Country Dan's Version of the Debacle @ Clemson

[myDeaconmyhand]

I don't get it. Even if I were to agree with your premise that Codi is average (he's not) and that Tony is average (he is) outside of being able to shoot the ball (Tony can't), one guy is a freshman and one guy is a reserve junior on a mediocre team. You said Tony would start over Codi and "it's not even close." And the numbers you quoted by just extending minutes to 40 (production doesn't work that way) don't even support your claim, and certainly don't support your "it's not even close" comment.

It's obvious you think [Redacted] was a dick about handling the point guard situation and you're constructing an argument to support that, even though you have no idea what really went on behind the scenes and in Tony's personal life. "This was a personal choice that has nothing to do with basketball" - is what Tony said about leaving Wake to be closer to his sick mother. His hardship claim was granted by the NCAA backing this fact.

Again, there's plenty of crap to slam [Redacted] on. That we would be in better shape starting Tony Chennault at point if [Redacted] hadn't "run him off" is not on the list. If we were struggling at the backup point position then it'd have merit, but as I showed earlier, Madison is actually putting up better numbers as a backup than Tony is right now, despite the age difference.

There's no argument here. After Cav's performance last it would make more sense to dive into the Desrosiers transfer.

CMM wasn't a big enough upgrade in the short term for Bzz to fuck over TC. Is that really so hard to admit? A coach basically giving up on his 2nd year player is more than enough reason to slam him, especially when a year passes and the replacement player isn't much better. Right now Codi is average at best, it would be pointless for you to dispute that.

 

[DCDeac]

The crying and whining about how [Redacted] may or may not have handled the gentle feelings of a career backup point guard are about #7,156 in the list of shit anyone should give two fucks about.

CMM is a no-brainer over TC. If you don't agree, good for you, I maintain you know zero about basketball if you can watch both those players and come away with that conclusion.

To argue that TC would be starting over CMM and it's "not even close" is laughable. Done arguing what should be obvious.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

The crying and whining about how [Redacted] may or may not have handled the gentle feelings of a career backup point guard are about #7,156 in the list of shit anyone should give two fucks about.

CMM is a no-brainer over TC. If you don't agree, good for you, I maintain you know zero about basketball if you can watch both those players and come away with that conclusion.

To argue that TC would be starting over CMM and it's "not even close" is laughable. Done arguing what should be obvious.

Thanks for the advice about what I should give a fuck about, but considering the amount of time I spend on a board devoted to Wake sports, it's relevant topic and I'll keep doing what the fuck i'm doing. As I said earlier, it's pointless for you to argue that CMM is anything more than average right now. Personally I'd rather have a player who's a trainwreck under the basket than one who disappears for the majority of games, but different strokes. CMM certainly has the potential to be a good point guardhere, but his potential isn't doing shit for us right now, and right now is what we're talking about.

 

[marquee moon]

 

[CheesePritchard]

The crying and whining about how [Redacted] may or may not have handled the gentle feelings of a career backup point guard are about #7,156 in the list of shit anyone should give two fucks about.

I agree. Seem to be a number of things people blow out of proportion to slam Bz when all you really need to look at is on court body of work.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

I agree. Seem to be a number of things people blow out of proportion to slam Bz when all you really need to look at is on court body of work.

Yeah, i'm not really seeing how a coach's treatment of his players, which directly leads to heavy amounts of roster turnover every season, is blown out of proportion. It's quite possible that Bzz wouldn't have such a long leash here if someone actually gave a shit about the revolving door in his locker room. We didn't have to be the 7th youngest team in the nation this season, Bzz had a lot to do with that.

 

[Strickland33]

I certainly look forward to CMM turning it on.

I saw Tony turn it on, and it wasn't pretty. I just hate seeing a confident kid who doesn't realize he is not ACC material and is a borderline Div 1 player. That was Tony. His last game with us, he drove past his defender using his strength, but the Georgia Tech big Dan Miller rotated over and was there to defend the rim 3 steps ahead of Tony. Tony saw Miller but due to his lack of athleticism, lack of vision, lack of talent, was unable to change paths, change his decision, change anything. Miller blocked Tony's shot with his elbow. WITH HIS ELBOW.

