An explanation to CBH Doubters

For all those doubting CBH, I want you to think of what should have happen this year. 

1.  Our best player was supposed to Holiday.  He would be our point, arguably the most important position in College Basketball.    CBH has said he did not expect to lose him. Now, our offense does not have a point guard, ML is not ready and JA may not have the talent. Sure, CBH should have prepared for an injury to Holiday but part of the problem with last year’s team is DC and Holiday did not mesh and Holiday was out of position as a #2 guard. While both were great individual talents, the 2 point guards did not play well together and he may have wanted to avoid that problem this year.

2. Drew Gordon was supposed to be the rock on rebounding and defense and chip in double digit points a game. 

3.  The 2 and 3 positions were supposed to be ML and TH each playing 30+ minutes a game.  (More below on them.)  MR was suppose to be the backup or the senior helping those two ease into their positions.  Eventually, one or both would be stars of the team and would determine how far we went in the Tourney.  Now ML is having to lead from day 1 of the season and play point as well when he is not ready. TH is still playing catch up from many injuries and sickness. 

4.  RN, JK, ND were supposed to be fighting out for minutes at 4 and 5.  JK would slowly give way to RN as time went on.  ND minutes would be determined by our offensive needs and he may not even have been playing much if the offense clicked.

5. JA would be playing 4 minutes a game giving a break to Holiday.  This alone may have beat AZ.  JA was covering Kyle Fogg and made him look like an All American.  Folk's career high was 16 going into the game and he averaged 7.8 points a game.  If ML or Holiday is covering him he is not going to get 25 and would probably be lucky to get 8.  That 17 point difference is more than the margin of victory.  Hopefully JA's problem was his hurt groin but I am not so sure.    

CBH didn't blow it, isn't a bad recruiter, etc. He just got a number of bad breaks. 

Now a little more on the AZ game today.   

CBH accomplished his number #1 priority on defense, he shut down Wise. ML did a good job on defense, don’t fool yourself. When Lee went out at 11:07 in second half, Wise promptly scored. While ML was out Wise scored four points in less than minute.  By comparison, Wise scored four points for the game when ML was covering him. No one else on our team could stop him. ML did a good job on one of the PAC 10s best players.

Because of no Holiday, now we are faced with, gulp, ND as a key to our team on offense. Don’t fool yourself, we beat ASU because of him. He has shown to be an good inside player and occasionally a good outside player. But it is really bad he is a key as he is not a CBH player. He is a showboat, plays matador defense, and I am not sure about his head. He needs to rebound better on defense then he did in this game, as he will never be a great defender. I don’t think CBH is happy about this but may feel it necessary.  (As he felt necessary to play him for extra offense last year.)

For CBH knows that RN and MR cannot carry the team. While RN can dominate bad players, he needs to work on his FTs and cannot carry the team in the PAC-10. He needs to be our third leading scorer and find ways to score. MR is a liability on defense. He had a bad first half but not a bad game. He is no pun intend a role player who can’t carry a team but will get his points and do his job. He is close to maximizing his potential right now.

TH is the player to watch on this team and what he does did not show up in the boxscore. He made some great passes that lead to FT points. He made some steals and blocks and looked like he had the most energy on the court. I know he also missed an easy layup and a tip in, was out of position a couple times on defense, but he played well overall; like a good but inexperienced freshmen. CBH went to him for JA when JA couldn’t handle Fogg and stopped the bleeding. He should be playing 30+ minutes somewhere on this team. If TH had not been hurt and sick so much he would be playing more as he is a true CBH player.

On CBH losing this team as some has suggested: I respect he stood up to Gordon; that could not have been easy and this was the worst possible year to lose a talented player. I respect what he is trying to do with ML and how tough that is. Look, ML looked brilliant for a four minute stretch on offense when he took the game over and scored 10 points. But look at game tracker, during that stretch he made two stupid fouls, Wise got a layup off him, and at the end he was out of control and ended the stretch with a turnover. He is trying to make ML into the “star” and ML did it for 31 minutes on defense and 4 minutes on offense but he could not do both. Maybe he will someday, but I trust CBH knows what he is doing, which is the way I will end this too long post.