Three Questions Loom For Texas Longhorns Basketball

When did we become Missouri under Quin Snyder? I wonder how many other teams will be fielding a squad stocked with McDonald’s All-Americans and be “competing to make the tournament”.

nice eval trips, RQ as usual…

my fear is something i have had before, constantly in fact, which is 2-5 moving without the ball. it may just be my predilection for a motion offense. but it seems to me that the players Rick recruits tend to thrive, or should thrive in a motion offense.

it sickens me every time i see one or all of the 2-5 standing or shifting within a one-meter perimeter, or switching across the lane, shaking up the side court. thats not movement. thats scratching an itch.

i say all this because our lack of size and experience this year will beg for movement without the ball. you mentioned CoJo having to work more motion into his game when he’s at the 2, but that had better be the norm for the entire squad, and not the exception.

ill be honest, i am not optimistic RB can do such things with young pups, and upperclassmen so ingrained in his rub and rinse O. everyone else seems to be up this year in the league, including ISU, and i foresee trouble a comin’ in the form of a pitty-in-disguise NIT invite.

I’m more optimistic than that. [either that or 95 degree heat that feels like a thermal blanket has destroyed all my common sense]. There is still a ton of talent on this team and I swear RB does better when the expectations are lower. This feels like a season of grind it out wins with some horrific lapses mixed in for good measure. I see making the tournament as easily attainable.

Good write up Trips. But I think that, under Barnes, Johnson will almost certainly be in the core group and not a mix and match guy. In fact, it would not surprise me if GJ led the team in minutes.

wow, an optimistic ransom, must be the heat blanket…

“Unless you’re into watching tall black dudes play volleyball against our Emmanuel Lewis/Gary Coleman frontcourt”

Trust me, it’s not fun. See Tech-A&M, Tech-Baylor, Tech-KU, Tech-UT…

I’ve given up on Barnes ever crafting a complete offense. At this point, I just hope we get players like Corey Joseph and Hamilton to stick around for a couple more years to legitimately pose a threat in the tournament.

you need not mention brown’s name at all.

Who are you and what did you do with Ransom?

But you are correct, Barnes seems to do his best work with the pressure off. This does not bode well for a NC in the future, but that hand-wringing is best left for another day. I want to be optimistic, and you are also correct in that there is much more talent available than there was when RB got to campus and ran a seven-man rotation to the B12 title. Unfortunately, RB has not been handed lemons the last two years, and he’s still made lemonade… and somehow, I’m among those that wound up bitter. Go figure.

Trips, as to your post, I think a major offensive problem on this team could be alleviated if the guy setting the pick in the pick and roll would actually roll, and that the guard getting the pick would actually pass the ball on occasion to the guy who is supposed to roll. It is SOP among opposing teams to 1) show at the top of the key when the ball comes from one side to the other, and 2) to ignore the picker in the pick and roll. Both of these usually cause whatever movement may be happening elsewhere to stop.

IMO, that’s on reason why the offense looked so bad last year. When Balbay and Mason ran the point, the defense knew that those guys had been ordered not to shoot jumpers. Well, the pick and roll is most effective when both guys can score in appropriate places, and it’s useless if neither guy is in position to score once the pick is executed. The guard would get swarmed and the picker would wander toward the basket with no particular motivation, because he knew he wouldn’t get the ball.

If they wanted Balbay and Mason to drive, they didn’t need to run the pick and roll. They could stagger screens and get them to the basket just as easily. Balbay, in particular, seemed quite adept at dribbling in traffic… not as good as DJ, but I digress. But if you run the P&R, it doesn’t necessarily look like a setup for the guard to drive, and you supposedly have the option to pitch it to the picker.

At least now, with Joseph they have somebody who will be a threat to hit a jumper, making the P&R useful. If you run it with Johnson — I can’t believe I’m about to write this — you could even have a pick-and-pop option, like they had with Connor Atchley. Thing is, Atchley was most effective with DJ, who knew how to operate the P&R. Imagine that. Do we think that Joseph and Thompson know each other well enough to run the P&R effectively from day one? I would hope so. Maybe Hamilton could run it from either spot. Who knows for sure?

IMO, Joseph off the ball just needs to be available to release pressure and to shoot jumpers. I’ve not been shown that Ward is a shooter, so in that respect he and Balbay can’t play together that much, as Balbay and Mason proved so frequently last season. The benefit is that Joseph should be able to do something productive as the safety valve… shoot it, or make the defense shift because he (hopefully) can feed the post or drive or find the open man even though technically he’s playing the two.

Defense? If Hamilton is the problem, I think zone has to be the answer. But last year’s team was dreadful at it. Just because you have guards who can pressure like Balbay and Ward can doesn’t mean you’re required to run man. Practice it. Make players believe you will use it. Then use it. What can I say? Hopefully, defensively, the game will slow down for Hamilton, and they could play man and this will be less of an issue. But I have to see it at this point.

I don’t know what to tell you about the rotation. They gotta have a big who deserves 20 minutes. There’s no reason they couldn’t find two. But again, I’m beaten down as far as the expectations go. We need to see more from Williams, even if it meant they can run the same D/same O when Hamilton isn’t in the game.

It doesn’t help that I’ve lost some faith in the coaching staff to do what needs to be done. I can’t imagine that a guy with as much experience as Barnes would continue to pound square pegs, but I heard Myck Kabongo say things that cause me to believe that nothing offensively is going to change. That’s fine for next year, but my teeth are just recovering from the grinding they took last year. Good for my dentist, I guess.

I hate that I don’t have one memory of The Microwave. I know who he is and what he did in the 80s but I can’t picture him playing or his game.