Those type of talent decisions are thankfully few and far between this year, though some of the blocks against Clemson under the rim were a grave reminder. I like Cav and I think he's going to be a double-digit scorer for us, but he needs to learn what his weaknesses are and work to expose those as little as possible on the offensive end. Defensive end you can't cover it up as much but you can on the offensive end.

I think we've had quite a few instances of our guys not realizing that they're not quite at an ACC talent level yet. None of our guys looked like ACC-caliber starters for entire halves of the Clemson, Virginia, Iona, Mercer, Nebraska, High Point, Richmond, or Duke games. That sucks.

I don't think I have to remind you how many times our guards got stuffed around the basket against Clemson's decently undersized frontcourt....

 

[Strickland33]

Big E, Justin

Big E and Justin were comparatively elite recruits. Their jumps should be considered differently. I've stated this before and explained that this is the reason why Vytas (top-100) and Viss (out of the top 100) are FAR better and more realistic points of comparison for our young bigs.

Is this really that hard to understand?

 

[CheesePritchard]

Yeah, i'm not really seeing how a coach's treatment of his players, which directly leads to heavy amounts of roster turnover every season, is blown out of proportion. It's quite possible that Bzz wouldn't have such a long leash here if someone actually gave a shit about the revolving door in his locker room. We didn't have to be the 7th youngest team in the nation this season, Bzz had a lot to do with that.

The roster turnover is a huge issue but I think the leap to trashing Tony may be exaggerated. What if the truth about Bz talking up CMM as the starting PG was just another PR hatchet job?

 

[Strickland33]

We need three or four of the frosh to have bumps like that next year with whomever is coaching, and it would be nice to get some quality minutes out of one of the two commits.

How can I better articulate this...

Eric Williams was RSCI #36. That means, via the RSCI composite ranking, he was the 36th best recruit in the country in 2002.

Tyler Cavanaugh and Devin Thomas, by comparison were the 34th and 35th ranked players in their position, not even registering in a single top-100 or top-150 by a legitimate scouting service.

To compare either of those guys with Eric Williams is, frankly, ridiculous.

 

[Strickland33]

The roster turnover is a huge issue but I think the leap to trashing Tony may be exaggerated. What if the truth about Bz talking up CMM as the starting PG was just another PR hatchet job?

It's my fault for making the initial post.

My frustrations stand, though. I agree with all of you that Tony Chennault was not , is not, and will never be better than below average at the game of basketball.

That's not my point.

I was just pointing out that Jeff [Redacted] chased a kid off campus under the assumption that the incoming freshman was going to be light years better and this, by any metric, is definitely (beyond debate) not the case.

I think Codi is going to be good. Really good, in fact. But the reasons why Tony transferred that were Wake Forest related was primarily that Jeff [Redacted] was calling CMM his starting point guard in front of Tony.

In addition to the fact that CMM is probably going to move off of the ball, at least by 2013, the starting PG competition between Tony and Codi would have been much closer than any of y'all think.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

The roster turnover is a huge issue but I think the leap to trashing Tony may be exaggerated. What if the truth about Bz talking up CMM as the starting PG was just another PR hatchet job?

Just to be clear, you think that [Redacted] naming CMM his starting point guard in front of Tony and Anthony, could be a "PR hatchet job"? I don't follow that logic. There are multiple reasons for nearly every player to transfer under every coach, but it's not a coincidence that [Redacted]'s teams have such a high transfer rate

 

[PhDeac]

Seriously. Is Codi even going to make the ACC All Rookie team? He really needs to start developing now.

No. He's averaging 5.5 pts in ACC play. This is what I posted on the Clemson game thread:

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The next highest [in ACC scoring behind CJ and Travis] is CMM with 5.5 pts on 10-36 fg (.276). He had 8 ast/7 to. This is not what we need from the guy who was supposed to be the star of this class. Just for fun, here are Tony Chennault's stats last year after 4 ACC games (VT, @MD, State, @Duke): 8.5 pts on 14-35 fg (.400) with 10 ast/9 to. Not good, but it's pretty clear so far that CMM isn't the improvement over Chennault that he was supposed to be.
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People are getting caught up in Strickland saying that TC would start over CMM when the real story and the real let down is that it is anywhere close.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

Pretty clear that Tony was leaving no matter what. BabyDeac, who is far from a Bz fan, has said as much. His family issues were serious and he was granted a hardship waiver before his brother's tragedy.

