I have seen him listed as 6'7" in Aug, 6'10" in Oct, 6'8" in Dec, 6'10" in Feb, and 6'9" on April 25th. So as the stat man you could make a nice graph of his growth spurt.
Grant Golden updates
- Thread starter Ulla1
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Drove out to Hagerstown to see Grant play; talked with him; saw him play. He is 6'9" or 6'10". OSC
I haven't seen him in person. He looks 6'9" in photos and 6'8" in videos. But I fully expect him to be TJ sized but not quite Paul sized.
Either way, I think it will work out well.
My original comment was more about media, social media, and printed rosters and inconsistencies than a negative about Grant.
I pretty much subtract and inch and a half from every player's listed height. It's much more accurate that way.
Based on those reports and some quick calculations, he should be well over 10'6' by the time he arrives. I'm OK with that, 3-point shooter or not.
I think the younger is better player and think it will take 1 year experience for the older pivot to be adjusting.
In some ways, I hate the way this is shaping up. To have a decent season, we will have to throw Grant to the wolves, at least try to run him out there a lot with TJ are only proven interior player. Wood is more of a perimeter player to me, most suited to be a wing. Hope Paul can recover and stay on the court a decent amount this year. Really really needed that grad transfer to play inside. Kind of like a 2 guard scorer last year.
The good news is yes maybe this will allow Grant to develop faster, and he and his family will be happy with the situation and this will help to sway Bryce. Have to look for some kind of silver lining here.
TJ, Wood, and PF are too slow to cover an opposing 3, so unless Grant can cover a 3 on defense Wood will only play our 4 or 5. I will be surprised if we play more than 2 of TJ, Wood, Friendshuh, and Golden simultaneously since we would get sliced apart on defense.
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^ this. we will have 2 of the 4 big guys on the floor most of the time, though some times only one. but we'll never have 3 of them out there.
True, but that did not stop us from playing Marshall on perimeter D last year...
The reality is we may play someone like Bernard as a 4 on O and a 3 on D. We are likely going to have a very different look on offense this year without a natural 4 to replace what TA did last year.
With our defense any of our players can end up playing on the perimeter, which is why having a bunch of slow players on the court is a huge detriment and will not happen. It is just as bad, if not worse, as having a bunch of short players out there. I think this is why Mooney is going after so many 6'4-6'6 players recently, they may be both quick enough to guard the smaller players and tall/strong enough to guard the bigger players.
I am well aware of the fact that Bernard is not a 4. We really don't have a legit 4 on the roster except maybe Grant. TJ can definitely play inside and may have to, which begs the question who plays the high post.
Very true, it's a known weakness of our D, and frankly, any type of zone where mismatches occur. Our system is not that different from a 3-2 zone, so you kind of expect your two low zone players to be forward/center. We do the same thing, but in theory our system is supposed to minimize a zone overload where someone is unguarded. Last year we were often bigger and slower on D, this year I expect we will be smaller but quicker. I would agree that we may not see many scenarios where we have TJ, Marshall and (Paul/Grant) playing at the same time.
Bone, not making excuses for this past year, but I think we were playing hurt more than anyone realized. I know SDJ, DT, MW and TJ were hurt in one way or another most of the year. I have heard TD was not a 100% either. The guys did look sluggish on defense all year. Davidson's Peyton E. offensive display was the biggest example of how slow reacting our defense had become by year's end.
Why has it taken our Princeton grad 11 years to figure it out, if TBone, Ulla and Fan 2011 can identify the problem? The problem has been exacerbated by the inflexibility of the Princeton grad in adapting to the modern game, his stubbornness in not admitting that he might not have all the answers and his unwillingness to add a contrarian to the staff. The result is a 54% win rate with a least two mediocre seasons ahead even if the current recruiting class is as heralded as we think.
While I agree with some of this, also wondering if the change to a 30 second shot clock last year played a role in our defensive going from a consistently above average to just being terrible last year?
While on average all defenses were worse last year than the year before, ours changed way more than the average. The average defense allowed 1.6% more points per possession in the 2015-2016 season compared to the 2014-2015 season. Our defense allowed 10% more points per possession. Why would the rule changes have 6x more effect on our team compared to the average team?
One could argue that our specific defensive style would be more affected by the rule changes, but other schools who play very similar defense (such as Oregon) did not see such a large effect. Oregon's defense was actually better in 2015-2016 than the year prior! Louisville is another team that heavily uses matchup-zone concepts and their defense only became 0.1% worse in 2016! There isn't much evidence to suggest that our style of play would be more susceptible to the rule changes.
So why was our defense so much worse? I believe for one reason or another our personnel just couldn't execute it properly last year. I think no matter what defense our team played last year we would have been bad.
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