I don't disagree, Reynolds was extremely valuable to this team, but I do think Asuma has a chance to be that kind of guy.
Niko knows what he had with this squad and what he needs. My take is he will add more size and guys good off the dribble. Next year’s squad will look different
Losing in the opening round to St. Louis is the ‘95 tourney didn’t help. Season is significantly different if Bobby Jackson is healthy from the start. He didn’t debut until the Cal game and he struggled some until the second half of the Big Ten schedule. ( It’s a fair statement to say with Bobby playing to capacity for 1.5 Big Ten seasons Minnesota was 23-4.) Back to the Cal game: Although it drew 25,000 (IIRC) moving the game to the Metrodome deprived us of the Williams Arena home court advantage. Also—if memory serves—Clem weirdly gave true freshman Miles Tarver many ineffectual minutes in the game. Cal wins and makes the field. We’re bubbled away. I believe we were the first Big Ten team with a winning conference record not to make the 64 team field. The ‘96 team had a shot at reaching the second weekend—quite “dumbfounding”.
Yep....what this year showed is Niko has a good eye for guys that fit his system and he was also able to navigate a really tough roster situation and still field a very competitive team.
In reality a team that wants to finish in the top 6-7 teams most years and be in the tournament, needs to have at least 2 or more guys who can do this? So, yes I agree Asuma can do some of this. But he is smaller and less athletic than Reynolds. Niko didn't have more than one of these types of players at CSU. But the mtn west is less athletic than the big ten (exception San D. st.). I hope we get guys with Reynolds athleticism to add to what Asuma may bring in the coming years.
Hello,Captain Obvious. The point is those few guys can't miss being healthy and really good just for us to tread water. AND then stats say we won way above our talent level this past year.
We finished 11th...the idea is to get better. My point is...it is going to be difficult to do. We had an exceptional season with underdogs in most every game...always struggling uphill is hard and this years results with even similar talent likely won't result in a finish as high as 11 next year.
Players who were supposed to be in the 8 man rotation at the beginning of the season missed a combined 87 regular season games. That is an absurd #. With any injury luck at all that # should go down by 50%-75%.
All this is amazing! Amazing! I just don't think it is duplicatable with just replacing Tyson and Reynolds ... who were excellent. I know we are adding three freshmen...I know we expect everybody to return and to be better than they were but the stats scream our competitive results are not sustainable without dramatically better players than we had...not just replacing what we had.
We just disagree on the value of Reynolds...did he turn the ball over more than you'd like? Yes, but he always had the ball in his hands by design and was the only guy capable of running the show. He can't shoot but he shot 14 percentage points higher than Asuma from the field. He drew a lot of fouls on the opposing team which puts front line guys on the bench allowing other teammates to benefit.
11th in the best league in the land translates to one of the top 75 teams in the country. That equals Johnson's best season, meaning as good as the Gophers have been in five years. I'm extremely pleased with this foothold on the way back up the mountain. Focusing on the losses of Reynolds and Tyson sounds a lot like, "Niko will never recover from David Roddy's graduation," which people did say at the time and, of course, turned out to be nonsense.
Bullshit. You'll be complaining like the rest of us for another season. Need your heart. You're not leaving us that easy.
I agree with you. Ay minimum we need another Cade Tyson in whatever we get.
I thought Stanford players were supposed to be smart?
We played both Michigan and Illinois this year—two Final Four teams with elite athleticism. Niko and players didn’t need to play a team in the Crown to have gotten their first experience of what elite athleticism looks like. There are plenty of examples in our own conference.
You are looking at 11th and saying it will be tough to get better. I look at 11th and say we finished way higher than we had any right to considering the way the roster was decimated by injuries so that actually gives me hope for better results in the future.
Thank you. Not only is this not an impossible task, it's the very nature and reality of college sports.
Yeah, used to be you could look at your squad and fairly accurately project out the next few years but those days are long gone (especially in basketball).
Certainly we'd have been in trouble without him. But that's mainly because Willis got hurt. For next year I'd rather have a healthy Willis and Evans (if we indeed land him) than Reynolds.
Okay, I can pretty much agree with that. Hopefully, both join the roster and stay healthy and perform well.