 2 guys who have never played PG to start at PG over Darling. What does that tell you about Pitino's confidence in Darling as a starting PG? It tells me a lot, hence my skepticism.
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Pitino says a lot of things and sometimes its opposite of what he really means as we have seen the last few years.
 
Eric said:
Pitino says a lot of things and sometimes its opposite of what he really means as we have seen the last few years.
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Very true. But in this case, Pitino backed up his words with actions by starting Jackson / Sellers at PG in the Towson, Michigan and Quinnipiac games, with Darling coming off the bench. If Sellers hadn't had such horrendous foul trouble in the Michigan game, Darling might not have seen the floor as much as he did.

But Darling now appears to be "the guy" at point, and he may very well beat the skeptics yet.
 
Redenbacher said:
Very true. But in this case, Pitino backed up his words with actions by starting Jackson / Sellers at PG in the Towson, Michigan and Quinnipiac games, with Darling coming off the bench. If Sellers hadn't had such horrendous foul trouble in the Michigan game, Darling might not have seen the floor as much as he did.

But Darling now appears to be "the guy" at point, and he may very well beat the skeptics yet.
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This is not a Jenkins situation with Darling. Don’t think anyone is anti Darling. Think people are skeptical he can be a starting point guard on an Elite 8 team. It would be different if he was brought in to be that guy, think most understand he is being asked to do something he was not supposed to do and are rooting for him to surprise.
 
Joedib said:
Oh please make him better than that. A low bar.
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Agree. I think he’s much more like Posh 2.0. Dylan has Posh’s tenacity as well as a little more height. Darling a better overall offensive guy probably buy not quite the defender Posh was. He’s not the mega athlete that much the rest of our guys are but he runs the team extremely well.

I’ll add that Liitopoulos can get some time there too as he’s heady and good with the ball, but also can shoot and keep teams honest.
 
Marillac2 said:
And as you know, it's more important for him to fight over those screens at 6'2 than anyone else in our rotation. If I'm an opposing coach, I don't like the prospect of a high ball screen on him come January. He's going to be a very annoying player to opposing guards with screens and drawing charges.
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He needs to learn the patented Geno “head-flop”.
 
Larry Wright said:
This is not a Jenkins situation with Darling. Don’t think anyone is anti Darling. Think people are skeptical he can be a starting point guard on an Elite 8 team. It would be different if he was brought in to be that guy, think most understand he is being asked to do something he was not supposed to do and are rooting for him to surprise.
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You can't just casually throw that Jenkins grenade in here and walk away. It always ends up with Marillac and Lawmanfan fighting for their lives.

Glen.jpg
 
Marillac2 said:
You can't just casually throw that Jenkins grenade in here and walk away. It always ends up with Marillac and Lawmanfan fighting for their lives.

View attachment 5648
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BTW this is what's fun about off topic sometimes. Even if the kids split it the posts from people are either hilarious or sometimes telling and in this case hilarious but this is why generally most people like each other on the site. For posts that deviate where you get to know the poster
 
Marillac2 said:
And as you know, it's more important for him to fight over those screens at 6'2 than anyone else in our rotation. If I'm an opposing coach, I don't like the prospect of a high ball screen on him come January. He's going to be a very annoying player to opposing guards with screens and drawing charges.
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Coach says he is 5-11
 
We don't have quite enough sample size yet, but my preliminary conclusion to The Point Guard Debate is: we don't have a point guard.

Below are the numbers for our four guards in the major-conference games to date, with comparison to the numbers posted by our 3 main frontcourt players (Zuby, Hopkins, MItchell) in those same games (I've excluded Prey, though there's a decent argument to include him but it would only skew things further).

The short version is that in the 4 games, our 3 frontcourt players are averaging 50 points and 9.75 assists, while our 4 backcourt players are averaging 31.75 points and 4 assists.

On a per-man basis that is 16.67 points and 3.25 assists per big man and 7.9 points and 1 (!!!!) assist per guard.
[EDITED to fix a math error understating frontcourt production for the Alabama game.]

Yikes. I'll be interested to see what information tonight's game adds to the pile (there are a few outliers in the 4-game sample that should smooth out over time), but "positionless basketball" i.e. "no point guard" certainly seems to be winning. Dillon Mitchell for point forward, anyone?

Michigan
Darling: 7 points, 2 assists
Sellers: 0 points, 0 assists
Sanon: 14 points, 0 assists
Jackson: 2 points, 2 assists
TOTAL: 23 points, 4 assists
Frontcourt: 50 points, 7 assists

Alabama
Darling: DNP
Sellers: 7 points, 3 assists
Sanon: 7 points, 0 assists
Jackson: 14 points, 3 assists
TOTAL: 28 points, 6 assists
Frontcourt: 53 points, 8 assists

Iowa State
Darling: 4 points, 3 assists
Sellers: 20 points, 0 assists
Sanon: 7 points, 1 assist
Jackson: 5 points, 1 assist
TOTAL: 36 points, 5 assists
Frontcourt: 44 points, 9 assists

Baylor
Darling: 2 points, 0 assists
Sellers: 22 points, 0 assists
Sanon: 2 points, 0 assists
Jackson: 14 points, 1 assist
TOTAL: 40 points, 1 assist
Frontcourt: 53 points, 15 assists
 
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