[stokesjokes]

Yeah, but we’ve had better athletes. We had a team with Cabbil, Myo, Scottie James, and Homesley, all great athletes. You would hope we could parlay that success into better recruiting, but, as someone said earlier this year, it no longer feels like a program that’s growing.

Ritchie typically recruits and signs players when they are underclassmen in high school. It's a high risk, high reward strategy. Sometimes we got guys like you listed that should have been playing at the mid or high major levels, other times we recruited guys that we thought could be very good and just didn't pan out. Unfortunately we had multiple relative flops in recent classes that have stacked up which has led to our situation. I dont think anyone thought Venzant would be an offensive liability his entire career. Beyond him Warfield, DJ Moore and Jonathon Jackson were all guards with decent size and good athleticism that would be on this team but they largely didn't end up being what we thought they were going to be for one reason or another. It's not like ritchie just hasn't signed an athletic guard in years.

Yeah, too many misses. The strategy hasn't been working.

[Humble_Opinion]

I attended the game in person and a few things stick out:

1) Our crowd without the students is boring. I just can't say it enough... they're too old and too traditional. It's insane to me that they sit on their hands and keep their mouths closed until it's a media break and they announce, "Who wants a free t-shirt?"

2) Our Free throw shooting is straight garbage. 6-11, but Peebles missed one and Rode missed one. Cleveland is the one that gets to the line the most on this team, but it's 50/50. I love the kid's attitude and the edge he plays with at both ends of the floor. Last night while he was bringing the ball down the court, he had it poked away by the defender. He responded by sprinting back in defense and ended up doing the same thing to get the ball back. We also missed two easy layups last night (I believe both by Venzant).

3) I've seen a few comments about Cleveland being our most consistent player, but I tend to disagree. Matheny seems to me to be that guy. He had an off night shooting the three, but he got to the rim several times when the opportunity presented itself.

4) Kyle Rode is in his own head right now. He had an open 3 point shot from the corner last night and it hit the side of the backboard. I've never seen him do that. He started the year hot and was a major contributor to our success in Myrtle Beach. He's since fallen off though and gone cold. He took almost 38% of our 3PAs last night and only hit 3 of them. The coaching staff is hopefully working on him to get him back to normal.

5) As far as our bench goes, Southerland and Yates are two guys I'd like to see more of. Yates has a nice stroke and when he locks in, he can make several in a row. Southerland has a nice shot too but is more inconsistent. Both seem a little less reliable on the defensive end though, which may be limiting their minutes a little.

[Ill flame]

I just finished watching the replay. This game wasn't an example of us getting overwhelmed by a bigger faster team like the Alabama or FAU games. Yes they were bigger and more athletic but thats not why we lost. We lost because we beat ourselves. We missed so many wide open shots and had a ton of unforced turnovers. If we make half of those wide open shots we win this game.

[ballcoach15]

Most all of our players are inconsistent. 15 points one night 3 the next. It's been this way for several years, other than McGhee.