Disclaimer: Madsen knows much better than I the capabilities of the guys on his roster, and he's forgotten more about basketball than I'll ever know. So this is in no way a criticism of Madsen's strategy, but rather a musing on what levers he might be able to pull to overcome our injury bugaboo and other early season shakiness.
I've been surprised how tight a rotation Madsen has been playing and how few minutes other players have received. I sense he's been trying to secure wins under difficult injury circumstances with a thought that we didn't have the luxury to lose early season winnable games while experimenting with the roster, and I appreciate that. But my sense is that Madsen should begin widening the rotation significantly -- I'm thinking Brown, Pavlovic, and maybe Larson as three that would see the biggest increases in minutes, Let me make the case....
(1) Goals and How to Get There:
If the goal was to get an NCAA tournament berth then Cal could ill afford to lose too many of these early games against middling competition. I had hoped maybe we could earn a berth by racking up a good non-conference record and going a bit over .500 in conference, with a P-12 tourney win or two, and get in with a record of maybe 18-12 or something like that.
Now that we will be shorthanded for a while and have taken some early losses, an NCAA tournament berth is still my goal, but I think the path to the tournament is clearly more perilous and might have to look more like this: we need to be a team that, in early March, the committee perceives has dramatically improved from the early season, thereby somewhat discounting our early losses. So I'm willing to risk some more early season losses in an attempt to really crack the code on unlocking this team's maximum potential come next March. There's precedent for teams with weaker records getting a berth if the committee believes they are much better now than earlier.
Maybe this was always our most likely path to the Big Dance, but I for one thought we'd be better early in the season than we actually are. I thought we'd win all 4 of our first games and would end up with a very good non-conference record. The shortfall is partly due to injury and partly due to less effective defense (and less overall cohesion as a team) than I anticipated.
(2) Reality of Our Team's Health
We now have 3 of our top 8 players injured. I know Kennedy should return fairly soon, and that should help a lot. But I think Madsen needs to account for the possibility that these players could reaggravate injuries and may require a somewhat lighter load after their return. Askew and Celestine were in boots on Friday; even when they come back Madsen will probably need to be careful with them for quite a while. Same with Kennedy, though I'd be a tad less concerned with an injury to the non-shooting hand than with a foot injury (which will take a constant pounding). So this implies that we should develop a deeper bench.
(3) Point Guard Issues
Askew did some good things in the Bakersfield game, but many on BI have noted his uneven play and some think he is not well suited as a point guard on this team. I share these concerns....I think this is a weak spot in our roster construction.
Now that Askew is out for a while, we'll need another PG solution anyway, but best case is we develop someone else or another way to play that addresses this issue. I think we need to try to develop Pavlovic and see what he can do for us. Even if he does not become the starting PG, I think we'll need him to provide relief there -- a lot more than Madsen has used him so far. I'm not necessarily bullish that Vlad is ready, but we know he's a hard worker and a relentless defender -- so let's see how quickly he can adjust to this level. I'm not sure if Rodney Brown could be a point guard, but even if not, without a top PG we'll probably need more ball handlers, so this makes me want to see Brown get a big boost in minutes a lot more than I want to see Bowser pick up the slack.
(4) We Need to Raise Our Ceiling....Calling Rodney Brown
I don't think we're as good as I expected AND we have injuries. To become a much, much better team by March we need to hit gold on some player development. To me, the biggest potential upside from what we've seen so far comes from Rodney Brown. Madsen didn't play him much in the first 3 games....unsurprisingly, he probably didn't think Brown was ready yet. I propose that we give Brown heavy minutes now and use the remaining non-conference games to see what he can provide and how we might change our approach to take advantage. Now we should do this for anyone Madsen thinks can make a big leap (I already argued for more minutes for Vlad above). So I'm cool with whoever Mark wants to take a shot on, but it seems to me that Brown is the most obvious candidate outside our current rotation to make a big leap.
