I don't like this team

Compared to Abrams, Pittman has a much higher ratio of points per shot and points per possession in which he shoots or is fouled and goes to the line, so I'm perfectly OK with Pittman taking it to the hole every time.
 
Too many "projects" on the team. Balbay is a project, Hill is a project, Chapman is a project, Wangmene was a project before he was hurt, Pittman is still a project, James moving to the 3 is a project. Hell, these days even Atchley has become a project. Add that to the fact that the only consistent player on the team is Johnson and it's no wonder they struggle.
 
I agree with most of the posters above. Having 3 "glue guys" does a dis-service to the team. There is no need to have 3 guys that are going to do the dirty work. Someone has to make a shot. Also, the "projects" comment is right on as well. However, I'll add that some of these guys have been projects for 2-3 years. At some point, it is time to move on.

What about Harrison Smith? This guy was recruited by UNC. I guess he turded in Rick Barnes' punch bowl as a freshman because that guy has been in the eternal dog house. He played well against OU and has not sniffed the court hardly since.
 
agree almost completely with hornpharmed.

and while this team could, as someone wrote, be 'one and done' in the tournament, i remain hopeful for better. barnes is still an excellent coach--if AJ, and or CA, gets hot c. tourney time, that could make all the difference in the world.

also, i'm not as disappointed in DJ's performance as some are, but mason and atchley--wow. i expected so much more from those two. couple that with the struggles associated with no proven point guart, along with one substantial injury, and i'd say RB is doing a good job.

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A lack of outside shooting and REALLY poor free throw shooting. The announcer yesterday said that Bilbay was shooting 40 percent from the free throw line. Surely that was a mistake? But, in any event, every trip to the free throw line makes me want to look away.
 
7 of 17 overall, but his 5 of 8 in conference is a huge improvement over the 2 of 9 he was in non-conference play, especially considering he deliberately missed one yesterday.

Mason is .469 for the year. Chapman is .071.
 
Hard to disagree with the many accurate posts on this thread....in the end if Clemente scores his season avg., 20 pts, Texas wins this game. It was just one of those games where nothing was falling Texas' way. Just not in the cards.

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I don't understand how a Barnes team, which is supposed to be so fundamentally sound.... that's what Barnes is known for... can be so BAD at shooting free throws. It absolutely kills us, and makes me want to pull my hair out.

And Mason and Balbay shooting under 50% from the line is unbelievable. A guard should never be that bad from the line... a guy who is supposed to be able to hit 3's should be able to hit a friggin' free throw.

I look for them to regroup after this game and make some progress, though. Barnes will make some adjustments to the lineup. He has to. And the team now realizes they are not good enough to overlook ANYONE.
 
I have said this before but Barnes' staple is that he coaches toughness, rebounding and defense. That is what he does. Somewhat like a poor man's Izzo.

The key, IMHO, is that he needs to recruit talented offensive players and then coach them some rebounding, defense and toughness.

I'm a huge fan of Barnes but he didn't have to coach offensive to TJ Ford. TJ came in with the offensive game already. Barnes didn't have to teach KD how to shoot jumpers or develop his crazy moves. But he taught effectively both rebounding,... TJ even as a small guard was actually a very good rebounder.

So when KD left after 1 year and DJ left after last year, am I shocked that we are struggling? Hell no. He has a team of guys that are just not that offensively inclined. AJ is a great shooter but slumping and he cannot create his own shot. Damion James can at times put together a great game but he doesn't have the ability at this time to carry the team. Pittman is showing a great game with his back to the bucket but he has noone who can get him the ball consistently and he can't stay out of foul trouble.

What has hurt has been the effort and defense. In the 1st 30min against KSU, it looked like we were hungover. No effort. Then we finally turned it on and made the comeback.

Anyway, we don't have the offensive talent to take us far. Barnes hopefully can coach the guys coming in next year to play defense, rebounding and toughness b/c it sounds like they have the offensive skills.

If people want Barnes to coach this team some offense, it is not going to happen. He isn't Bobby Knight.

Hey, I'm still going to the games but I don't have much expectations for this team. The offensive talent just isn't there and without that Barnes is going to inherently struggle.
 
It's an OK team and from a recruiting perspective that's what it should be.

The following are position rankings (not overall):

Damion James was the #7 SF in his class
Connor Atchley --unranked
Dexter Pittman -- unranked
Matt Hill was the #17 center in his class
Gary Johnson was the #8 PF
AJ Abrams -- unranked
Clint Chapman was the #19 center
Justin Mason was the #26 SG

If you didn't know how Texas did last year and just took a look at how these guys were graded in high school, we wouldn't even be a top 50 team. No McDonald's AAs on this team.

As for some comment above about devising an offense that didn't rely on a top notch point guard. Who in the hell has this "mythical" super offense? Last I saw, Duke has Paulus and Smith (not great but serviceable), UNC has Lawson, UConn has 4 guards that can bring up the ball (isn't how they handled Louisville's press today), WF has a great combo guard in Teague. Pitt has a senior All Big East guard in Levance Fields.

Instead of griping about the offense, why don't we accept the fact that we're not UNC or Kansas that can reload on an almost annual basis and take the early draft hits. Barnes has excellent recruits coming in the next 2 years, This year we're left with a decent serviceable team. Considering we've never been National Champions, I'm not quite sure where this sense of entitlement comes from.....

And yes, you can ***** all you want. I equally can point out the deficiencies of that bitching. (so that addresses the 1st Amendment issue)
 
Bobby knight didn't need a great point guard to have a decent offense.

I don't think anyone is underestimating the importance of talent (at least I'm not). I'm simply saying that it shouldn't be a prerequsite to have an all american pg for the offense not to look like a monkey humping a football.
 
I echo the sentiment that you don't need an Augustin to win and make it look pretty. It obviously helps, but the biggest asset to "good guard play" is ball protection. Our passing is lazy, our pass catching is lazy, and we have about as many scheme threats as a team of 3rd graders.
 
Since I'm not the biggest Knight fan, I'll just run with the basics. I'm not sure if the best point guards really want to be in a motion offense which runs multiple screens. I really don't. So if you want that offense, that's fine, just don't expect the top PGs to come here. As for Knight's teams:

His 32-0 national champion team doesn't need to be explained (a crap ton of talent).

His other national champions had Isiah Thomas (HoFer) and Steve Alford (3 time all Big 10).

We have a converted SG (Mason) and another SG (Abrams) trying to run point. No filler like Paulino or Ivey to adequately fill in.

Still top 20, I'll take it.
 
The thing I've found most irritating (or is it infuriating) about our guards this year is the tendency to pick up the dribble without a clue of where they are going to pass the ball or having nothing better to do than throw a pass across the defensive perimeter to someone who isn't closing on the passer. Ward has been particularly bad about it, and Balbay and Mason have been disappointing in this regard as well. There have been an awful lot of turnovers caused because the guard picked up the dribble having nowhere to pass.

Missouri could make things really ugly tomorrow if ball handlers don't keep the dribble alive until they have a target.
 
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