Kentucky started 5 freshman. Also watching the elite 8 this weekend got me thinking(not always a good thing) about the talent level of the kids on the 8 teams compared to our talent level. Of our main 8 players, 6 were 4 star recruits coming out of High School. One(Jordan) was a 5 star recruit and one(Sanchez) a JC AA.
From a High School ranking perspective, , that rivals any other team in the elite 8 with the exception of maybe Kentucky.
Yup.
But, with that talent in mind, it's shocking at times how far away we seem from these teams in certain respects, especially offensively. I had the chance to sit very close to the action Friday night, and with no rooting interest was just observing. The structure, discipline, and ball movement from these teams on offense is really what jumped out contrasted against our games.
While we lacked consistency in these departments (to our ultimate demise the last 2 weeks of the season), at our highest points this year I thought we competed defensively, on the backboards, and for 50/50 balls at the level those games were played Friday night.
But we are a world away offensively. Even in the stretches where the teams weren't scoring (largely do to the defensive intensity of the games), there was no dribbling east/west 30 feet from the basket, no out of control 1 on 1, no one pass and shot. They trusted their stuff and ran it consistently for all 40 minutes. They were executing what team offense looks like at the highest levels of Division 1 college basketball. We do not do that.
Those teams that played yesterday really move the ball. They have superior basketball talents that take and make tough shots. I don't think if you gave our players to Ollie or Calipari that the results are much better.
I respectfully + wholeheartedly disagree.
+1, also have to disagree here Beast. I am not saying that, collectively, MSU doesn't have more talent than we do. But the gap between talent is far less than the gap between the way the teams play on the floor, and that's the critical point.
And I think that ties back to perhaps the main point. When the MSU players were coming in, how much more talent did they have on paper than when the SJU players were coming in? That's where I really think you'll find very little gap between us and all but the very top few teams in the country (which perhaps makes MSU not the best example). The top coaches cultivate their players and those players get materially better over the course of their careers.
We have not had that kind of player development, at all. On a team full of players who had been with the program 2 and 3 years this past season, how many do you look at and say "that kid has gotten so much better since he was a freshman"? That, to me, is as big a problem as any we face under the current regime. These teams may have better players than us now - at least players playing better than ours now - but I don't know how much better they were coming in.
You give our players to Izzo for 12 months, put them in the bracket MSU was playing in, and I think that team is playing at the Garden this weekend also.
