Speaking of the number 5 here are my 5 problems that the team will have to overcome to be competitive this season:
5. PONT GUARD PLAY. Boothe has been AWFUL! Now in fairness to him, he is still playing in an offense that was geared towards a slow moving headband. Hopefully Boothe shows something otherwise Stith might have to play more and well becuase no team can be succesful without a good point unless they have a superstar wing player.
4. 25 WING PLAYERS ON THE ROSTER. The main problem with this is two of them happen to be our best all round players and one is probably our best scorer. Having depth is great except all of our depth is at the two and three position. Horne and Kennedy should be on hte court as much as possible! Now with Off Balance Jumper jr back and a couple of decent recruits they will play less. Your best players should always play a lot. If Hardy and Lawrence are indeed going to warrant time, I am not sure how this can work?
3. STYLE OF PLAY. I don't care what anyone thinks, I will not believe we will play any differently until I see it in a BE game! For 5 years no matter the personal we have played the same way. Now I guess Norm felt he was outgunned so he tried to limit the other team's possesions and ugly up the game. If he continues this style of play there is absolutely NO WAY you can legitimetely play more than 9 guys let alone 6 wing guys!
2. FRONTCOURT. Unless Coker suddenly realized that he is supposed to actually grab rebounds and not foul every living person in his vicinity he is nothing more than a black man's Sean Muto. Evans was our most productive Big and he hustles and plays hard. That being said he is totally raw and undersized. Rob Thomas is the only big that has any inside moves but he has bad knees, will not play that much is probably only 6-4 and can't even jump over Malik Boothe er I mean a phonebook. The key is Burrell! If he plays anything close to the way he did last year this team will stink again!
1. GO TO PLAYER. Our best two all -around players, though decent scorers aren't really go to players! I like Kennedy and Horne and think they would be solid players on even a really good BE team but your 2 and 3 position players should be your prime time guys. Horne and Kennedy are just not at that level. Mason will most likely be the go to guy, but it is a role that frankly he is ill suited for. When he was a Frosh and Soph he played the game right and was a Horne/ Kenendy kind of player. In his junior year he stopped doing all of the little things and some big things like rebounding and not dribbling the ball up by his neck. His jumpshot is never the same two times in a row and he stopped driving to the hoop sometime in the middle of his sophmore year. His biggest flaw however is a selfishness that is not fun to watch and if a poster with an in on this team is to be believed not fun to play with either.
So those are the 5 things this team will have to overcome to be competitive in the BE this year IMO.
BTW I did not even include the actual coaching