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Nelson Ododa

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9Legs

Assistant Coach
Mar 4, 2005
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Not that anybody cares but for what it is worth

PITTSBURGH - Pitt capped off the seventh annual Maggie Dixon Heart Health Fair / Fan Fest with an exciting 32-minute Blue-Gold Scrimmage that wasn't decided until the closing seconds. Graduate transfer Alonzo Nelson-Ododa dropped in a shot in the lane with 0.6 seconds remaining off a pass from senior James Robinson to give Gold a 57-56 victory.
Nelson-Ododa finished the day with six points on 3-of-5 shooting to go along with nine rebounds in 19 minutes of action.
"It was a scrimmage, but we treated it just like a game," said Nelson-Ododa. "We had a shoot around this morning at 8:30 a.m. We had a pregame meal and we also met before in the locker room just to simulate what a real game would be like. It was really important to everybody today."
 
Good for him, he was the softest big man I've ever seen. His transfer made no sense at all. That scrimmage might be the most action he sees all year at Pitt.
 
With all due respect 32, disagree. Alonzo will be a solid contributor for the Panthers. He has always been good on defense and his offense was just beginning to blossum as a Spider. A nice young man, wish nothing but the best for him. OSC
 
SpiderHoops32 said:
Good for him, he was the softest big man I've ever seen. His transfer made no sense at all. That scrimmage might be the most action he sees all year at Pitt.
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This is ridiculous. Ododa was a very efficient scorer for us and our best defensive rebounder and shot blocker. He is lined up to get 15-25 minutes a game for a good Pitt team this year (potential top 25 team). You may not be able to see why he is a valuable player, but there was a reason he was poached by a P5 school.
 
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Agree with 32 and Midlo. Softest player we've had in years who never came close to playing to his potential. In my opinion, his lack of development kept us out of the tournament the past two years. Time to move on and forget about him.
 
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The guy had a Richmond degree but who leaves their alma mater to play against his alma mater in their last year? You may say Pitt does not play us this year but we all have the same goal of winning a title. I have a hard time considering him a true Spider going forward. I appreciated his time here but find it baffling....
 
So I guess no one on here ever moved or changed jobs because they thought it was a chance to improve or a better situation.
I appreciate Ododa's efforts here and wish him the best. Moving on....
 
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he put his 4 years in here. he then did what he felt is best for him. we don't have to like it or agree with it. it's his life, his choice. I hold no ill feelings and wish him the best.
 
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Hope he does well. I thought he was finally coming into his own offensively and would have liked to reap the benefits of that this year, but we won't, so be it.
 
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I'm no fan of Ododa. I don't wish him ill, but I'm not a fan. He understood, why we redshirted him, and gave him a free year of education. I look at highlights of NIT games, and he's sullen and unenthusiastic. He could have helped us this year, but he wasn't going to play a major role. He hurt our program, but not announcing his transfer until late in the year, and we were unable to replace him. He didn't give us 4 years, he gave us 3 years, when we gave him 4 paid years. Pitt will receive all of the benefits of our free year to Ododa, his freshman year. In hindsight, we should never have redshirted him.

He certainly didn't live up to his potential at UR, maybe he will at Pitt. I don't care, I'm not a fan of him, I do feel that he unfairly hurt our squad. CM says Ododa caught him totally by surprise with the transfer.

I might add, UR was very supportive of Ododa, when he first arrived on campus, and had some legal problems. I think UR was always loyal to Ododa, I don't feel that was reciprocated. So, I could care less how he does this year.
 
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fan2011 said:
Ododa was a very efficient scorer for us and our best defensive rebounder and shot blocker.
Click to expand...

I disagree with this. He was an inconsistent scorer. Efficient once in a while, but mostly irrelevant offensively. I don't see him magically becoming a really influential offensive player this year, unless there was something about our offense that held him back.
 
Spiderbymarriage said:
I disagree with this. He was an inconsistent scorer. Efficient once in a while, but mostly irrelevant offensively. I don't see him magically becoming a really influential offensive player this year, unless there was something about our offense that held him back.
Click to expand...

He was the most efficient player on our team (points scored per shot attempt).
 