That’s it. I emptying my bank account for one last weekend of debauchery because I’m certain the apocalypse is upon us.

J’Covan????

The film on Joseph tells me he is our best option at PG by a large margin. Balbay can be the situational defensive stopper that he is.

Brown can play the two where he is most comfortable along with Ward.

With those guys at the two, we have to have a shooter/scorer at the 3. So, Hamilton will have to be a 30-35 minute guy. Williams will log some minutes and when we go small, one of these could shift over to the 4.

Johnson and Thompson man down the 4. It all depends on Thompson. We know what we have in Johnson. A solid, undersized player with limited defensive and rebounding skills for the position.

I think we go with a traditional 5 man and don’t go small much this year. Chapman is the key to this team. His skillset is far greater than Wangmene. Hill is a 5 min./5 foul guy. This position is Chapman and Wangeme. Wang with the better toughness/rebounding and Chapman with the better offense/upside.

That is how I see it, but I’m sure Barnes will have something different. If we can get decent play from our 5, we have a chance to be decent.

I have more faith in Greg Davis fielding a smash-mouth running game than Barnes crafting an offense that consists of something other than 1 guy running around w/ the ball while his 4 teammates just stand there.

Legit discussion of whether or not the Horns will go dancin’? What happens to RB if this team falls to the NIT?

Forget lowered expectations & rational thinking, the gnashing will be cacophonous if Texas doesn’t make the tourney.

Maybe I’m delusional, maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m homerific, but I see this team as a protected (I.E. top 4 seed) way more likely then not make the tournament.

We have all sorts of talent (not national title talent like last year- but good enough to thrive) and a legit (I’m hoping) PG which is what we all know Barnes needs. When he has that guy his teams do well. I’m betting (hopeful?) he has that guy.

This handwringing is warranted I suppose in the sense that we got kicked squarley in the nuts last year, but I think that’s not the norm for where we are as a program.

If I’m wrong, and we are a bubble team, I am fine with having Barnes head on a pike and marching it through campus, into the drum. But I don’t think that’s how it plays out.

“I hate that I don’t have one memory of The Microwave. I know who he is and what he did in the 80s but I can’t picture him playing or his game.”

He was deadly off the bench in the NBA. I was able to watch him close-up once in Austin. He looked like a fullback from the waist up. In addition to the jumper, he could drive at will at the college level, and he did it.

My Microwave story: I went to Baylor my freshman year. The week before school started, I went to the intramural gym to shoot some hoops. There was one black guy in the entire gym. When we chose up sides, they told me to guard him. I started in high school, I’m 6’3", so I’m thinking I can take this short, sort of pudgy, lazy-looking guy. He proceeded to score about 50 points on me in 10 minutes with layups, 3’s, off of steals, etc. When the humiliation was over, I asked someone who he was and they said “That’s Vinnie Johnson.” He never said a word to me.

Who is going to consistently rebound the basketball. That’s really the first question you need to answer with this team. If the answer is nobody, then forget the rest.

Defensive rebounding is overrated when the opponent never misses.

As a KU fan, I have always seen Rick Barnes as an outstanding recruiter and a mediocre coach. I don’t say that to slam your coach, just an honest opinion. The Big 12 is going to be rough in basketball this upcoming year, so it will not be easy to just waltz into the tournament. Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Texas and Baylor will all be fielding good teams, so everyone had better be ready. We’ll probably see some great games, but there is going to be a very big need for solid coaching. If I am wrong about coach Barnes’ coaching skills, we should see it this year.

Trips, great read as always. To follow Barton’s thought, given the lack of references to Brown in your write-up, I might suggest considering him. The Brown of the last three weeks bears little resemblance to the Brown of last season and this spring. It’s as if a brain transplant has been performed. Will see if the condition is transient. Hope springs eternal I guess, but I’m cautiously optimistic about Brown. I didn’t think I’d ever say that after this March.

Still won’t help our hole on the boards. Just added that for some balance.

Your daughter has had my prayers this last week. I wish they were coming from someone a little more reverent, but I’m confident she’s had better help than me.

ADP – That is huge. Kid has hoops a high hoops IQ and big competitive streak.

I felt a number of times last year, the rim was unkind to him, and if a few of those had gone, we’d have seen a much different player. He will feed off of success, his own and his teammates, in a very big way.

I just want to add that microwave is one of the all time great nicknames.

“When did we become Missouri under Quin Snyder? I wonder how many other teams will be fielding a squad stocked with McDonald’s All-Americans and be "competing to make the tournament".”

Wow…talk about hitting home. That’s a pretty brutal statement, but I guess that’s how a lot of other teams see us.

KU fan: You don’t need to qualify your statement, it’s how most people here feel about Barnes. Too bad Ricky can’t just serve as recruiter for us.

ADP: What’s this news about Brown? The last thing I heard was a couple months or more ago about how he was slacking off and Hamilton was busting his (JH’s) butt to improve. I think we need JCB next season to have another backcourt scorer along with CoJo. It’s just too much responsibility for one guy to handle. Ward isn’t a scorer and we’ve all seen Balbay and Lucas play. Hamilton hurts too much on defense as a two unless you’re playing zone, and I still don’t know if he could guard anybody in that instance. Williams is a forward all the way. JCB was also a really solid defender last season WHEN HE WANTED TO BE. Then he’d just lose his mind and forget the stage he was on. It was nuts to see how different he’d be each position. Dude needs to get his head right and his swagger back. He’s a big time talent and somebody HAS to take the pressure of Joseph somehow.

I’m already looking forward to Myck and DeAndre running the best pick and pop Texas has ever seen…