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Man, this really ruined my day, and took some significant air out of the fact that the season starts tomorrow. I don’t even know what to say right now, I’m pretty speechless. This came out of thin air, and I’ve never heard of this rule before, still not sure it makes total sense to me so if someone a lot smarter than me can explain it please step right up. Initial thoughts are as follows:
1.) I have been on record all along as saying I was shocked Reed didn’t use last schollie to fill up front court depth for this year, and that was before this was even announced or known as a possibility. I mean if I’m Reed, I know how special this year could become and the only thing holding that back is the frontcourt depth and lack of size. Adding another big body would have been huge, cause our guard play should be as good as anyone’s. In my opinion, knowing how important this year is to the program from future impact standpoint that another big march run could bring, I even try to force feed the schollie on a kid. I know many say “we couldn’t find one” or “he must have tried”, but I’m not asking for a Muscala, not even an Mgebroff, just give me any big kid 6’9 or taller who can weigh 230+ lbs and just get rebounds. Heck, even another Safstrom would have been fine, literally ANYONE TALL who we can get 5 fouls from would have been worth a 4 year scholarship considering the potential this year could have and the fact that our frontcourt is so small and lacks depth that this person would have had an impact somewhere this year..if even to spot our guys rest for 5 minutes a game. I’ll stand by that. To me, if Reed really knew JC not playing this year was an option from the beginning, it is really really hard for me to believe or understand how the heck he didn’t find anyone available in spring after our win over duke to come this year. I think this caught everyone by surprise, I really do, you can’t convince me otherwise, I think this just came up in the last week or two and I have a few reasons why I think that but I won’t get into it.
2.) Importantly, as I’m late to the tea party after a long day of work, what does this leave us with. We have 4 players 6’6 or taller on the entire roster. Any closely officiated game and we’re screwed, any game where gabe gets in foul trouble and we’re screwed. We went into this year thinking if 2 of the 3 from the CB, JC, JG group broke right we’d probably have enough with our guard play to make a run…now, we need both CB and JG to step up and be impact guys right away. I thought we’d be 3 guard line-up all along this year, but now it is clearly cemented. Man I’m depressed….
Here is what I’m going to do to try to pick up everyone’s spirits….be positive and give you all a little blog post that you will enjoy, think it will be therapy for all of us, a nice positive, cool piece that delivers some solid coverage at the player level that we’ve never gotten before….going to work on this now for you all.
LUHoops00 – sad but upbeat still!