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Young and Johnson

RU89

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Oct 30, 2001
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Young and Johnson:

Well, it's perfectly clear that the loss of these two players is the total difference in the quality of last years team as opposed to this year. Pike saying his best team ever is/was total hyperbole. And he knew it all along. But he is a cheerleader and backs up his players so that was his stance to the basketball world. Well we have been exposed and that narrative will now fade away and we won't hear it again from him for the rest of the year.

Put those two players in the lineup tonight and multiple things happen. One: You actually get to play Jaden Jones a bit more regardless of his horrible defense. With Young and Johnson, you have 2 of the better players defensively at their positions in the nation so a guy like Jones can be hidden a bit more (and I emphasize a bit more) on defense and allowed to develop his scoring chops. Additionally, the rest of our defense is better because the full defensive responsibility is spread out to multiple solid defenders.

Two: Young's defense has an affect on some of those 3's by Depaul. You have an electric defender that can close ground as fast as anyone i've ever seen. That kind of closing ability would of definitely taken Depaul out of the free flying confident 3's they were chucking up.

Three: Myles Johnson's ability to change shots in the paint and most importantly grab rebounds on both ends of the floor would of neutralized their big men and taken away a handful of their easy putbacks and offensive rebounds that led to many of our fouls.

Four: Young's energy was contagious. When he would make a difficult steal and bucket you could see the impact it had on the emotional energy of the team. That is missing big time this year.

Five: Speed.................And I don't only mean the obvious here. Young's speed is otherworldly but i'm talking about the fast breaking speed of the overall team. Close your eyes and envision Johnson snatching a rebound last year with his long arms and utilizing his excellent passing ability to chuck it halfway down court like a quarterback tossing a perfect 40 yard pass in stride. This happened often and sped up the entire team and led to many fast break baskets even without Young on the receiving end.

I could add multiple other points and someone like Bac would do much better at this then me, but from my vantage point, this is the biggest difference in the NCAA team of the past 2 years and what we will likely see this year. A team that will struggle to get to 500 or slightly above and end up hoping to be in the NIT. GO RU!
 
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this is a great post but you will take heat for bringing up Myles and Jacob. But the biggest point is that it refutes those who said we wouldnt really miss these guys especially JY. We definitely traded up with Hyatt over Mathis.

The glaring part is we lost Myles and replaced him with a guy who was a non entity from San Jose State...Magnifying how poor the class of Mag/Palm/Reiber was
 
Last years team was so much more talented, despite the chemistry issues that pike and team claimed they had. As a coach he chose to sell us a bag of goods, instead Of being Honest. RU lacks talent. But if he were able to recruit better, and get suitable replacement, it’s a different story.
 
If we had Hyatt on last years team instead of playing McConnell (who was our Achilles heal ever since he returned form injury for Iowa) and spell Ron, I think that team goes Elite 8 fairly confortably.
 
If the point is that last year’s team is better than this year’s team, that’s not even debatable now that we’ve seen this team in action. The post- December Montez was addition by subtraction but losing JY’s ability to create something from nothing like he did down the stretch so many times is something we desperately need. When all is said and done, talent is the thing. When he wasn’t in foul trouble, Myles owned the boards and was a defensive presence even if he was no threat on offense. I don’t know if Cliff had any defensive rebounds tonight and I’m not seeing any great shot blocking or altered shots. Puts that much more pressure on Ron and Hyatt to expend energy to rebound.
 
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The Young move actually bothered me because it seemed like he straight up didn't want to be here. I know losing Montez wasn't a loss, but it was VERY obvious he didn't want to be here either.
That's a major problem. Montez was super athletic coming in and showed some ability in his career. Very poor player development there.
Lastly, Pike's recruiting sucks. You mean to tell me you can't land a multiple B1G caliber players in the portal after making the tournament? Don't even get me started on what's going on at the HS level. My guess is our assistance will jump ship after the season.
 
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We can make up for the loss of Myles a little better than Jacob. Just need better team defense and rebounding.

