A quick first look at this year's team

Basketball is back!!!

At the season ticket holder event this evening fans were treated with a sneak preview of the year's team. The team played one half of basketball. No Anthony Lamb or Ben Shungu for his one but every other player played at least a few minutes. Extrapolating one half of basketball into a entire season's performance is always a fun exercise so let the overreactions begin! Biggest takeaway right off the bat is the depth of talent on this team. They are two deep at every position and are going to have impact players off the bench. Over the past few seasons they have had to cobble together their bench play and in the big games the rotation often became very small. Whoever turns out to be the second unit has a chance to be just as impactful as the starters. The battle for minutes is going to be fierce and this might be the year Becker is able to go back to the more even minutes distribution that he prefers. This group has so much length and athleticism. Becker has always had top notch defensive teams and I think this group has a chance to be one of his best. If the new players are quick studies of the system, watch out. Both transfers (Duncan Demuth, Daniel Giddens) are going to make an impact on the defensive end. Demuth is going to make some of big hustle plays and play hard nosed defense. He looks like the ultimate glue guy who is going to do a lot of little things to help the team win. Giddens has a limited offensive skillset but can absolutely jump out of the gym. He is going to have some electrifying dunks this year. His challenge will be to stay out of foul trouble and limit his turnovers. To continue on with the new guys both of the scholarship freshman looked strong. Aaron Deloney was quick and fearless. He attacked the rim and finished through contact. He is definitely going to be able to provide an offensive spark off the bench. Eric Beckett looks like a Swiss army knife player. He did a little bit of everything and is built like a truck. The other big takeaway was that Ryan Davis looked like a stud. Slimmer, quicker, and more decisive, Davis was the leading scorer in the scrimmage. He has some nice finishes inside and hit a couple from three. I really think his injury last year slowed his development and he never really got back into the groove. He looks like he could make a big jump this season. Robin Duncan also impressed by knocking down a couple triples with confidence. His offensive limitations cost him minutes down the stretch last season. He clearly committed to improving his shot in the offseason as his mechanics looked very different. He stayed much more vertical with less of the drifting that created his shooting inconsistencies last year. If he rounds out his game by making himself more of a threat on the offensive end of the floor, the sky is the limit. Everyone else looked good as well. One last observation was that Nick Fiorillo, the walk-on from Maine, might be a diamond in the rough. He is bigger than I thought and has a nice soft shooting stroke. With a year of development he looks like he has a chance to be an impact player. What a treat it is going to be to go and see big time college basketball this season at Patrick.

P.S. You might notice a change to the name of the blog. When I started this six years ago I had a website as well where I tracked milestones and important stats. That was a little beyond my computer abilities but the website was called 14th State of Mind. I am so excited for this season I felt like it was time to jazz up the blog a bit so it was time for the name change. Thanks again to everyone who reads the blog and gives me an outlet for all of my ranting and raving!