Got to see the Deacs up close finally this past weekend. Alondes and Daivien were fun to watch. West Carolina had some decent guards and they just destroyed them. 75% from the field, scored or assisted on almost 80% of our points. I was interested to see if in person Cam's game looked like it'd translate against ACC-level players, and I think it will. He's much quicker than I thought; he'll be a good one. I was a little disappointed that LaRavia seemed to struggle to find shots against that level of competition, at the same time he was extremely active - I counted more than the 6 steals he was credited with and a lot of those Alondes boards were really ones he controlled. He'll also be a solid player for us. If only those 4 guys were all coming back for another year, that'd be a hell of a core.
The not so good... Whitt's uptick in speed in strength seems fairly minor, although the talent is obvious. A little disappointed to see zero improvement in that borderline push-shot... Having Alondes for the year to give him another full year before likely taking the reins at point is huge for us having any shot at being relevant this year. I think he'll get there but glad we're not depending on him this year to start.
Our front court, to be honest, was pretty shockingly bad minus LaRavia. Mucius I can understand - he just looks hurried, he's forcing things, his shot release timing was wildly different even when he was warming up. Looks like he's really putting pressure on himself to lead and impact the game. Hopefully he'll figure it out over the next few games, but it was like he'd either go too fast or too slow, go too hard after a defensive recovery or way too soft. Just needs to find that middle ground.
Walton was baffling to me. If you told me he was having pain issues and took too many meds before the game I'd 100% believe it. That play where they brought it up the court and he just turned his back to the ball watching the weak side of the paint, completely spaced out, and only turned around after the layup was on the glass, only to goaltend it with a confused look on his face.... Woof. And that post up "move" against a much smaller defender to a quasi-fade away... They only had one dude over 6'6" and he only played 11 minutes. Yet Walton didn't score a point. And he was 5th on the team in rebounds. So that's not great. Hopefully he's just lost against guards and he'll hold his own against real big men. Maybe same with Sy who seemed to be good for some size, 5 fouls and a couple of putbacks. Which we need.
Should be an interesting season. Feels like Forbes did a great job of filling in gaps so we're not devoid of talent anywhere like we were at the 4 last year, but a lot of those gaps are pretty rough around the edges, or they're one year rentals, etc. LaRavia/Cam/Whitt is still a decent base layer though.