Why does anyone care that Ododa scored the winning bucket in some inter squad scrimmage? He's gone, I don't care about what he does or does not do at Pitt. I'm not wishing him well because I felt he bailed on a coaching staff that showed a lot of faith in him as he navigated his legal troubles and of course bailed on his teammates as well. (not that I am wishing him ill either, but the manner he left the program lacked maturity).

And I think it is fair to say he never lived up to potential. He would have been a 5th year senior this year and coming off of the bench, not exactly what most people envisioned when he came here.
And ultimately that is why he is not here with us. He was not good enough to start for us.
 
players have the right to transfer if they graduate in 4 years. he exercised that right. it's a risk you take with a redshirt, and one that shouldn't have come as a huge surprise when the guy goes from starter to role player. not shocking that that's not how he wanted to end his career. I'm sure he has aspirations to continue to play. next man up. we'll be fine.
 
Players have the right to transfer, most certainly. I'm just saying there is a mature/professional way to go through the transfer process after 4 years, and there is doing it in the dark of night where the coaching staff program is caught with there pants down, when it happens. Big difference between the way Wayne Sparrow left the program and the way ANO chose to leave and they both essentially left for the same reason.
 
ANO epitomizes what has been a bit of a problem for a few years and that is what I will call "unbalanced skills" for lack of a better term. Defensively he is a solid, even upper level talent, offensively, he's never found his game etc. On a team with other weapons, he could be an exceptional role player (great on D and good enough to not be a total hole on offense). On our team last year, with TD and DT both out there also a lot, he was needed to be the 3rd option on offense. He's no way close to that (in fact he should be a 5th option), but that's no more his fault than it is DT or TD's fault that they too are offensively challenged. Conversely, TJ was and likely will be defensively challenged, but fits nicely as a top 3 offensive weapon.

Our problem overall is too many guys like ANO that are too one dimensional. You can't play with 4 guys who are so uneven and are thus all best suited to be role players at the same time. TA is really the only returning guy that is a complete enough player to be called a good (not Ok or passable, but GOOD) all-around player. We need at least 2 more "good" (not just OK or passable) all around players on the floor. DT, TD, TJ, SDJ have so far NOT shown they are that. SDJ may still have a chance to be good enough on D to get there. TJ last year was not on D or on the boards. Others are clearly not there.

Hope for Wood, maybe a freshman and maybe a surprise step up from someone, but we need to be well better at a couple of spots to be what we are hoping to be. 3 "all arounders" plus a TJ OR an SDJ and then one of the D guys (TD OR DT) makes for a decent lineup with the upside to be very good, but right now our most likely lineup is 1 all arounder, plus 2 D guys and 2 O guys.

IF Wood can be an all arounder (and he's the best hope) and one of SDJ or TJ steps up their defensive game (but remember, OK or passable or similar are not good enough!), then we have the other as an O guy and one of the Sr's as the D guy and we are dangerous. But that's two big "ifs" on Wood being the guy and someone stepping up big time!
 
It amazes me the number of people on this board who call ANO soft or say he is not a big loss and then expect Wood to come in and be a better player. Wood's career statistics are almost uniformly worse than ANO's.

ANO had better offensive and defensive rebounding percentages, better turnover rates, better block and steal rates, drew more fouls per minute, shot better from 2pt range, but Wood does have a very small advantage in 3pt shooting (27% vs 28%). If you think ANO was not a big loss I can't understand how you could possibly think Wood is a big addition.
 
You are comparing Wood's stats from 2 years ago when he was on a terrible Virginia Tech team and at the end of the season actually decided to quit playing the game. He obviously has a renewed passion for the game and has come into a situation that is the polar opposite of his previous situation.

I don't know if he will have a huge impact this year or not, but I think the extrapolation of what he did at Tech as being what we should expect from him here does not hold a lot of water with me.
 
If that is directed at me - - I am hoping on Wood, not expecting. IF, IF IF he turns out, we are a better team. We'll see! I'd really like to have ANO still here and he'd no doubt contribute! And I'd still be HOPING on Wood cause better players make for a better team!!

But those comparisons are pretty useless given Wood was in the ACC not the A-10 among a host of other reasons. We have had a bunch of successful transfer over the years whose numbers after arrival dwarfed what they did in their previous stop! And some who didn't as well. HOPING Wood is more the former!
 
