Lathan Sommerville practicing
- Thread starter Tango Two
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In what universe was GG our best shooter? I could have hit for a higher percentage and I was a wrestler in HS.
If Gavin was allowed to play through his offensive struggles and his defensive terribleness and some of his teammates didnt freeze him out Gavin’s shooting numbers wouldnt have been as horrific.
Now the scoreboard numbers are a different story.
Gavin was our highest rated recruit almost exclusively based on his shooting. I highly doubt he wasnt the team’s best shooter.
Now the scoreboard numbers are a different story.
Gavin was our highest rated recruit almost exclusively based on his shooting. I highly doubt he wasnt the team’s best shooter.
Wait aren’t you the guy that complained all year that Gavin was getting TOO MUCH play time????
If it weren’t for his HS reputation he would have been on the bench much earlier. Based on his actual performance, he was given way more minutes and freedom than he deserved.
You can't be labeled "best shooter" on a collegiate team based on high school observations. Once they roll the balls out in college, you've got to earn your accolades. If you didn't do it with the lights on, you didn't do it.
He might turn out to be much better at Nebraska, or he might not. Either way, saying he was our best three-point shooter last year is just fantasy.
NF was a different story. He was a starter through the first 14 games and shot .273, losing his starting spot. Coming off the bench, he shot .459 the rest of the way, earned his way back up over 20 mpg, and was again the starter for the last game of the season.
He might turn out to be much better at Nebraska, or he might not. Either way, saying he was our best three-point shooter last year is just fantasy.
NF was a different story. He was a starter through the first 14 games and shot .273, losing his starting spot. Coming off the bench, he shot .459 the rest of the way, earned his way back up over 20 mpg, and was again the starter for the last game of the season.
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It’s not reputation. It’s what the coaches actually saw. They saw him play well. They saw him have a sweet stroke. They saw potential.
What?
Pike and the staff decide all of this stuff after seeing these players play together over a period of months. OTOH, we guess, spew and opine based on very limited info. We don’t know sh!t (and some of us are more full of it than others).
It’s all guesses. And the more confident and definitive anyone is in their assessments at this point, the less you should trust them.
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Absolutely. Nothing changes the fact that he was bad on D and the softest player I have ever seen.
Maybe he turns out to be Steph Curry but so far he has been awful.
I have a pretty good looking golf swing but when you put a ball down, I’m a 20 and that’s being generous.
Also - wouldn’t your theory on Caleb’s declining numbers due to the perimeter 3 pt line getting pushed back after his frosh year apply to frosh transitioning from high school? Not every good HS shooter will be as good in college for this reason I would think.
I’m not saying that he would be a “good” 5.
What I’m saying is that it’s highly unlikely that Somerville comes in (as a frosh) as a comparable option to him at the 5 on D. I expect Somerville to have significant growing pains on the defensive end . I hope I’m wrong. Just because I think Martini would do a better job defending the post than Somerville does not mean I want him playing the 5. Unless Somerville comes in and plays well above the level he projects on starting D, I hope our starting 5 in not on the roster yet. Otherwise, I hope Ogbole can cut back on his fouls and play more minutes. Ogbole’s starting point is likely far ahead of Somerville on D too. We are going to need to balance the ticket some with reliable D from our center being more important that having the ability to step out and hit some shots. At least, that’s my prediction.
Ogbole taking a large step forward, to me, is our best hope at this point. I like Lathan's game, but would be very surprised if he doesn't struggle some as a freshman, especially as you say, defensively. If he can come up with an EJ Liddell type freshman season, 6 sand 4, but his D was serviceable in 16 minutes, I'd be ecstatic.
Martini is looking good right now to play a ton regardless of how many guards we run with in my opinion - at either the 4 or 5. That changes if we land another center who isn’t a project. I understand Somerville comes in highly rated but we willneed post defense and that’s not an area where he’s known to excel. I think he’ll start behind the other options at center for this reason even if he has more potential as an offensive player.
Same - I hope to be proven wrong but I see that as the ceiling. Something like the frosh season Cliff had playing behind MJ. My point is that unfortunately, there’s a reasonable chance that sliding Martini to the 5 situationally becomes a better option than playing a frosh who struggles with basic positioning on D. As I said - I’d love to be completely wrong
If Lathan's D is as you expect, how many 3s, and at what shooting percent, would he have to hit to make up for it and get major minutes?
What I’m saying is, if he’s taking enough shots for his offense to make a difference, that’s probably not a good sign. We have two lottery picks on this team, a veteran double digit scorer in JW, and multiple transfers coming in who led their mid-major conferences in scoring - also veteran seniors. What we need from the center position is reliable (servicable the minimum standard) defense.
