New Orange/Brown event!

[mbenecke]

Mattos - more athletic Koch. Can really bang inside, and has a little more finesse to his game. Has the ability to step out and shoot. In a little better shape, and was aggressive rebounding the ball, beating Wiggins to the ball a couple of times.

Matiss - can really stroke the ball. He's got a lot of skill, and I'm really excited about his game. I feel like he could start at the 3 or 4 this year, depending on lineups and match-ups.

Fields - energy guy. He's quick and he seems to get after it defensively, in addition to making smart decisions with the ball in his hands. I like his game a lot.

Laster - long arms, seems to be a scrappy guy due to his smaller size. Looked like he enjoyed getting after it defensively. I need to see more from his offense.

Sierra - didn't really stand out either way. Looked solid in warm ups, but kinda blended in during the scrimmage. Good that he wasn't making obvious mistakes, bad that he didn't stand out.

Gadson - still explosive, and looked to have a little more coordination than last year. Gotta just keep improving his game - which now appears to include working on a jumper. I like that he goes against Wiggins in practice every day - iron sharpens iron, ya know?

[hammb]

So I wanna start this by saying yesterday was a fun event. I didn't catch the first half due to the Browns again going to OT to lose a game against a team with less talent than them, but I digress on that point.

It was cool to hear the sneakers squeaking and see some of the newcomers play.
The dunk contest was rather anti-climactic with Lillard's struggles to get any in, but Plowden looked great. Bonus points for Richaun's tweet lamenting how they never had a dunk contest when he was here.
I think long term Jerry is going to a great job on announcing, but will take me some time to get used to hearing a different voice.

All that being said, is it foul to also point out how cheap and half assed some of it felt? I mean the flier saying, "select free food" actually meant, "We'll hand out a couple free pizzas, but nothing else, and won't even have any available for purchase". We know, with our fan following, these events aren't drawing more than 250 people. Would it cost too much to maybe have free popcorn for everybody? Would it cost too much to actually just give everybody that shows up a free t-shirt? My wife got there pretty early and lamented (along with some others sitting around us) that they never even saw anything to sign up for the raffle. Obviously, we've already got season tickets so wouldn't need to win them, but who knows where that sign up was?

I love the idea of this event, but as is typical with so much of our athletic department it just felt like it could have been so much better.

[Falconwriter]

So I wanna start this by saying yesterday was a fun event. I didn't catch the first half due to the Browns again going to OT to lose a game against a team with less talent than them, but I digress on that point.

It was cool to hear the sneakers squeaking and see some of the newcomers play.
The dunk contest was rather anti-climactic with Lillard's struggles to get any in, but Plowden looked great. Bonus points for Richaun's tweet lamenting how they never had a dunk contest when he was here.
I think long term Jerry is going to a great job on announcing, but will take me some time to get used to hearing a different voice.

All that being said, is it foul to also point out how cheap and half assed some of it felt? I mean the flier saying, "select free food" actually meant, "We'll hand out a couple free pizzas, but nothing else, and won't even have any available for purchase". We know, with our fan following, these events aren't drawing more than 250 people. Would it cost too much to maybe have free popcorn for everybody? Would it cost too much to actually just give everybody that shows up a free t-shirt? My wife got there pretty early and lamented (along with some others sitting around us) that they never even saw anything to sign up for the raffle. Obviously, we've already got season tickets so wouldn't need to win them, but who knows where that sign up was?

I love the idea of this event, but as is typical with so much of our athletic department it just felt like it could have been so much better.

Your comments are valid and suggestions are good. Have you sent them to someone in the AD's office? If not, please do. Unless people give them feedback like this, they aren't going to learn and get better. I often wonder if the people putting this stuff together aren't young/new/interns and learning on the job...and if that's the case, it is even more important. And if it's an "old dog" -- then they need to learn some new tricks.

[hammb]

So I wanna start this by saying yesterday was a fun event. I didn't catch the first half due to the Browns again going to OT to lose a game against a team with less talent than them, but I digress on that point.

It was cool to hear the sneakers squeaking and see some of the newcomers play.
The dunk contest was rather anti-climactic with Lillard's struggles to get any in, but Plowden looked great. Bonus points for Richaun's tweet lamenting how they never had a dunk contest when he was here.
I think long term Jerry is going to a great job on announcing, but will take me some time to get used to hearing a different voice.

All that being said, is it foul to also point out how cheap and half assed some of it felt? I mean the flier saying, "select free food" actually meant, "We'll hand out a couple free pizzas, but nothing else, and won't even have any available for purchase". We know, with our fan following, these events aren't drawing more than 250 people. Would it cost too much to maybe have free popcorn for everybody? Would it cost too much to actually just give everybody that shows up a free t-shirt? My wife got there pretty early and lamented (along with some others sitting around us) that they never even saw anything to sign up for the raffle. Obviously, we've already got season tickets so wouldn't need to win them, but who knows where that sign up was?

I love the idea of this event, but as is typical with so much of our athletic department it just felt like it could have been so much better.

Your comments are valid and suggestions are good. Have you sent them to someone in the AD's office? If not, please do. Unless people give them feedback like this, they aren't going to learn and get better. I often wonder if the people putting this stuff together aren't young/new/interns and learning on the job...and if that's the case, it is even more important. And if it's an "old dog" -- then they need to learn some new tricks.

I will do that. I love seeing more hoops events, every chance to hear sneakers squeaking in the Stroh is good to me, but I just felt they could have done so much more for the fans.

[Globetrotter]

So if you were going to make a very early 2 deep

1 Frye-Laster
2 Turner
3 Lillard
4 Plowden-Mattis
5 Wiggins

Not sure about the roles for Mattos, Gadsen, Uju, Sierra, Fields.

1 Frye-Laster
2 Turner-(Fields)
3 Lillard
4 Plowden-Mattis-(Sierra-Uju)
5 Wiggins-(Gadsen-Mattos)

5
Wiggins starts. Mattos and Gadsen will hopefully be able to provide 10-15 minutes as a group to spell Wiggins. Uju can play here v small lineups

4
Plowden starts? Sounds like Mattis lack of Athleticism means he won't be able to guard other teams 3's. He might pair well with Plowden who is definitely more athletic, I just can't remember how his D is. Uju can provide some minutes here as a steady glue player. Sounds like Sierra might be just a guy. Didn't look like a good enough athlete to play the 3.

3
Lillard starts. Backed up by minutes from Turner and Plowden here.

2
Turner is the rock here. Backed up by minutes from Frye and whatever Fields can give us

1
Frye starts but can swing to the 2 and it sounds like Laster can provide a ton of good minutes here as well.

We have a 12 man roster with 4 athletically limited bigs who we don't really know what their role is and a Freshman guard who is a question mark. While I really like the top 6-7 of our roster we could have desperately used another wing.

[footballguy51]

Don't forget about Ethan Good. He played in the scrimmage and looked decent. Wasn't outstanding, but wasn't terrible. Also, I noticed De'Andre Austin was on the Brown team but didn't play. Not sure what that was all about.

[hammb]

Ethan Good should not ever be in consideration for playing time. Sure, you can put him on our "depth chart" but he's not going to play in anything but blowout situations.

And if he does, we're screwed. I'm sure he's a good kid, but he's not a D1 basketball player.