bear2be2 said:
Crawfoso1973 said:
bear2be2 said:
IowaBear said:
Your season is defined by what you do in March. Fair or foul. I don't necessarily call it a failure. But we underachieved relative to our seeding.. again
This. I would call our 2023-24 season a moderate success, but a lot of Baylor fans talk out of both sides of their mouth. They want to crow about our program like it's a new blood elite, but they refuse to hold it to that performance standard and make excuses when we don't meet it.
It wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't spend so much time running down programs that are often outperforming us on the court.
I'm proud of Scott Drew and the program he's built. We've been a picture of consistency the last 15 years and are as strong a bet as anyone in the country to put a good product on the court on a year-to-year basis. But the heights we reached from 2020-22 are looking more like a peak than a plateau. And if we really want to talk and act like an elite program, we need to get back to winning like one.
So get back to a winning like an elite program by getting rid of productive starters like Jayden Nunn? That's how this argument started when Ivan said we had a garbage finish to the season, in large part because Nunn started for us. Elsewhere Ivan says we have weak backcourt going into next season and need to upgrade from Nunn and Love. You don't achieve program continuity by recruiting over or getting rid of productive players like Jayden Nunn or Langston Love. You let them develop and flourish over a 2 or 3 year period. Jayden Nunn and Langston Love are the exact type of players we need to build around if you are looking for roster continuity from one season to the next.
Ivan's take on Nunn -- and our guard guard corps, in general -- is way off IMO. I've said as much many times.
And this post seems odd being directed as me because I've been beating the drum for more roster continuity, not less.
We fully agree on the need for roster consistency.
To be clear my reservations of our guard core next year are about 50% need for consistency, 30% we're going to rely on 2 freshmen, and 10% concern for Nunn's skill and Drew usage of him and 10% concern for Love's health.
I'm way more worried we've got a core that hasn't played together that's going to demand a lot of ball handling and production out of the freshmen. That's always a dicey proposition.
My constant frustration with Nunn is I don't get how he fits in this team. He's not great at defense, he's not good at ball handling, and he's only a streaky scorer. Even if he starts, he should be 5th in minutes out of our guard core. We're all in on Wright being competent enough to come in off the bench and relieve Roach, and last year Love was getting more minutes than Nunn when healthy. I don't get what Nunn brings to the table over either of those guys unless like Miro Little, Wright won't be as ready to play at the next level as people make him out to be (I hope this is not the case). If Wright isn't ready for 15-20 minutes of play time this is running back essentially the same guard group as last year with a more talented guy in the point even though he's a combo not a PG.
Our guard core last year was not very impressive and I'm worried we haven't done enough to upgrade it. They constantly underperformed in meaningful games and meaningful moments. Only 2 games last year can I think of them winning us the game against a top flight opponent and that was Auburn and the miracle recovery against the refs with Iowa state. The rest of the time they'd put out a valiant effort but be unable to finish the job (Houston, Ku in Lawrence, Duke, etc).
We've for sure upgraded over Dennis with Roach, hopefully Love stays healthy and gives us an upgrade over Nunn, and hopefully Edgecombe is better than Walter. Hopefully Wright is ready to be a sixth man of the year nominee. But that's a lot of hopefully and not a lot of proven commodities in our guard core.
I still think the roster is shaping up a lot better than last year, Omier I think really changes a lot of the dynamics of the team, but the Guard core is only a marginal upgrade and only makes us more like our 2022-2023 guard core not 2021-2022 or the completely unfair standard of 2019-2021.
I'm fairly negative on Nunn but I'm positive on this team right now, I like us 3rd or 4th in conference and anything below elite 8 would be a massive disappointment with the current roster. I think the roster will get better and I would hopefully we'll add more talent that makes our talent so great we just have to ignore the consistency issue when comparing us to Houston and Iowa State.