The thing we are missing that Jacob (and Montez) had was dribble penetration. We are missing that blow-by penetrator right now that takes it downhill. Need Geo or something to channel his inner Corey Sanders. Corey was a two-trick pony, but it worked. Either drive for a layup or step-back jumper.
 
I wish we still had them but we did, for example, let Nebraska take a 30 point lead on us in an important game with those two on the team.
 
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What is lost with losing myles, Jacob and Montez is they were three of our four best defenders (maybe three of three ...Depending on jf you thought Caleb or Montez was the better defender )

That’s what is missing right now

We gave up 70 to Lehigh and DePaul

Now that’s a problem
 
Agree with OP.

It’s very evident that we lost a ton of length, speed, athleticism and defense from last year. Those losses are magnifying some of the weaknesses of our current players.

I’m not panicking yet as I think this team will find it’s stride, but that will require Pikiell to shake things up. This needs to happen soon.

The ceiling definitely seems lower than the past 1-2 seasons though.
 
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this is a great post but you will take heat for bringing up Myles and Jacob. But the biggest point is that it refutes those who said we wouldnt really miss these guys especially JY. We definitely traded up with Hyatt over Mathis.

The glaring part is we lost Myles and replaced him with a guy who was a non entity from San Jose State...Magnifying how poor the class of Mag/Palm/Reiber was
Agree Bac, Agee along with Mag/Palm and Reiber is a shockingly bad recruiting miss by our staff and is likely why we will be lucky to be around the 500 mark this season. I still hold out a little hope for Mag as I think he has some potential to be an effective off the bench spark in the future but Reiber/Palmquist and Agee are huge recruiting misses and Miller????? Well just don't understand what the deal is with him. Pike and the rest of the coaching staff have to pull 3 talented rabbits out of the portal hat for next year for us not fall into the proverbial BIG basement. Depressing even typing this stuff.
 
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What is lost with losing myles, Jacob and Montez is they were three of our four best defenders (maybe three of three ...Depending on jf you thought Caleb or Montez was the better defender )

That’s what is missing right now

We gave up 70 to Lehigh and DePaul

Now that’s a problem
Look at the game tracker to see how many points were put backs
 
This was obvious the day we lost defensive stallworths Myles and Jacob, combined with the fact that we don't have formidable young talent. I said it repeatedly in the off-season and got lambasted on these boards. Now people are realizing it?
 
Cliff is averaging more rebounds and way more points than MJ is this year for UCLA, and he’s averaging more points than MJ ever did here. Now, it’s early, but that when you decided to do your analysis. So, at least after four games, the problem has been that Cliff doesn’t have a Cliff behind him. It’d be nice to still have both. So we may have a personnel problem.

I agree on losing Young. It was always a big loss. Second leading scorer, and the team was left with little to no speed.

RU lost 3 of its too 5 scorers from last year, Young, Mathis and, Johnson, in that order. The only way that doesn’t hurt is if we replace them with players. So far, we haven’t. Personnel.
 
If we had Hyatt on last years team instead of playing McConnell (who was our Achilles heal ever since he returned form injury for Iowa) and spell Ron, I think that team goes Elite 8 fairly confortably.
If we had Hyatt instead of Mathis, it would have been even better
 
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100%. Highlights the issue with high school recruiting
How? Hyatt was a higher rated prospect. It shows we should be aiming for the guys with offers and not any random project pikiell thinks he can turn into the next eugene omoruyi (who also left)
 
How? Hyatt was a higher rated prospect. It shows we should be aiming for the guys with offers and not any random project pikiell thinks he can turn into the next eugene omoruyi (who also left)
Inability to close we had Hyatt in the bag like couldn’t get it done. Same for Alvarado. Man with Hyatt we coast past cuse
 
totally agree with OP.. we know we cannot replace those guys with what we have... but perhaps.. with time.. we can reconfigure and learn to work with eachother differently.

at times I think I see the players reverting to the kind of play they did the last two years... but we do not have the same players to pull that off.
 
