Down, but not awful

Our 3-point was down significantly this past season, from 38.4% to 34.6%. Still, that mark is not too bad, and was better than 2012, 2013 and 2014 seasons.

A bigger casualty on the arc than our shooting, however, was our defense. It exploded from a 31.3% mark by opponents to 36%.

Most likely an upgrade

The signings of Wadly Mompremier and Cezanne Carson are not the sort of stuff that makes fans stand up and cheer. However, most likely they will replace a couple of players who haven't played much and are not likely to. So, we upgraded our roster with those moves, if they turn out at all like we hoped. Mompremier is a proven rim protector, and you definitely need one of those. Carson comes advertised as a defensive specialist, and no matter how uninspiring that is to some fans, we sorely needed one last season. We helped ourselves with the signings. How much remains to be seen.

So what specifically are we losing?

Stetson Billings - defensive specialist
Jalen Jackson - scorer, rebounder
Lis Shoshi - best big man
Marcus Johnson - combo guard, scorer, shooter
Maurius Hill - all-round player
Kemy Osse - shooter

In other words, we lost substantial part from all over the vehicle. Facing a full-scale overhaul.

TV logic

"In a democracy, the umpire is always wrong."

(from The Donna Reed Show on television)

Possibly in good shape at guard?

Dayshawn Watkins is advertised as a pure point guard. Deondre Burns came to us as a combo guard, but played more SG than point. Presumably he could do either in a pinch. Camron Reedus is listed by Verbal Commits as a point, but his stats suggest he may really be more of a SG. The long and short of it is that in these three we hopefully will have three players with some experience (if even at the juco level) who among them should be able to cover both the guard positions if we mix and match them, with occasional minutes from the other players.

WKU bouncing back

Our old friends, the Hilltoppers, fell on hard times last season (15-17), but don't grieve for them. They have a monster recruiting class coming in, with a 5-star and a 4-star among them.

LINK

Who gets the most from his talent?

To me, recruiting is the "oh by the way" part of coaching. I do not really judge a coach by his recruiting, since that is a part of the college game that is distasteful and lends itself most to cheating and unscrupulous methods. I wish one of the experts would do a study to see which D1 coach gets the most from his talent. Surely there must be a way to do that statistically. The recruiting services pretty much rank all the recruits (although their "rankings" at the lower levels are pretty much token marks). So, someone ought to be able to somehow incorporate those rankings with  RPI or Sagarin and see who did the most with what he had. To me, that is the real measure of coaching.

A shortage of seniors

One thing we won't have much of next season is seniors. Assuming the Verbal Commits announcement of Wadly Mompremier is correct, he will be our only senior. True, Dayshawn Watkins will be a redshirt junior, but that still does not amount to three previous years of playing.

Evaluating this next season

For unbiased observers, evaluating the job Wes Flanigan will have done after this next season will be tricky, because of all the new faces. If it is glaringly evident that there is no talent there at all, then it is easy. Wes didn't get it done.

However, good talent is not always obviously good right off the bat. Take Deondre Burns for example. For a season and a half he was an also-ran; then he caught fire and ended up as one of our best shooters, all of a sudden. I absolutely would not have predicted that at the first of the year. The same could be true of some of the large group of "new hires" for next year. We may not set the house a-fire early in the season, but if in the second half the new faces are starting to show that they are getting the idea, then there would be reason for optimism.

A positive observation from a new Trojan

We are so accustomed to hearing negative comments on the message board that it is refreshing to hear a new voice chime in about the Little Rock program and its fans. This is from a post on the official website that involved an interview with new recruit Damir Hadzic.

"I think the passion for basketball here is great. Even this year, when we lost a few games, people were still showing up and still supporting us. That really got my attention and I thought that was really cool. Not all schools are like that. The people here love basketball."

When someone is not determined to be negative, it is not hard to be positive. Good for you, Damir!

"Sophomore bump"

It is a saying that players make their biggest improvement in their second season at the D1 level. And, there probably is some truth to that just given the nature of things. If that is so, our candidates for that jump would be Ryan Pippins, Andre Jones, and Shandon Goldman. I do not know how much impact those players can be expected to have, or even if they will all survive to next season. So, it does not look like we will get much benefit from the Sophomore Bump this next season.

