Because it's NEVER too early to be talking about W&M Tribe Basketball. As March Madness rears its head yet again, we're excited about the possibilities that our 2016 squad can accomplish. In analyzing the starters (and next the bench), we honestly think that we might be even stronger than this past year -- especially relative to the rest of the CAA.

Below is our analysis of the 2016 starters. All are pretty straightforward, except perhaps the big man position. Check it out, let us know what you think, and LET'S GO TRIBE.

Article: http://wmsportsblog.com/2016/03/13/looki...-starters/

I think there's no way your starting 5 won't start the season but Pierce may take some minutes from Dixon if Daniel starts the 2016-2017 season they way he shot the past two months of this season.

I expect Malinowski to give us a nice bump on offense but we'll miss Tarpey's defense.

Curious to see how our offense runs without Sheldon in the high post. Both Whitman and Seacat don't seem like great passers out of the high post and might limit our chances at scoring on back-cuts to the hoop.

Defense is going to be a giant scare next year. I doubt we win many games when we don't cross the 70 mark

(03-13-2016 03:53 PM)Tribal Wrote:  I think there's no way your starting 5 won't start the season but Pierce may take some minutes from Dixon if Daniel starts the 2016-2017 season they way he shot the past two months of this season.

I expect Malinowski to give us a nice bump on offense but we'll miss Tarpey's defense.

Don't you think that Burch could fill that role? That is, unless, you think Pierce is more of an all-around player than Burch, which is understandable.

(03-13-2016 04:31 PM)WMtribe17 Wrote:  Curious to see how our offense runs without Sheldon in the high post. Both Whitman and Seacat don't seem like great passers out of the high post and might limit our chances at scoring on back-cuts to the hoop.

Defense is going to be a giant scare next year. I doubt we win many games when we don't cross the 70 mark

What do you think of Nate Knight? The Freshman will come in as already the biggest player on the team, at 6'9" 255. Looks like a beast in all of his highlight videos.

(03-13-2016 04:33 PM)WMSportsBlog Wrote:  

(03-13-2016 04:31 PM)WMtribe17 Wrote:  Curious to see how our offense runs without Sheldon in the high post. Both Whitman and Seacat don't seem like great passers out of the high post and might limit our chances at scoring on back-cuts to the hoop.

Defense is going to be a giant scare next year. I doubt we win many games when we don't cross the 70 mark

What do you think of Nate Knight? The Freshman will come in as already the biggest player on the team, at 6'9" 255. Looks like a beast in all of his highlight videos.

He is raw. It is tough to learn everything you need to know on defense in your 1st year.

Even if he does do well, nobody on our team can consistently stop dribble penetration except Dixon which will leave us victim to the usual wide open corner 3.

I know far less about bball than most people on this board. That's my disclaimer.

My eyes tell me Burchfield isn't consistent enough to play a lot.

I do think Seacat will improve but Knight, based solely on YouTube highlights, won't be ready to contribute much his first year. That's totally acceptable as his size allowed him to flourish in HS but the CAA has enough 6'9 - 6'10 experienced college players to slow him down a bit.

Knight is a year away from playing against 15-18 year old high school players most of them much smaller than him. If he's a monster he would have completely dominated the prep league. I have hope that he'll blossom into something really good, but he's moving up into a league with a lot of players with way more experience and ability.

Fingers crossed.

If Seacat or Whitman don't step up this year then both are officially busts. I'll bet that Whitman comes back and surprises a lot of folks. He's been hobbled with injuries and should be pretty solid if he's healthy. Seacat is a total unknown after this season. My guess is that he'll be average at best.

(03-13-2016 04:33 PM)WMSportsBlog Wrote:  

(03-13-2016 04:31 PM)WMtribe17 Wrote:  Curious to see how our offense runs without Sheldon in the high post. Both Whitman and Seacat don't seem like great passers out of the high post and might limit our chances at scoring on back-cuts to the hoop.

Defense is going to be a giant scare next year. I doubt we win many games when we don't cross the 70 mark

What do you think of Nate Knight? The Freshman will come in as already the biggest player on the team, at 6'9" 255. Looks like a beast in all of his highlight videos.

I think Burchfield will be a big contributor next year.

We need Dixon to be 100% for the team to have a good year.

(03-13-2016 06:25 PM)Tribe32 Wrote:  If Seacat or Whitman don't step up this year then both are officially busts. I'll bet that Whitman comes back and surprises a lot of folks. He's been hobbled with injuries and should be pretty solid if he's healthy. Seacat is a total unknown after this season. My guess is that he'll be average at best.