It is almost to close too the start of the season to speculate about individual players.

But I will say Tarrant was a master at finding players with a big strength and a big weakness. He would find a lot of them and the weakness of each one would be covered by the strengths of the rest. He was very good at putting together a team with complimentary skill sets.
 
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We've seen players make big strides from one season to the next. In Marshall's case, it will be two season's strides. I'll go with CM's observations, Marshall is going to be a big plus for the Spiders. As for Alonzo, he was efficient on offense, as I don't feel he ever created his own offense, most of his points were when he was fed the ball, and had an easy layup or dunk. I'll cheer for the players who have elected to play for UR, and the players, that don't- As Mr. Wonderful says on Shark Tank, they're dead to me.
 
You are comparing Wood's stats from 2 years ago when he was on a terrible Virginia Tech team and at the end of the season actually decided to quit playing the game. He obviously has a renewed passion for the game and has come into a situation that is the polar opposite of his previous situation.

I don't know if he will have a huge impact this year or not, but I think the extrapolation of what he did at Tech as being what we should expect from him is not very indicative of his impact.
 
PhillySpider said:
If that is directed at me - - I am hoping on Wood, not expecting. IF, IF IF he turns out, we are a better team. We'll see! I'd really like to have ANO still here and he'd no doubt contribute! And I'd still be HOPING on Wood cause better players make for a better team!!

But those comparisons are pretty useless given Wood was in the ACC not the A-10 among a host of other reasons. We have had a bunch of successful transfer over the years whose numbers after arrival dwarfed what they did in their previous stop! And some who didn't as well. HOPING Wood is more the former!
Click to expand...

The post was not directed at you, but was inspired by your post and many posters on this board who are trying to rationalize losing ANO by saying he wasn't that good while simultaneously expecting Wood to be a big part of our team. I just don;t see how someone can simultaneously believe both of those things to be true since ANO was the better player by virtually every measure. I hope Wood is good too, it just is not very likely that he will be what people here are expecting him to be.

If you told me to guess which player was better with no knowledge other than one transferred from the ACC to the A10 and the other transferred from the A10 to the ACC I think it would be pretty easy to guess which was better.

As for comparing stats, kenpom luckily keeps individual stats for players against what he calls Tier A teams, teams in his top 50. If we compare these career stats for Wood and ANO this is what we see:

ANO vs Wood
3pt: 27% vs 33%
2pt: 51% vs 31%
Fouls drawn per 40 minutes: 3.4 vs 1.7
Steal %: 1.4 vs 0.3
Block %: 8.4 vs 0.4
Turnover %: 22.6 vs 31.7
Assist %: 7.1 vs 4.7
Defensive Rebounding %: 16.6 vs 22.5
Offensive Rebounding %: 5.9 vs 5.2

So when only comparing their games against top tier competition ANO surpasses Wood in 2pt shooting (1.6x better), drawing fouls (2x better). steals (4.7x better), blocks (21x better), turnovers (1.4x better), assists (1.5x better), and offensive rebounding. Wood was statistically better at 3pt shooting and defensive rebounding. I would still take ANO over Wood, he was just so much better at so may things.

If you think someone's passion for the game is more indicative of their future success in the sport than their actual previous in-game performance than I don't know what to tell you.
 
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I will miss ANO and I think the team will too. I've previously stated that I think he was mishandled by our coaches, just my observation, but as fan2011 points out, he was very efficient in what I think were too few minutes played, particularly on offense.

As for the whole 3/4 year argument, dude was here practicing week in and week out all four years. Hard to argue that doesn't count.

Most important, he's gone. Bummer but whatever. I hope he finds success and hope we do too.
 
If he was such an "efficient" player than how come the coaching staff removed him from the starting line-up at numerous times during this career. The answer to that question is because he didn't perform on par with his abilities during game situations. And I think that is where the "soft" comments are coming from. Maybe "soft" is not the right term, but ANO was one of the few players, possibly only player CM has removed from the starting line up on multiple occasions due to lack luster play.
 
OK, so how many players in the history of our program were "complete" players without a discernible shortcoming?