Might be the next Jokic. Lathan will be surrounded by numerous and various talents.
If that’s the case, the scouts got it very wrong. I think folks are badly miscalculating the realistic odds of a frosh BIG who isn’t ranked in the top 75 of any national recruiting rankings being a day one super star on offense for a major conference NCAA caliber team. Anything is possible, but this outcome is statistically unlikely. It would be great if he could come in and provide a spark, but expecting more than that is probably setting yourself up for disappointment. Again, I would love to be wrong.
To my point above - even the Luka Garza types only played 20ish minutes as frosh. That Iowa team went 14-19 so it wasn’t that there was overwhelming talent over him. Garza put up good numbers, but they needed him to on a bad team.
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Obviously there is some level of offensive efficiency and output that would eclipse the D shortcomings. Nobody is expecting 100 points a game. But if we got 100 points a game that completely changes all assumptions about what we need on D.
What level of efficiency and volume would you say we need on O from Lathan to make him a PLUS starter for 30 mins a game if his D is as you expect?
I agree that we need Lathan to be reasonably good defensively. If not, we will likely see Martini and Ogbole fight it out for minutes at center. However, Lathan’s offense matters because he has a really good outside shot. If the opposing team’s center plays off him to help defend at the rim, the way Latham played in high school suggests he can hit open 3s, which makes playing off him a bad idea. This should allow Rutgers to space the floor giving room for Ace and Dylan to operate. Whether we play with a more traditional center like Ogbole or a center that can shoot 3s like Martini and Lathan, I expect the three leading scorers to be Ace, Dylan and Jeremiah. I just think it will be easier for them to score if we spread the floor on halfcourt offense and run and press to take advantage of their athleticism and the scoring abilities of the transfers.
He doesn’t play offense in a vaccum so it’s difficult to answer that. The opportunity cost of his volume means less volume for Ace and Dylan. Also - some of his efficiency potential, I suspect Martini could easily match because he did it consistently at Princeton. Lots of back door cuts made for easy baskets due to the focus being on Lee and the guards. Somerville is not going to stand out as far superior with this because Martini is already very reliable. If teams overplay the frosh he can make them pay. So back to your question - the offense Somerville could deliver in a vacuum would have to be in iso and one on one match ups. Perhaps he has a soft midrange touch? These are not shots we are going to want from him in the first place though with the roster we have.
This was mainly a comparison of Martini and Somerville because I don’t expect them to play that much together. I think Martini will play the 4 when Ace plays the 3. Hopefully it will be a center not on the roster yet getting a lot of minutes at the 5, but if not, I predict it will be a good amount of Ogbole with that rotation for size and strength purposes. I think Ace will slide to the 4 whenever Somerville or Martini play the 5 and we’ll ride a speedy 3 guard line up.
So keeping that in mind - to earn significant PT, Somerville will have to show that he can do things that we WANT him to do, that Marini can’t to compensate for his relative shortcomings on D positioning. In my view, it will be a major surprise if frosh Somerville defends any position (4 or 5) as well as Martini. So he’d have to make up for it in other ways. Folks keep saying his scoring but they both hit open 3s. So it would have to be some other way of differentiating on a team where he’s at best going to be 3rd of 4th offensive option in the game. That’s why I say it’s not likely.
Somerville = town in Somerset County, NJ
Sommerville = our 4-star center recruit
Sommerville = our 4-star center recruit
However his name is spelled, I really hope that our plan isn’t to just ride him through the defensive learning curve. I know many folk are ready for a Loyola Marymount style but it’s just not going to happen successfully with Pike as our coach. He’s good at what he does but running and gunning without care for D isn’t his thing. We’re going to need a semblance of post presence to be competitive no matter how good Ace and Dylan are. If not, we will likely have a pile of losses before conference play even starts.
If are 3 centers are Lathan, Mikic and Ogbole, for Ogbole to get major minutes he needs to beat out the other two, and he is so raw and fundamentally flawed, I really doubt he will be able to do that.
He’s not “fundamentally flawed” in defense and we don’t need proactive offense from our center. So unless these two offense first frosh who project as projects on D vastly exceed expectations on that end, my prediction will stand that we will see a lot of Ogbole with a mix of Martini sliding to the 5. I’m still holding out unlikely hope for the UK kid. That’s what we need.
I’ll expand this further, acquiring the UK kid would boost PJ’s pool of potential PT by 5-10 minutes. Maybe more. Absent a rim protector, it’s going to be hard to play a kid who gets beat some easily on the perimeter if we go super undersized with Martini at the 5 or completely green on post D with the frosh. It will be shocking if either of them are servicable help defenders next year. That almost always takes time when the scouting report already questions D for bigs.
