Tevo
- Wilmette, IL
Let's say each of those guys, if playing for 40 minutes, might have 8 good minutes, 20 serviceable minutes, and 12 bad, oh-my-God-he's-a-freshman minutes. The trouble is, when any one guy goes in, you're not sure what he's going to give you. ...
I understand what you are saying. But the point I was trying to make is that surely 2 of them will develop enough to at least be an average defender. At worst we'll have enough fouls to give that maybe we'll get lucky and wear the opposing C down, or possibly get them into foul trouble. I think anything offensively is gravy. We are bound to get 6 points/game from the center position just off garbage buckets.
I also think too many people are selling Ebo short. He was looking good towards the end of the year. Finke was out with the concussion and Ebo was starting and holding his own.
Hopefully we will be fortunate and a couple guys will surprise us and outplay their stars and their offer sheets. But for fear of this devolving into another discussion of probabilities, having Giorgi not pan out doesn't make it any more likely that Kane will, and having Kane not pan out doesn't make it any more likely that Ebo will. They are all individual flips of the proverbial coin. Still, I agree that with several guys in the mix (and again, I think really we're talking about just three guys -- Giorgi, Ebo and Kane), it's better than having just one or two. But it would be surprising if ANY of them are even Big Ten average this season, and that includes just on the defensive side. Freshman bigs don't usually play good defense, even 4 and 5 stars often don't. For even one three-star freshman big to come in and legitimately hold his own on defense against the experienced bigs in the Big Ten, let alone TWO of them playing that well, would be surprising.
As for having lots of fouls to give -- is that really a good thing? I mean, I guess it means we're more likely to still be able to have someone tall in the game, but if we're using 15 fouls a game from just our lone Big position against the other team as a strategy to "wear them out", we're going to have a very long season. And games will take 3 hours to get through.