I think you would have labeled Sheldon a bust after his sophomore season if you were using this criteria. Seacat and Whitman are the best offensive post players we've had in a while, but I don't know if we'll be able to stop anyone. Whitman is a foul machine, so I think Seacat and Knight will get plenty of game minutes to show their worth regardless of Coach Shaver's preferred rotation.

Marcus Thornton, Omar, Daniel, and Terry all had to play their way into the rotation as freshmen, and they're the best players we've had in the last 5 years. Pierce and Knight will likely get rotation minutes, but they'll have to earn backup minutes, because it's very unlikely they'll get to start with veterans already at their positions.

I think the blog post is right about the starters, and not to slight Omar and Cohn, this team will go as far as Dixon goes. If he can finish the season healthy, unlike the past two, we'll have our best chance to win the conference tournament. His shooting has been solid except when he's had wrist problems, and his defense has been stellar, downgraded to good when he's had various leg ailments. We know what we're getting from Omar and Cohn, and it's great. Hopefully we'll get to see a healthy backcourt come tournament time next season.

As far as the bench goes, Tot will be the first man off the bench, and hopefully Coach Shaver sees fit to play him at a variety of positions. Burchfield will spell Dixon mostly, and I think we could see a 3 man rotation with Omar, Cohn, and Tot. I don't know if we'll ever see Schlotman or Rowley in significant minutes, but if we did it would be next year. The "known asset" hole in our rotation is at the 4. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cohn, Burchfield, Dixon, Prewitt, Whitman/Seacat as a regular lineup when Malinowski is resting. Based on his highlights, we might see Knight get some 4 minutes, but again, he's a freshman and Coach Shaver doesn't play freshman a lot.

Yes, hope Dixon can have a healthy season next year. As a senior, he will need
to bring a level of physical and mental toughness as well.

On the big man front. If the Whitman we saw at the end of the season is the one we see entering the season, we should be fine. He seemed aggressive scoring and rebounding and not afraid to bang underneath. His build and knowledge of the offense trail Sheldon, but his athleticism and offensive skills can be much greater. I felt like Seacat, in his limited role, did some OK things. I think if he focuses on being physical and bringing energy he will be fine. Knight will take his lumps and certainly need to adjust to the speed and size of college basketball players. I don't put much stock into high school highlights to gauge production. I look for the skillset they possess and the potential to improve. With improvement, where do I see Knight in 2 years? In 4 years? I focus on the things you can't teach that he does well that translates right away. a) he has very long arms and tends to keep the ball high b) he has soft hands- both catching the ball and scoring around the hoop. While that 255lb number looks great, I kind of feel he is a little more chunky than chiseled. I'd try to convert some of that babyfat to muscle or lean down a little.

(03-13-2016 08:50 PM)mrjoolius Wrote:  On the big man front. If the Whitman we saw at the end of the season is the one we see entering the season, we should be fine. He seemed aggressive scoring and rebounding and not afraid to bang underneath. His build and knowledge of the offense trail Sheldon, but his athleticism and offensive skills can be much greater. I felt like Seacat, in his limited role, did some OK things. I think if he focuses on being physical and bringing energy he will be fine. Knight will take his lumps and certainly need to adjust to the speed and size of college basketball players. I don't put much stock into high school highlights to gauge production. I look for the skillset they possess and the potential to improve. With improvement, where do I see Knight in 2 years? In 4 years? I focus on the things you can't teach that he does well that translates right away. a) he has very long arms and tends to keep the ball high b) he has soft hands- both catching the ball and scoring around the hoop. While that 255lb number looks great, I kind of feel he is a little more chunky than chiseled. I'd try to convert some of that babyfat to muscle or lean down a little.

Agreed. Biggest game for Seacat was holding his own against Hofstra. Whitman got his minutes back after recovering from getting his tooth knocked out, but I was always eager to see Seacat come off the bench after the Hofstra game. The thing he did best was using his height on offense. Gustys isn't a jumper, so he just shot over him.

I feel good about the inside play going forward with 2 more years of Whitman, 3 more years of Seacat and 4 years of Knight. Barring injury, they should develop nicely next year and be fabulous in 2017-2018.

I will go out on a limb: Next season's team will have, barring major injury/injuries, an unprecedented fourth consecutive 20-win season and strongly compete for a CAA championship.

