@Peacone36 I agree with the two comparisons you made. Not so sure I agree about Sampson. He was second on the team in rpg and committed fewer turnovers than Cox or Mitchell, neither of whom could play defense as well. I am not praising Robert, but he was an asset versus liability. My complaint about him was the ball never came back out once he got a feed from a guard or wing.
Looking at this year's lineup, I see this:
PG play needs to improve. Jorgenson, Heath, and Heyward averaged ~10 ppg as a group. Their assist/turnover ration was almost 2/1. That needs to improve if they are only scoring 10 points. Hopefully a fully recovered Jorgy will show marked improvement over last year. The question I have is why Heyward gets the minutes he does. Granted, he is a better defensive player than Heath or Jorgy, but he seems reluctant to shoot and only had 10 assists all season. Of the guys who played significant minutes, he was dead last in assists and scoring.
Wing play also needs to improve, but mostly needs more consistency. MGH is clearly our leader, but will likely spend more time this season tilting toward the #4 rather than the #2, as we will not have as much heft inside. Also, Smith should remove some of the pressure for him to take the last shot or to beat the clock on so many possessions. If Smith can give us 14 ppg, that will be huge, but he will be taking minutes away from Tadric, who was showing up at the end of last season like we hoped. Unless Q has gained some weight during off season, he may be the loser here. I would not be surprised for us to use a small lineup more this season, with MGH moving to #4 while Tadric and Smith played #2 and #3.
Inside last year we dominated the boards, but were also a highly automated turnover machine. Cox/Sampson/Mitchell/MGH turned the ball over more than 200 times. I am sure there could be a metric that shows how many rebounds were negated by subsequent turnovers, and, if there is, we may have won the ACC title for that stat. I agree that Jacobs should be better than Cox and hopefully White will be an improvement over Sampson. But, I hope Mitchell2015>Mitchell2014.
The bottom line is that I do not think a BG team at GT has averaged more that 67 ppg. That needs to improve unless our defense improves, or we will be in the same place again next year. In ACC games last year we averaged 61 ppg and gave up 66 ppg. Our style of play contributes to both those numbers, but we need to have a net improvement on 3 or more possession per game this season. Those turnovers, as well as improved shooting (and better shot selection), will have to make up for fewer rebounds and maybe a less effective defense.
But, to put some this into perspective, when we traveled to Durham to play Duke in February, we were 1-8 in the ACC. Except for the UVA game, if we replace, at most, three positive possessions for three negative ones in the other games we lost, we would have been 7-2. Duke, UNC, and UVA were clearly better teams and had far more talent than us, but we had a chance to win all but three of our ACC games. Including both ND, Louisville , and NC State.
We have to learn how to finish games. That means elevating our play in the final four minutes, but also not getting ourselves in the position of having to.
