(11-23-2020 09:40 AM)Lush Wrote: one article said keith could play some spot four as well. rap in a practice video i saw looked solid as hell; surprised to hear he has defensive liabilities
Hard to get much from practice videos, mostly pretty short. Brannen said that Rap has been showing nice physicality with Vogt, but my concern isn't so much his interior defense at center, but his perimeter defense if he plays the 4. I've gone back and watched quite a few games from Rap playing at Colgate. One of his big issues is simply giving up on the play when he gets beat, that is correctable but also a common trend for him over the past few years. Brannen will probably fix it, or Rap will be sitting on the bench.
The other issue is more about his size/mobility and depends on what position he plays. If he plays center, he should be fine, he's mobile enough to guard most big men and strong/tall enough to hold his own on the interior. But playing the 4 is another issue entirely, he doesn't have great mobility and aside from freakish athletes (Diarra) it is hard to be 6'10" and guard a smaller guy on the perimeter, even much better athletes (like Scott, Diarra or Gary Clark) struggle with it at times. A lot of teams run a 6'6"-6'8" more mobile guy at the 4 and Rap is going to struggle to guard those guys. It seems like on film he gets beat off the dribble a fair amount while at the 4.
This issue with likely be exacerbated if Rap is playing with Vogt at the 5. Not only will Rap have issues guarding on the perimeter, Vogt isn't a great help defender, so if/when Rap gets beat there won't be good help for him. I expect teams to focus heavily on getting Rap in a mismatch on the perimeter and then bring Vogt's man out to run the pick-and-roll. Last year Vogt was weak in pick-and-roll defense and with Rap also not being great defending the drive it seems like an area other teams will try to exploit.
Maybe all my speculation will turn out wrong, but I am expecting it to be difficult to play Rap and Vogt at the same time. If they pair up well enough on offense we may be able to do it anyway and accept that we will give up some defense but score more on offense. But if they aren't generating a lot of offense, they probably will be unplayable together.
The other interesting part of the Rap/Vogt pairing is neither is that mobile. Show me a team playing two guys with the size/mobility of Rap and Vogt and I expect a grind and pound type team. Not a fast past running team. Rap is mobile enough that he'd be workable as the 5 in a fast paced offense, but Vogt isn't really built to run and it's already a stretch to have him at the 5 in a fast-paced offense, put them together and it's hard to expect a fast-pace.
With our bigs especially we are going to have the ability to almost completely alter the look of the team depending on who is in. Rap/Vogt will be a slower paced pound the interior type offense and a beefy interior but poor on the perimeter defense, while with Diarra/Eason we'd be set to be a fast paced spread the floor and slash type offense and a lock down perimeter defense but vulnerable to opposing bigs with a lot of size. The different combinations will make it interesting to watch and see what works and Brannen will likely change it up if something isn't working. We may also go small at times with Rap/Diarra at the 5, Williams at the 4 and 3 guards. Or the opposite with Rap/Diarra/Vogt at the 4/5, Eason/Davenport at the 3 and Williams at the 2.
The versatility sounds good in theory, but with the number of new faces and short off-season due to Covid, will guys have picked up enough to be able to play the multiple positions that would require?
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Starting 5 for 20-21 hoops
