CJF
- Thread starter BirdistheWord
- Start date
Talking to old friend from Lexington today. Went to KY state tourney with his kids. Good report on CJ.
Once you get past the "well, not that we'd look at him (which every person in KY says about anyone else's recruits-know a lot of people down there and I swear to God its the first thing off their lips) but blew up as a senior and would be a good scorer." Second person I know that said about the same thing. Of course, that could be influenced by the ton of points CJ scored in that tourney-possible Blind Man in Stands kind of special moment. Just cannot rely on anything major from a freshman until you see them playing against college competition.
More illuminating, or at least entertaining, was discovering that people actually camp out for general admission tickets. Imagine that for an Iowa tourney game. Hell at Vets you could walk in and get floor level seating/standing. Always good seats in Wells Fargo at the tip as well.
Then the good news died when it hit me I've known some of these old buddies around the country for almost 45 years-which pretty much killed the righteous CJ buzz. That is a long time.
Once you get past the "well, not that we'd look at him (which every person in KY says about anyone else's recruits-know a lot of people down there and I swear to God its the first thing off their lips) but blew up as a senior and would be a good scorer." Second person I know that said about the same thing. Of course, that could be influenced by the ton of points CJ scored in that tourney-possible Blind Man in Stands kind of special moment. Just cannot rely on anything major from a freshman until you see them playing against college competition.
More illuminating, or at least entertaining, was discovering that people actually camp out for general admission tickets. Imagine that for an Iowa tourney game. Hell at Vets you could walk in and get floor level seating/standing. Always good seats in Wells Fargo at the tip as well.
Then the good news died when it hit me I've known some of these old buddies around the country for almost 45 years-which pretty much killed the righteous CJ buzz. That is a long time.
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I was there he can play were in good hands
There seems to be almost no doubt that CJF can shoot, and from anywhere on the floor. He has decent length and some ballhandling skills, which should help him find shots. I will be most interested in how he can play on the defensive end.
From what Fran said in the video he can really guard. When I saw him at the State Tourney his team played great defense and he guarded the other teams best player. What I was most impressed with and I saw three of the four games he played was his conditioning. He moves non stop without the ball and made plays for his teammates. I was hoping he would be good but he exceeding all expectations when I saw him. How that translates to college we will see.
This has me thinking. Will our team be a lot better on defense this year. I love Bohannon, but he did struggle on the defensive side of the ball at times. We also lost Cook and Moss. Both also struggled on the defensive side. We gain Nunge, Fredrick, and Pemsl. It is hard to say that Fredrick will be a lot better on defense than Moss, but I do not see how he can be worse. While Pemsl and Nunge will not be as explosive of a player as Cook was, I have to think they will be better defensively and getting after the boards. We also gain Toussaint. Who can say how well he will be on defense, but he seem to fit that mold coming out of high school.
I am excited to see this years team in action. There are a lot of question marks, but there is a lot of talent as well. If Fran can fit the pieces together, it could be a really fun year.
Certainly with the last two groups of players. The Woodbury era teams were good defensive teams. Of course, White, Woody, Mikey G, AC and, on the NIT team Eric May were all good to great defenders.
Big caveat but...if Cordell has not been too injury impaired we have a defensive upgrade at the 4, assuming we don't require much wing defense from him. Jack is a question mark. Showed some weak side shot blocking ability. That might be an upgrade as well at that position.
C McC was an eager if not particularly effective defender. Bet he improves. Big rugged kid who obviously likes to play pretty physical defense. He will be bigger and stronger than most of the PGs against whom he plays. To paraphrase Lenin, size has a quality all of its own. Kind of reminds me of Jerry Sloan's attitude.
Joey W was a respectable defender. An overall good player that should get better defensively.
We lose offensive punch with TC but it won't take a great defensive player to improve the defensive performance at the 4. Moss would play decent defense about 50% of the time so there's certainly a chance to improve the defensive play at that position.
Moved up more than 100 spots on the team defensive ranks from 18 to 19: historically bad to merely bad. Another hundred spots puts us right in the consistently mediocre category. A low bar to be sure but off seasons are a time for aspirational thinking.
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