And having said that CMM is struggling. But he had a better game in his 2nd game ever than TC has ever had. And honestly I like Madison more than TC too as a player. The harping over TC is an odd product of Bz hate.

 

[Doggus]

I think we aren't comparing the right current Wake guy to Tony.

Madison Jones' per 40 min numbers are:
9.3 PPG, 2.5 RPG, 3.8 APG, 3.4 TO, 2.5 SPG, 1.3 BPG, 50% from the floor.
Tony (Soph): 11.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, 3.8 assists (2.9 turnovers), and 1.3 steals.

Madison will be PG next year with Tony playing SG. We won't have the outside shooting but will be formidable defensively and plenty of ability to get in the lane and pass. CMM will certainly score more points in that role. And we'll have 2 capable non-freshman PGs on the roster which we haven't seen since Ish/ Teague.

 

[stonz]

CMM is averaging less than 8 ppg. No doubt that number will go up next year, it won't go up enough to replace CJ's scoring. Even if all the freshman come back next year, how much can you really expect them to improve? Not much reason to be optimistic about next year.

A: A lot. As Jaybone mentioned, college players typically improve the most between their freshman and sophomore seasons. The most relevant example right now is Boston College. Last year they went 9-22 (4-12), ranked 259 in KenPom. They used roughly an 8 man rotation, which featured 5 freshmen playing major minutes. Hard to find a team more similar to us than that.

This year they are projected to go 13-18 (5-13), ranked 121 in KenPom (a 138 spot improvement).

The 5 freshmen, ORtg by year:

Patrick Heckmann: 87 --> 109
Ryan Anderson: 97 --> 110
Dennis Clifford: 89 --> 103
Lonnie Jackson: 102 --> 111
(Jordan Daniels is transferring)

With 8 freshmen (including Daniel Green), we can safely assume at least a couple of them will significantly improve. The cumulative improvement from all our young players should outweigh the loss of CJ, imo. Travis is the crucial variable. Either way, even though I think we will likely be better next year, I wouldn't say I'm "optimistic". We could be better next year, and still not make a postseason tournament.

I think the whole damn team is in denial. CJ said "we didn't attack the rim like we usually do". First of all, this team doesn't attack the rim. Secondly, I can think of 6 or 7 specific times when we did "attack" the rim, and Clemson smacked that shit to the cheerleaders. I know Madison Jones got at least 2 foolish layup attempts blocked. The problem is that our team is weak, small, and can't finish at the rim against a more athletic team.

We're top 10 in the country at getting to the foul line.

It pisses me off that [Redacted] chased away Tony Chennault - in the most unprofessional and frankly dickish manner possible - by implying that Codi was going to be a stud. It's actually kind of hindered my ability to like Codi, which I think is what really gets to me.

BTW, here's a statistical comparison (per 40 minutes pace adjusted) of Tony's sophomore year and Codi's freshman year.


Tony Chennault would be our starting point guard this year and it's not even close.

This is incredibly wrong. Even if you have convinced yourself that their production is similar, the fact that Codi is younger, has a much higher ceiling, and a [Redacted] recruit makes it pretty clear who would start.

There's no argument here. After Cav's performance last it would make more sense to dive into the Desrosiers transfer.

Yea. Carson is the transfer we miss the most this year, and his loss is absolutely on [Redacted].

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

Pretty clear that Tony was leaving no matter what. BabyDeac, who is far from a Bz fan, has said as much. His family issues were serious and he was granted a hardship waiver before his brother's tragedy.

And having said that CMM is struggling. But he had a better game in his 2nd game ever than TC has ever had. And honestly I like Madison more than TC too as a player. The harping over TC is an odd product of Bz hate.

I think this "harping" is really just backlash for all the hype CMM got and credit Bzz got from members of this board for the initial move. I was convinced that CMM was going to be a clear upgrade, and I don't think he has been. I don't think DC is giving [Redacted] his deserved amount of criticism for the situation, so I'm being twice as critical to make up for it.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

No one would care if Bz could coach. Would we rather have last year's PG situation or this year's?

 

[HeavyPetter]

Did I say the team would suck

I just said the Big E needed CP3

Like Cathi Lee needed Regis.

 

[myDeaconmyhand]

...

lot's of room to get fouled away from the rim. We get very few layups and hardly ever dunk the ball. Devin, Cav, and Travis all avoid contact under the basket, Cav especially.