halftime of exhibition up 52-28. Bowden and Lamonte look good and Lamonte handling the ball a little better. Newcomer Gaines has some length to defend. Kent looks like he won't do much. Fulky dominated first few minutes. Jalen Johnson looks same. Pons a factor rebounding and blocked shots and needs to stay down low. Newcomer Pember looks better than Kent. The guy from Finland is smoothe but needs a lot of work as expected. JJJ will need to take over at some point but his release looks raw. At one point we had Gaines, Jalen, JJJ, Pons and Fulk, all lefties.
no and its ridiculous. This team of course looks a lot different. Ball seldom goes to the post, but we do have a couple of guys in Turner and JJJ who can draw and dish. Lots of high picks on ball, which is cool
This team can make the tournament. We will take our lumps this year, which is expected, losing as much as we did from last year's team, but this team still has some ability. Can't afford injury to Bowden or Turner. They are the leaders and are gonna be relied upon to score. James brings a nice drive and dish guy to the table, and once he settles in I think he'll be a good mid range scoring guy. I like the potential of Nkamhoua and Pember. I like Pember better than Fulkerson already. But both those guys will only get better as they put on more muscle over time with strength training. Need one of the big guys to step up and be another scorer to go along with the guards. And itd be nice if Plavsic can get eligible. Really need him. I think defensively we will be fine. But its going to interesting to see what we do offensively against good teams.
turned ankle is gonna put Pember behind a little. He def moves better than expected and knows what he's doing.
tough little matchup early. Asheville getting up in us early. Fulk has been all over the place. Lamonte bothered by pressure. JJJ smoothe but no shot. Dude from Finland is strong for a freshman but needs to go harder. Pons looks ok early. Comfortable on the block but hit a nba top of key 3 off pick and pop
Whooooole lot of unforced errors. Think this team will be all over the place this year. Hopefully the young guys get some good experience and improve.
12 first half turnovers...that will have Barnes dropping every clean version of a four letter word in the locker room.
Turner and Bowden aren't good ballhandlers under pressure. #5 looks comfortable with it and uses his size.
I'm a little concerned about where the scoring will come from against top level opponents. Still think we win about 18-20 games, but the two awful recruiting classes of 2017 and 18 will have their effect. We could've really used Blackshear. Low post presence isn't ideal and Kent surely must be in his last year in Knoxville, especially if we are over-signing.
There will be a lot of up and down with this team. There will not be consistency in scoring I'm afraid, which is to be expected after losing what we lost last year. But this team will generally play good defense, they got a little lazy at times tonight but hopefully that gets better as the season goes on. Pons with a good game, need him to step up this year. Gotta clean up turnovers too. Way too many, especially from the guards. We clean that up and tighten up on D to end both halfs and it's a 30 point victory.