When you consistently fumble loose balls and rebounds you have bad hands. I think it's self-explanatory. I still like his potential. He needs to get better at securing the ball
Ok just have to disagree here. Sorry for the wtf.
 
If Jacob stayed and the game was tied at the end, it still would have been Geo given the last shot. I think that may be on reason Jacob left
 
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When you consistently fumble loose balls and rebounds you have bad hands. I think it's self-explanatory. I still like his potential. He needs to get better at securing the ball
Sorry, nobody makes the catches and reverse slams with bad hands. Now maybe focus is another thing.. but I don't see bad hands. We've seen plenty of that to know he's not the worst by far.
 
i root for all RU guys, even after they leave.

I like our team this year but non conference is where we figure out the chemistry and rotation.

pike has done this before and the rotation you are watching now is not what we’ll see in a month, but changes needs to happen organically as the new guys establish themselves.
 
What is lost with losing myles, Jacob and Montez is they were three of our four best defenders (maybe three of three ...Depending on jf you thought Caleb or Montez was the better defender )

That’s what is missing right now

We gave up 70 to Lehigh and DePaul

Now that’s a problem
RHJ is and was by far our best Defensive player. JY is a nice ball hawk who turned steals into points in a blur and Myles was a beast in the paint but Neither could play D like RHJ. Caleb is also a solid defender.

Those guys are gone so let’s stop crying about it.
 
Young and Johnson:

Well, it's perfectly clear that the loss of these two players is the total difference in the quality of last years team as opposed to this year. Pike saying his best team ever is/was total hyperbole. And he knew it all along. But he is a cheerleader and backs up his players so that was his stance to the basketball world. Well we have been exposed and that narrative will now fade away and we won't hear it again from him for the rest of the year.

Put those two players in the lineup tonight and multiple things happen. One: You actually get to play Jaden Jones a bit more regardless of his horrible defense. With Young and Johnson, you have 2 of the better players defensively at their positions in the nation so a guy like Jones can be hidden a bit more (and I emphasize a bit more) on defense and allowed to develop his scoring chops. Additionally, the rest of our defense is better because the full defensive responsibility is spread out to multiple solid defenders.

Two: Young's defense has an affect on some of those 3's by Depaul. You have an electric defender that can close ground as fast as anyone i've ever seen. That kind of closing ability would of definitely taken Depaul out of the free flying confident 3's they were chucking up.

Three: Myles Johnson's ability to change shots in the paint and most importantly grab rebounds on both ends of the floor would of neutralized their big men and taken away a handful of their easy putbacks and offensive rebounds that led to many of our fouls.

Four: Young's energy was contagious. When he would make a difficult steal and bucket you could see the impact it had on the emotional energy of the team. That is missing big time this year.

Five: Speed.................And I don't only mean the obvious here. Young's speed is otherworldly but i'm talking about the fast breaking speed of the overall team. Close your eyes and envision Johnson snatching a rebound last year with his long arms and utilizing his excellent passing ability to chuck it halfway down court like a quarterback tossing a perfect 40 yard pass in stride. This happened often and sped up the entire team and led to many fast break baskets even without Young on the receiving end.

I could add multiple other points and someone like Bac would do much better at this then me, but from my vantage point, this is the biggest difference in the NCAA team of the past 2 years and what we will likely see this year. A team that will struggle to get to 500 or slightly above and end up hoping to be in the NIT. GO RU!
This is a very late reply, but you hit the nail on the head. The loss of MJ and JY has hit the program far harder than we anticipated, and lies at the heart of the team's struggles this season. Think of the way those guys played in the tournament last season and your point is underscored big time. The presence of Geo and Ron and the improvement of Cliff does not mean that we have sufficient talent to compensate for the loss of these personnel. We might get a little better, but not enough to win much in the rugged B1G. Next year without GB & RHJ looks even bleaker, unless a few miracles are coming via the transfer portal, but that's not likely to happen, and several of our bench recruits are not Big Ten-level players. Wish I could be more optimistic, but I can't.
 
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