In the past 30 years, I can name 3 or 4 who come close (KA, KA, Harper, and Newman). There may be a couple more who merit a mention. The fact is, until we are a consistent Top 25/NCAA program, those are the kinds of players we will get. The secret is putting a team together with chemistry.
 
No doubt ANO never lived up to his potential at UR but CM closed the door on him getter closing to it by his non-starter role and ANO realized this and made his decision. Probably knew he wouldn't be handed a starter's role at Pitt but Dixon probably told him he could if he showed more than the other newcomers vying for the spots.

CM stated he was surprised by his departure which means there was no post-season talk with ANO about his senior role on the team and IMO that blame rests solely with coach. I'm surmising CM saw DT as a better option to be the guy defending opponents SFs (I agree but seriously DT's best work at defensive isn't covering guys out deep) with having bigs like TA and TJ in there at the same time.

Though from what I have seen TA would be very close (equal?) to being the defender DT is out there on smaller 3s plus with all the automatic switching the Spiders do on D who's really covering there intended guy anyway? Maybe CM's thinking is he can't afford TA being the guy in foul trouble? Smart but unfortunate he forget that at the end of the JMU game last year when UR had to foul. LOL!

Fan2011 should appreciate these Kenpom stats.

Usage (% of possessions used)
This describes a player’s role in the offense, by explaining how many of his team’s possessions a player is personally responsible for ending while he is on the floor.

Major Contributors (24-28% of possessions used)
0 Kendall Anthony
15 Terry Allen
10 T.J. Cline

Significant Contributors (20-24% of possessions used)
3 ShawnDre' Jone

Role Players (16-20% of possessions used)
33 Alonzo Nelson-Ododa

Limited roles (12-16% of possessions used)
5 Trey Davis
1 Josh Jones

Nearly invisible (<12% of possessions used)
11 Deion Taylor

OK the above is an offensive stat but realize I looked up every other A10 team and only two players were classified as "nearly invisible." Means the guy wasn't really involved on offense which IMO translates to playing 4 against 5.


A simpler version of personal efficiency (above stat) is this one

True shooting percentage (TS%)
Points scored / ( 2* (FGA + 0.475*FTA) )

Kendall Anthony
55.2%
Terry Allen
57.7%
T.J. Cline
60.3%
ShawnDre' Jones
55.4%
Alonzo Nelson-Ododa
56.5%
Trey Davis
49.3%
Josh Jones
50.9%
Deion Taylor
37.5 %

Maybe 97 as you stated ANO wasn't good enough to start here but I think you would tend to agree that unless there is a change to this season's starting 5, or less time for a few starters, or starters improve, it won't be good enough to maximize UR's season ending finish. Or maybe if they don't go dancing that's their best effort but hopefully that won't be the case!



 
ANO was not soft. And he wasn't benched due to lackluster play, imo. Our best 5 players would definitely include ANO and TJ, but the offense did not run well with both out there together. TJ and ANO are both best suited for the same position in our offense and TJ earned the spot. TJ was clearly not only a better offensive player, but a spark plug for the whole team.

we all wanted them out there together. it just didn't work.
 
SpiderHoops32 said:
Our team was better without ANO, and we will be even better without him this year.
Click to expand...
I think you mean we played an easier schedule without ANO. We were less efficient both offensively and defensively when he was hurt, but luckily his injury coincided with a stretch of games against bad teams.
 
SJ, good post. Lost in this discussion is the improved team defense that we played once our best individual interior defender got hurt last year. I think this resulted from as you said, Deion, being pulled inside for interior defense, where he is very good.

And the lack of reliance on a shot blocker. We have had several stud shot blockers in ANO and Garrett during Mooney's tenure and while exciting, their shot blocking presence did not neccesarily make us a great defensive team. We had our best defenses when we had guys like Geriot back there, who just were rugged, stand your ground interior defenders. I think this type of defender might be a better fit for CM's match-up defense.
 
our defense is also better when our super stud shot-blocking all everything tough guy defender doesn't get backed down into the paint and dunked on by Mo Allie-Cox. That won't happen with DT this year. Our D will be very good. I hope he blocks a lot of shots for Pitt.
 
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