Khan4Cats wrote:So far so good. I know I was among several UNI fans arguing that UNI would still be in the top tier despite last years' results because of Jake's history of developing players and what we saw. I know a lot of fans just looked at losing Morgan as being a massive blow, but sometimes it seemed the whole team was waiting for Jeremy to do something last year. This year they are able to play into their roles, and the other thing Jake does in addition to developing players, is finding the right pieces to plug into place and making the sum greater than the individual parts. Still have two big tests before conference (iowa State (N) and home with Xavier). At least split those and we head into conference with a tremendous non-con (already been pretty good). We'll see how the grind of Valley play goes as those teams, minus Valpo, are familiar with us.
This was something I argued over the off season. Jake's systems aren't built on one player taking over like Jeremy did. J-Mo did what J-Mo had to do, but you could just see the rest of the team default to him. Never really seemed comfortable outside of getting him the ball. Once could argue Washpun was the same time of "ball hawk" on offense, but it was different. The ball was in his hand with screens, cuts, and movement to open a lane for him to drive and kick. J-Mo was more of a stalled offense.
Washpun was very similar to Kwadzo in that regard. The ball was always in his hands all the time. He actively sought to have it in his hands. It wasn't in his hands to stay in his hands like we saw with J-Mo. It was in his hands to create.
Playing last year with a true freshman at PG with a rFr, another true freshman, a JUCO walk-on that was supposed to redshirt and a grad transfer wasn't supposed to be how the back court got matched up with J-Mo.
