@KUSTEVE
Solid post!
Yes… Doke has to receive a lot of minutes this year. He really needs to see a lot of minutes in about every game. That is the only way to season him. He needs to be put in the most challenging situations, including games and situations where he may not always be our best option. Give him plenty of those minutes, and he soon will become our best option for ALL situations!
It is pretty hard to keep a guy like him on the bench, especially when we are proven to have rebounding issues with this team.
I agree… that Landen misses having Perry to draw attention away from him. But I see what everyone else is seeing… that Landen is SLOW in the post on his moves (so is Doke). Our guys are bringing the ball down and gathering for an eternity. Hopefully, that is being addressed and worked on. Much of that is about confidence. Some of it is about building more scoring moves and practicing them enough to where there is no long gather in practice.
You mentioned that Landen is having to deal with having 3 players swarm him. Great! I would be more concerned if he didn’t even draw in a double-team and still couldn’t score. If there are 3 guys on Landen, we have 2 of our players wide open. Or, at least, they should be wide open.
So far, in this young season, I see something else as causing the problems for Landen more than missing Perry… WHERE HAS OUR TREY BALL GONE? I think this is the biggest reason for the swarm on Landen. Teams are baiting us into taking treys because so far, we haven’t proven we can hit them.
I think a big part of this is just getting our guys to polish their offense. I’m not too worried yet. It’s a young season and even though most of our guys were here last year, every year is a new challenge. They are still developing an effective pace. They still need to polish their spacing. They aren’t yet seeing where there opportunities really are. And after all of that which they still must learn, they then have to take their education and apply it. This is often the toughest thing to accomplish… the execution. Especially with young players caught up in the moment, but even a challenge for the veteran guys, too.