Returning minutes

With two more commitments in the spring period, we do not know how things will fall out, but for the sake of argument, here is what we should have returning from last season in terms of minutes played, as things stand right now.

Burns 606
Black 587
Jones 324
Marcus 191
Pippins 59
Goldman 23
Moorman 19
Brady 3

That is 1812 minutes, or 28% of the total minutes played last season, and none of the top five. That ain't much. The sky is the limit for any players who want to step up and make a place for themselves. Ought to be interesting.

In defense of the media

I complain (and I am not the only one) that the media knows virtually nothing about the lower-level schools that are not named Gonzaga. They affect expertise, but except for a few exceptional situations, they are, for all practical purposes, uninformed about basketball below the power conference level and especially below the top third of conferences.

In fairness to them, it is an almost impossible task to be well-informed on all of college basketball. After all, there were 351 D-1 teams this past season. If a reporter watched only one game for each team, he obviously would not make it. Even with modern recording technology, he would have to be watching games virtually round the clock to have even a passing knowledge of all the teams. It is just too much.

So, we are left out in the cold. Bloggers and message boards are beginning to close the gap somewhat for the truly die-hard college basketball fans. To get solid information about the little guys today, you have to go to those who are not "experts," but who probably know more than the experts, at least about one particular niche of the game.

Perfect practice

One of my old music teachers used to say, "Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. If you repeat mistakes, you are only practicing how to be wrong."

In basketball there is not much time to think, just time to react. So, if you have not practiced the motions - doing it right - over and over and over, you will not do what you need to do when you need to do it. You have to program your brain, almost at a subconscious level, to do the right thing. You cannot so program your brain by doing the wrong thing (being sloppy) in practice.

How did Porter do?

Our old friend Porter Moser is still holding down the bench (when he sits on it, which wasn't often while  he was in Little Rock) at Loyola (IL). The Ramblers had a pretty good year. They finished 18-14 and 8-10 in the tough Missouri Valley Conference. They were 13-3 at home. Porter should have four starters returning for next season, so the future looks bright.

Successful transition back?

I asked this question on 9 June 16: "Could Johnson successfully make the transition back to point if he had to?" We know now that the answer is mixed. Yes, he could, but No, he could not with unqualified success with the mix of players we had this past season. The result was less than sterling.

How did Slippery Rock do?

All America just be on the edge of their seats to learn how fared that symbol of the out-of-the-way, Slippery Rock University, this past season. Mediocre, in a word. The Rock finished 14-15, and 10-12 in conference play. They did have a loss to Indiana (that's Indiana University of Pennsylvania), and a win over California (that's California University of Pennsylvania), and they got blown out by Tennessee (the one in Tennessee). Furthermore, they had a win over Seton Hill (that's Hill, not Hall, in Greensburg, PA).

Looking back at Arkansas State's year

Considering a 20-win season is always pleasant. ASU's contemplation might be a little muted because they did not go to any sort of post-season, but I figure that was a result of an administrative decision, since they probably would have qualified for one of the pay-to-play gigs. We figured the Wolves might be pretty salty when they beat Georgetown in DC in November. In fact, that defeat might have played a significant role as a straw that broke the coaching back of John Thompson III. Losing to cellar-dweller Monroe in the first round of the Belt tournament had to have been painful.

But still, 20 wins is 20 wins. We would have loved to have that problem in Little Rock.

Looking back at Pine Bluff's season

It was a rough year for the Golden Lions. They finished 7-25, and 6-12 in conference, next-to-last in the SWAC. Their only non-conference win was against non-D1 Ecclesia College. They even lost in triple overtime to non-D1 Blue Mountain College. They did actually play a non-conference D1 game at home, against UT Martin, which is a little unusual for them. (They lost it.) As they lose several seniors, the Lions need an immediate upgrade in talent.

Looking back at UCA's season

The Bears finished 8-24, which is rough, but better than two years ago, when they were 2-27. They played us pretty tough again. They moved out of the cellar in the Southland, beating out McNeese and finishing in a five-way tie for eighth place. I still think Russ Pennell was  a good  hire and that the administration in Conway just needs to be patient. Things  are moving in the right direction, albeit slowly.