Open Scrimmage

Many thanks to Skins and DigitalHawks for the reports on the scrimmage! Much appreciated!

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I asked DICK how we looked. His reply was ā€œehā€. After that terrible football game, that was exactly the kind of positive news I was looking for!

At least in the pic, that Pepsi looks well carbonated. So, we have that at least!

As I was leaving the scrimmage, a guy in front of me turned to his friend (on October 22) and said very seriously, ā€œWe need to get a lot betterā€.

It was hard to sayā€¦Mehki looked to be dealing with somethingā€¦saw him walking after game as if he has shin splints or somethingā€¦

Kamari is much improvedā€¦if Safford is healthy, thatā€™s immediate help on O.

Donā€™t know what Etzler and Harrison bring, but J. Morris bring some defensive energy.

Billy Smith can shoot and is longā€¦but we will be limited off the bounce.

Surprisingly Tatum has some nice mid rangeā€¦Kamari offers someā€¦and of course Mehki is the main option.

It looks Anderson can go 20 minutesā€¦will see if he can night in night out.

For Digitalā€¦

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Donā€™t think about coming in hereā€¦

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Iā€™m not sure thatā€™s unexpected. Steele himself said the team in January will look very different than the team in November. Theyā€™ve had official practices with coaches for less than a month. Multiple players are limited. If anyone said the team looked ready to go, Iā€™d question their objectiveness

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Good comments. I have a few things to add. Javon Etzler is having another knee surgery this week.This is his 4th season and the third time he has had knee surgery. Both his first season and his third season that basically ended his season as a productive player. So it may be the same this year, but we will just have to see.

Mekhi Lairy got hurt with about 4 or 5 minutes to go and was limping around after the game. I thought it might have been muscular issues around his waste when it happened, but he was hobbling/limping afterwards. He just ran the offense Saturday and was not looking to score. After one day of watching the guards, I would agree that Tatum is the backup point guard. I also have comfirmed that Tatum may have been a recruited walk on his first year, but was on scholarship last year and is this year as well.

Last year at the end of the year I posted on what I thought Kamari had to do in the offseason ( develop a mid range jumper off a couple of hard dribbles and learn to take it to the hole and draw fouls and/or finish. I certainly take no credit for that, but the most exciting thing from the scrimmage ( for me ) is that he seemed to have worked on those areas of his game and he was easily the biggest scoring threat in this scrimmage and demonstrated ability in all 3 areas, perimeter shooting, midrange jumper, and taking it to the hole. He is a lot more dangerous than last season when he was just a spot up shooter for the most part.

Most people seem to feel Safford should be the starting 2 guard.
He did not practice Saturday, so no report on him.

I was pleasantly surprised by recruited walkon Eli Yofan. Three freshman appear to be pretty pure 3 point shooters ( Yofan, Mabrey, and Smith). Yofan is quicker, stronger, faster. Might he play ahead of the other 2??

I would guess we divide the 40 minutes at center fairly evenly between Mirambeaux and Morris, maybe play each 4 minutes at a time. Both are good enough to hold their own in the MAC, but not sure how long they can go hard. Mirambeaux had a poor shooting scrimmage, donā€™t know if that is typical or just a bad shooting day. With Etzler and Harrison out, Lewis and Rylee would get playing time at power forward.

I think we have all kinds of options at the 2 and 3 spots, we could end up with 3 or even 4 of those guys on the court at any one time. There is good competition for playing time.

Power forward looks like a huge question mark, that is the spot that nobody stepped up in the scrimmage to show that they were good enough to grab the job.

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How did Lewis look , I believe he would be top contributor this year ?

Iā€™m guessing this confirms that this will be Etzlerā€™s final year on scholarship at Miami.

Dick - Is Harrison out for an extended period of time?

I heard no information on Harrison.

He looks athletic and knows how to play, but really did not do a lot. We seem to have terrible options at the power forward spot and several good options at the wings, so of all the guards the one who might be able to play power forward part of the time is probably Lewis, and that might be where they use him the most. Maybe Williams and Lewis at the two forward spots?

Yeah, I would have said Etzler would spend time at 4 if healthy, even though he was working with 3s a lot in practiceā€¦but as noted did not get to see Etzler at all.

The 4/5 (BF) rotation will simply be a collective of Anderson, Rylee, Morris and Harrison when filling those roles.

Otherwise, weā€™ll likely be a big forward (BF), two wings, 2G and PG. Where one or the four I mentioned above will be out there with Kamari/Lewis, Lewis/Smith, Safford/Tatum, Lairy/Tatum. Yofan will likely play given that heā€™s a combo guard and looked solid, not that quick, but athletic enough, smart and good shooter.

Again, not fully backed by high school numbers I suppose, but Smith looked to be the best of the new, catch and ā€œin-rhythmā€ shootersā€¦Smith looked as ready to play in that role as Lewis, but Lewis better handling the ball off bounce.

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