MtnWasp
Helluva Engineer
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Pastner's pre-season presser was revealing. I think I counted at least four times that he commented about various positions needing to play hard and winning 50-50 balls.
He talked about Sturdivant and Smith approaching Alvarado's scrappy play, hitting the defensive boards and winning 50-50 balls. So that is what he is looking for from the point position.
He said what he was looking for from the 5 spot was that group to play hard and to play good defense. He didn't talk much about scoring from that group except the need to be sound while we ran the offense through them from the elbow and the ability to make the "quick jump hook."
About Devoe, he said that he wanted him to focus on winning games without looking to score all the time. It was when speaking about Devoe is when Pastner commented about "not giving the ball a headache" and emphasized Ball Movement, "rhythm, flow and energy." Sounds to me like Pastner is really trying to develop the primary scoring option being the open man.
In other words, this is not going to be a "star" system where we feature players. It is very clear that Pastner is running a system and he wants the guys to buy into running the system. On offense, that means lots of movement, everyone touches the ball, hard cutting and crisp ball movement. Rhythm, Flow & Energy. The "Go-To" man is the open man.
In the fewinstances that Pastner made a comment about scoring, it was in the context of guys making open shots. So that is the deal there, he has a system to get guys open shots, and he needs for his players to run the system and then finish by making the open shots.
On defense it is all about intense, dive on the floor, effort; a sophisticated amoeba zone with seamless transitions between man an zone, and an emphasis on guard rebounding.
In speaking about his freshman class, Pastner paused for a tangent when he said that Gt was "unique" in that we were a little complicated on both sides of the ball. That kind of statement is a dead giveaway of a systems coach. Having complicated schemes could also be part of the reason the team starts slow, as it takes time to catch-up with complexity.
Anyway, this is why forecasters miss on their projections for GT teams. Forecasters are fixated on star players and they tend to be mystified by system coaches. They saw our team last year and assumed it was star players that won the day, even though the same forecasters did not project our star players to be star players.
Forecasters start to pay attention to systems coaches after repeated success, like Bennett and now Leonard Hamilton.
He talked about Sturdivant and Smith approaching Alvarado's scrappy play, hitting the defensive boards and winning 50-50 balls. So that is what he is looking for from the point position.
He said what he was looking for from the 5 spot was that group to play hard and to play good defense. He didn't talk much about scoring from that group except the need to be sound while we ran the offense through them from the elbow and the ability to make the "quick jump hook."
About Devoe, he said that he wanted him to focus on winning games without looking to score all the time. It was when speaking about Devoe is when Pastner commented about "not giving the ball a headache" and emphasized Ball Movement, "rhythm, flow and energy." Sounds to me like Pastner is really trying to develop the primary scoring option being the open man.
In other words, this is not going to be a "star" system where we feature players. It is very clear that Pastner is running a system and he wants the guys to buy into running the system. On offense, that means lots of movement, everyone touches the ball, hard cutting and crisp ball movement. Rhythm, Flow & Energy. The "Go-To" man is the open man.
In the fewinstances that Pastner made a comment about scoring, it was in the context of guys making open shots. So that is the deal there, he has a system to get guys open shots, and he needs for his players to run the system and then finish by making the open shots.
On defense it is all about intense, dive on the floor, effort; a sophisticated amoeba zone with seamless transitions between man an zone, and an emphasis on guard rebounding.
In speaking about his freshman class, Pastner paused for a tangent when he said that Gt was "unique" in that we were a little complicated on both sides of the ball. That kind of statement is a dead giveaway of a systems coach. Having complicated schemes could also be part of the reason the team starts slow, as it takes time to catch-up with complexity.
Anyway, this is why forecasters miss on their projections for GT teams. Forecasters are fixated on star players and they tend to be mystified by system coaches. They saw our team last year and assumed it was star players that won the day, even though the same forecasters did not project our star players to be star players.
Forecasters start to pay attention to systems coaches after repeated success, like Bennett and now Leonard Hamilton.
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