Are you kidding? You don't know why people would criticize Travis? He was a 4 star recruit, top 10 at his position coming to Wake. His Scout profile said he had tremendous upside, high major prospect, and noted he needed work on ball handling and developing inside. Now he's our only senior and you're praising him for taking a back seat to Cavanaugh? He still can't handle the ball and has no inside game. He disappears frequently in big games. His level of effort routinely doesn't pass the eye test.
You guys rip Cav all year last year as non-ACC caliber but Travis regresses and it's undeserving of criticism or it's understandable because [Redacted] is to blame?
The criticism is fair. The guys ranked one spot above and below him in 2010? One is averaging 17 and 7 at Stanford, the other 19 and 6 at Florida. A "good coach" would game plan Travis to only take 5 shots a game? And that's meeting his expectations? You guys are taking crazy pills.
This is easily one of your worst posts ever. Feel free to read my posts on this matter and get back to me about what I've actually said.
For one, I have always been one of the few Cav supporters on this board. That was "before he was good," too. That's also because I was one of the few people on here that saw him tear up a really competitive AAU field in the summer that Coleman went down. Save your over generalizations for someone else. My issue regarding Cav always that [Redacted] failed to play to his strengths and it showed. The combination of this changing and him maturing physically have really made a good deal of difference as I posted earlier on a few threads throughout the season and even on this thread.
Criticizing a guy, like Travis, who is a known commodity as a high schooler because he hasn't panned out like you would expect from an elite prospect (eschewing the fact that he was RSCI #56, BTW) is more in line with your brand of post-hoc "I told you so"-isms than it is with me. Never have I seen a fanbase so eager to dump on a kid than Wake and you're among the most gleeful in doing so. I've followed basketball recruiting as a fan and professionally since 2003, and I can't tell you how many guys would be thrilled to rack up Travis's career production considering the turns their careers, relative to the field, have taken.
Travis was an RSCI top-75 recruit and he's playing like one, a 4-year starter averaging double figures for a high major basketball team.
Here's the 2010 RSCI:
http://www.draftexpress.com/RSCI/2010/
Just ask James Bell, Gerard Coleman, and Mychal Thompson if they think Travis has had a bad career... If you give me the option of KT Harrell, Casey Prather, Anthony Brown (all of whom are actually shooting guards, technically) and Travis McKie (who was and still is a combo-forward), then I'll take Travis every time. And Travis would have had the same trouble getting minutes that Prather did if he had played on a team 1/10 as talented as Florida. We'll see how Prather, Anthony Brown, and Harrell keep up with those numbers, but something tells me that they'll all end up pretty similar by the time it's all said and done. By the way, nice #samplesizedeac. Also, I see how you conveniently left out Rion Brown, Jordan Sibert, Okaro White, Dom Ferguson and our very own JT Terrell as a means of proving a point that just isn't valid given the data.
Has Travis underwhelmed relative to what he showed us as a freshman? Yes. But plenty of posted have offered reasons for why what we saw from Travis as a freshman might have been the product of a lot of pieces falling into place rather than some goldmine of untapped potential. I'm perfectly willing to accept building him up too much as a fan, and I'm sure if you asked writers at nbADraft.net, espn, and DX they'd have similar responses.
Has he taken a back seat to Cavanaugh? I don't know if players can make that call. What I've seen is that Cavanaugh and Moto are once again getting looks that seem like they're the outcome of [Redacted]'s offense. Add to that the fact that CMM and Devin at both better at creating on the perimeter and in the post, respectively, and I'd say (in addition to the possession splits and numbers that you conveniently ignore) that Travis's lack of aggressiveness coupled with his gradual demotion in the presence of other options (both guys that our staff is creating looks for and players better suited at finding their own) has resulted in a temporary drop in numbers.
I can tell you one thing, though. Travis's "demise" hasn't really surprised anybody that I've talked to, whether they be Wake insiders, basketball analysts, or NBA scouts. Outside of his freshman season and his standout performance at LeBron camp awhile back, Travis's expectations have been managed (and overinflated) by our fanbase (particularly by the sunshine brigade to, now ironically, show how [Redacted] can develop talent in years two and three) and our fanbase alone.
