Like most of you, I’m hoping Nance withdraws from the draft and signs with us. We’ll know if he’s staying in the draft in another couple of days. I’m confident the staff will sign a player that can provide us with competent minutes at the 5. There are too many minutes available on a top level team to not attract somebody who can help.The 3rd string 5 is still scary. Wish BBV had stayed. Is Lieb capable of giving us some decent minutes when foul trouble happens like BBV last year? If not, we’re going to have to rely on a tall lineup and lots of help defense against the true bigs like Edey.
There has been some hand wringing about our ability to compete against teams with a dominating center such as Zach Edey. Like BWA stated above, there are a lot of ways to defend a center without matching his size. With our overall length and speed, feeding the post will be a major challenge. If they are successful getting the ball inside, we have many options to double the post. With our #2-#4 players all being 6’-6” to 6’-10”, they won’t know where the double is coming from, and all can be effective defenders. Think back to this year’s NCAA tournament where Purdue lost to St. Josephs, whose largest player getting major minutes was 6’-7” and weighing 200 pounds. If I recall, the Baylor national champions didn’t have a dominant center and their defense was incredibly effective.