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D isn't in a vacuum either. I don't see Martini playing a lot of pick and roll/pop like Lathan.
Mikic wouldn’t be a bad pickup at this late juncture. He seems to have some offensive skills. Ogbole is already a very good rebounder and at least on D he can keep post up players from getting comfortable down low and can force them to try to shoot over him from midrange. I’d like to see if Lathan can play point forward at times although that may be asking a lot from a freshman with his build until he learns how to control a defender who is on his hip.
Actually D is kind of played in a vaccum in the sense I’m referring to it. Either you have a general understanding of where you need to be or you don’t and your regularly out of position. Martini is a super senior and does. Gavin Griffith, as an example, did not. I’m banking (based on the scouting report and him being an inexperienced frosh) on these frosh being much closer to GG clueless to start out. Having that understanding tends to either come with experience or you have a knack for D coming in - which would likely be noted in the scouting report.
On offense - we’re probably not going to be looking to play through our center because we have two lottery pick playmakers. I’m actually concerned it could possibly be counter productive to have over zealous frosh centers looking to force the issue because they are used to beating people in iso because they are used to putting up a lot of points and being the main scorers.
Look I’m not intending to pick on him or the potential Serbian kid. My expectations are just aligned with historical probabilities and outcomes. Anything is always possible, but it’s just not that likely for a BIG who was rated pretty well but not close to projected lottery pick type, to have the immediate impact your suggesting as a frosh. When it happens, it’s usually output on a weak team where usage is extremely high out of need. That scouting report that says “needs work on D” usually means there will be growing pains in year 1.
The Serbian kid played against higher level competition in Serbia and Europe than Ogbole has against very low level Juco competition, and he is a much more polished player. I expect him to beat out Ogbole for time on the court.
Yes - anyone can come in and shock the world with Shaq O’Neal like offense. The chance of that happening to your point, can’t be zero, I’m just saying that it’s a very low probability, based on the surrounding cast and the playmaking hype around them. There’s a much better chance of it being hard to keep PJ off the court due to his 3 point shooting - 42% over a 3 year college career shooting from behind the regulation perimeter line isn’t something to be ignored. When open - that kid can shoot the ball. I hope we can mitigate his weaknesses on D enough with team help so that he can stay on the court for stretches.
In contrast, Somerville’s shooting stats aren’t real yet. A lot of guys shoot the ball well in HS- the line is closer in so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It’ll be great if Sommerville can step out and drain some 3s to keep a D honest. it’s unlikely he’s going to be a high volume 3 point catch and shoot guy while he’s in the game playing the 5 though because that would really limit our post presence next year.
In my opinion, the team most needs a reliable rim protector and a strong interior post presence for put backs from the 5 spot.
One of the biggest challenges for freshman bigs is staying out of foul trouble, which is a significant limiting factor on minutes. Body control is one part of it, but also the experience/insight to know when you should/shouldn't contest, the practiced skill of exactly how to set a good screen, etc.
Looking at personal fouls per 40 min for our freshman centers over the years:
TBD - Lathan Sommerville (National #105)
5.2 - Cliff Omoruyi (National #42)
6.1 - Myles Johnson
7.3 - Mamadou Doucoure (National top 100 before reclassifying)
7.5 - Ibrahima Diallo
5.5 - Shaq Doorson
7.2 - Kadeem Jack (National top 100 before going prep)
9.0 - Greg Lewis
5.8 - Gil Biruta
6.1 - Austin Johnson
3.2 - Greg Echnique
5.9 - Hamady N'Diaye
If Sommerville can limit his fouls, that will go a long way toward accelerating his development.
Looking at personal fouls per 40 min for our freshman centers over the years:
TBD - Lathan Sommerville (National #105)
5.2 - Cliff Omoruyi (National #42)
6.1 - Myles Johnson
7.3 - Mamadou Doucoure (National top 100 before reclassifying)
7.5 - Ibrahima Diallo
5.5 - Shaq Doorson
7.2 - Kadeem Jack (National top 100 before going prep)
9.0 - Greg Lewis
5.8 - Gil Biruta
6.1 - Austin Johnson
3.2 - Greg Echnique
5.9 - Hamady N'Diaye
If Sommerville can limit his fouls, that will go a long way toward accelerating his development.
To be fair, I don’t know much about the kid other than that the guys on the Rant said he would be a project addition that we should expect would play 2-3 minutes max. They certainly aren’t always right, but the way it was said, led me to believe that they weren’t pulling that from thin air and the word around the program is that he would be brought in as a developmental addition if we went in that direction.
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