Adriacus Peratuun said:
IvanBear said:
Crawfoso1973 said:
Even when fully healthy Love was our 6th man last year. It's not a knock on him at all, he brings instant offense off the bench but is a bad defender and doesn't handle or facilitate. Our rotation pattern is 8 top guys so it doesn't really matter who starts. Nunn is a more versatile player and is a better fit with the starting unit. We just have to knock on wood that Love can stay healthy and will still be effective after multiple leg injuries, that is my only concern with him.
What Nunn did you watch last year? He was not a better defender than Love they were pretty level and other than a handful of games where Nunn got hot he was a drag on the offense.. Love was also a vastly superior passer and better at driving to the basket which is going to be extremely important in the hypothetical rotation being built.
If Love is going to be healthy this offseason he'll pass Nunn. He had passed up Nunn during the regular season until he went down last season. There's a version of our season last year where he becomes a starter over Nunn barring injury. The starting 5 couldn't get things done early in games as the season dragged on, getting subs in was just not realistic for a lot of that, but in a world where Love is healthy he likely gets started over Nunn to give the offense an instant start.
Unless Nunn somehow becomes a vastly better defender or ads a lot point guard skills to his game he's not the better player than Nunn and it would be foolish to not start Love.
Love was the worst perimeter defender on the team last year. By a significant margin. And he managed that reality while having the easiest perimeter assignment every time he stepped on the floor.
Nunn [except when in foul trouble] drew the most difficult perimeter assignment every game.
As an aside: that last sentence about Nunn being a better player than Nunn is mildly confusing.
As an additional aside: the entire returning roster and coaching staff has a ton of soul searching to accomplish about their individual/the team's D intensity.
Corrected, it should have been Love and Love at the end of the sentence.
We were playing a lot of zone at the end and Nunn was just frankly out of position not drawing the best outside shooter. As you said no one on this team looked good defensively last year so I'll even grant you the assumption love is a worst defender, it's a meaningless ranking because they have both been bad.
I'm confused by all the assumption here though we'd leave a top 3 or 4 player on our roster on the bench. It was questionable when we did it last year. We all agree Love played more minutes than Nunn when healthy, it seems pretty clear the staff and everyone here agrees he's a better player. Last year's team had this massive problem of the offense being dreadful until we made the Love for Nunn substitution. If Love had stayed healthy he probably was a second team all big 12 type player last year and becomes a starter.
I know drew loves to bring a ringer off the bench, but it is never the same guy for 4 years. Even Acy became a starter his senior year. You do not put one of your top 3 players (who is a senior) on the bench. Outside of some new guy entering the portal at the wing position and us landing him our top 3 players coming into the season are likely to be Roach, VJ, and Love. If Nunn was some elite defender you could make make an argument for subbing offense for defense, but you're just subbing offense for streaky offense that didn't show up against good teams.