With LeVert gone, does this season turn into a “get the young guys a ton of minutes” type of thing? Who do you guys think will start in his place? I would have to guess Dawkins, as having MAAR out there would make it a 3 point guard starting lineup. Is the NIT even in sight anymore? If there is a silver lining to this, it’s definitely that the frosh are getting thrown into the fire for some big time experience. I guess my main question is what should be the goal for the season now?
Goal for season should be to get the freshman as much work as possible. I would bench walton to let him heal along with spike. Play rahkman, dawkins, irving, chatman, and doyle. Season was bleek, now its officially over. Might as well throw these kids into the fire. let them get spanked and let them grow through experience, being comfortable in big games.
Think Walton’s growth might be as important as anyone’s.
The main goal for me is to still win games any way we can. A lot of our younger guys are likely 4 year players. We need to see progress out of them as the season continues. They can get time and experience, but we need to see results as well.
MAAR will be playing more and its time for him to use his ability to get into the lane and draw fouls.
Resting Spike and/or Walton is totally unrealistic at this point. We have 9 realistic contributors right now.
As a whole, we need guys to be assertive on offense and active on defense. When the energy is high, our younger guys can be very solid.
After watching the documentary on the 2013 team, I also feel like we need Spike to shoot the ball more. I know his shot has been a little hit or miss this season and I imagine his injury doesn’t help, but he can’t continually pass up open shot attempts from behind the arc. With Levert out, he is a guy to watch as we will need him to be more of a contributor in the scoring column.
Will these guys accept the challenge? Beilein will put them in advantageous situations. Its time to go out and do it. I hope that three helps things click in MAAR’s head that he can be a player and we need him to be a big time player now too.
Perhaps a sizable number of the young guys right now will form the core of an experienced team in a year or 2, something we have not had the luxury of watching these last couple of years.
However, I’m really surprised by the lukewarm appraisal of Dawkins’ ability. For a 2 star recruit, he has really impressed me the few times he’s come on the court. In the games in which he has been allowed to a take a decent volume of shots, he’s had very decent performances. Beyond Doyle, Dawkins has been the most impressive recruit of the 2014 class, at least in my opinion.
Right now they’re 4-2 in the big 10. I’m realistic enough to know that they’re not going to win the big 10 or finish top 3 but there are still some weapons out there and for me there are two guys who need to step up. Walton needs to put this team on his back and start creating his own offense rather than just being a distributor and catch/shoot player. Zak Irvin needs to find himself and start playing to his capability both shooting and driving to the basket. He turned down a few chances against NW to blow by his opponent off the dribble and either get fouled or get a layup. If those two guys step up, and the other “role” players do their jobs, this team is much different.
JB’s preference for low TOs takes away some inherent aggression in my view. Now, that’s not always a bad thing, because you always want to maximize possessions. That being said, I think there is fine line there…perhaps we can loosen the rope a bit now that we really have nothing to lose. Let’s see what we have here