Malinowski is a budding impact player, the three-man center players will more than adequately fill Sean's spot,
Omar is poised for a tremendous senior season and, if he stays healthy, Dixon should have his best season yet. Add Cohn as the dynamic point guard to drive this group with Burchfield, Tot, Pierce and even Rowley
as more than adequate bench strength.

Based on conversations with coaches, I'm betting that, as the season wears on, we'll see the two exceptional freshmen play more minutes than we might believe right now.

And I still haven't given up on Schlotman. Michael is no Chris Darnell: Schlotman has very good basic skills.

This can be a formidable team.

Tot and Seacat will surprise us next year by earning minutes and some possible starts. Tot when he is confident (which he lost during the season when he had virtually no playing time) is better at running offense than Cohn who has a tendency to revert to one on one play ground ball. Cohn is clearly the better player and his quickness is awesome but he needs to stay within the system.

Seacat played well in his first game at N C State and when he got consistent playing time. Wish Shaver had given him more minutes and experiences this past season. Whitman is injury prone so my guess is we will see Seacat start 33% of the games next year and the two combined will create one of the best center combos in the CAA.

Greg will have a break out season on BOTH defense and O challenging Pewitt as the leading scorer and assume Tarpey's D role!

Dixon is a great player who had a tough injury....he will come back and show why he was the best 3 shooter in the country before his injury. His D combined with Greg will be key.

Pewitt is a stud at scoring but needs to work on playing in the system --Shaver has to send the message early and hard.

Burch will challenge for minutes as his game has evolved to more than a 3 point shooter on both driving and D.

Pierce has great press let us hope it translates to results and get us over the top!

I think our team will struggle next year relative to where we've been for the past three. I expect us to be about a mid standings CAA team.

I think the two big problems will be the loss of transition baskets and rebounding/defense in the post.

Unless someone can fill Terry's shoes as a ballhawk we won't quite be able to get out in transition and get easy baskets like we did this year. It also added a nice wrinkle to our defense and helped spark huge runs for us.

The other big issue I foresee is in the post. Unless Seacat gets a bunch of minutes I think we'll get absolutely mauled down low. We lose both of our top rebounders from the season before and I simply don't think Jack has the size to compete with some CAA big men. He's a threat on offense where he can use his quickness and moves but on defense I can see us getting pushed around. A lot of multi-shot possessions for our opponents.

On the plus side our depth will again be a huge asset next season and it looks like both freshmen could contribute early.

Next year is really put up or shut up time for Omar too. His whole career he's had the confidence of a volume shooter without the team really needing him to fill that role. But next season we may need to lean on him for 20+ multiple nights. He has the talent, he has the confidence, and now he has the perfect situation. It could be a huge year for him.

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Dixon and Tarpey were less efficient this year than 2014-15 and the offense was still humming along thanks to Prewitt and Cohn. Plus Tarpey was still a solid scorer- he just put his 3 point shot in storage in the offseason and couldn't remember which box it was in. It happens to all of us. We have enough evidence to say that as long as Shaver has a couple offensive weapons he'll cobble together a solid offense. This was the 4th straight year they've had the most efficient offense in the conference (per KenPom). Whitman will be a junior next year much like Sheldon was when he replaced Rusthoven with similar experience and playing time. Seacat has offensive moves in the low post (#FreeSeacat). They'll score, and they'll likely tear apart teams with questionable defenses who throw zones at Burchfield.

Tarpey was their best defensive player last year by a not insignificant amount. It's tempting to joke that they can't get any worse on D but they can. Assuming that none of the incoming freshmen are Scottie Pippen Jr. defensively they'll need guys like Cohn and Burchfield to be at least average defensively just to make up for Tarpey's loss.

We are all assuming that Malinowski gets the nod as a starter replacing Tarpey. It is possible that Tot starts at the 3 and Omar at the 4 and that Tot jumps lanes on defense almost like Terry. Tot doesn't have the 7' wingspan, but he does have the instincts.

Shaver hasn't done a lot of position-switching the last couple of years. I see us playing four guards (two points, Cohn and Tot, and two off-guards, Dixon and Burchfield).

I assume Malinowski will take the open forward spot. Depth at that position may be the most wide-open competition we have in the fall. I assume the candidates are Rowley, Pierce and Knight.

Rebounding is going to be a major struggle for us (especially against Towson, CofC, UNC-W) and I don't think a three guard lineup, which is what you would have with Cohn, Dixon and Tot on the floor at the same time, can work. In addition, unless you totally moved Tot from the point guard rotation (replace with Schlotman?), you are asking a player to rotate between point and forward. That is a tall order.