(5) Issues With Our Bigs -- Maybe Larson Could Help
I won't pretend to really understand what the issues have been with our defense. Fardaws seems a bit slow defensively and he can definitely be exploited by clever coaches. Larson is a different kind of big man than Fardaws or Okafor. But I'm told Gus can shoot the 3 (as can Fardaws) so I have a sense that we need to change what we're doing and maybe having another shooter out there who is also a rebounder on defense could help in certain situations. Now Larson seems more like someone who could spell Newell more than a sub for Fardaws or Okafor. But my supposition is that we need a much deeper rotation than it seemed like 2 weeks ago, so I'm really just saying I think Gus Larson might be able to find a role and it's wroth giving him some minutes to find out.
(6) Other Options
Clearly Madsen felt that Bowser was the most ready to step on short notice in against Montana State when Askew and Celestine became unavailable. I'm wondering what others think, but my sense is that Bowser is not really a guy with a huge untapped ceiling. Can he improve and contribute? Surely. But he's not the guy I'm counting on to step up and save our season.
Could Wrenn Robinson be a guy who could get some time at point guard and maybe take some of that burden off others? I really have no idea. Does anyone feel optimistic about that?
Keonte Kennedy will surely be a key player when he returns. He's not a point guard, but could we see more ball handling from him than we expected? Seems like that's a decent possibility.
Lastly, Jalen Cone has tried to be a PG before. He certainly has speed and a handle, but would having to run the offense take away from what he does best? I'm not sure, but I think we can expect Cone to play some PG for us until Askew returns.
Conclusion
Whatever we do, my hope is that when Askew and Celestine return our team has more players who are in a position to contribute, and hopefully one, two or three guys who have really stepped up from what we were expecting before. Tyson looks to be an incredible all-around player, turnovers against Montana St. notwithstanding. Clearly he will be a huge part of whatever success we have, and he could step up too. But I was already expecting huge contributions from Tyson, so I'm not looking at him as one of the key swing factors in whether we make the Big Dance, make the NIT, fall somewhat short, or, heaven forbid, face plant vs. our earlier expectations.
I know this is a long posted advocating for things that may already be obvious to many Cal fans. But I'm really interested in what people think the outlook is, and what we might try personnel-wise and schematically to try to achieve some of our loftier goals. I'm not saying we'll reach the NCAA tournament, but I think it should still be our goal until it's clear that it won't happen. Then our goal can be the NIT, but this team is built with key players in their final year of eligibility, so while we clearly also want to develop our team for future years, there's a strong element of "win now" that is inherent in the roster that Madsen has put together.
Even though there have been some disappointments so far, there's no way in hell I was typing out a post like this last year under Mark Fox. So we've come a long way, baby. In Madsen I trust!
I've been surprised how tight a rotation Madsen has been playing and how few minutes other players have received. I sense he's been trying to secure wins under difficult injury circumstances with a thought that we didn't have the luxury to lose early season winnable games while experimenting with the roster, and I appreciate that. But my sense is that Madsen should begin widening the rotation significantly -- I'm thinking Brown, Pavlovic, and maybe Larson as three that would see the biggest increases in minutes, Let me make the case....
(1) Goals and How to Get There:
If the goal was to get an NCAA tournament berth then Cal could ill afford to lose too many of these early games against middling competition. I had hoped maybe we could earn a berth by racking up a good non-conference record and going a bit over .500 in conference, with a P-12 tourney win or two, and get in with a record of maybe 18-12 or something like that.
Now that we will be shorthanded for a while and have taken some early losses, an NCAA tournament berth is still my goal, but I think the path to the tournament is clearly more perilous and might have to look more like this: we need to be a team that, in early March, the committee perceives has dramatically improved from the early season, thereby somewhat discounting our early losses. So I'm willing to risk some more early season losses in an attempt to really crack the code on unlocking this team's maximum potential come next March. There's precedent for teams with weaker records getting a berth if the committee believes they are much better now than earlier.
Maybe this was always our most likely path to the Big Dance, but I for one thought we'd be better early in the season than we actually are. I thought we'd win all 4 of our first games and would end up with a very good non-conference record. The shortfall is partly due to injury and partly due to less effective defense (and less overall cohesion as a team) than I anticipated.
(2) Reality of Our Team's Health
We now have 3 of our top 8 players injured. I know Kennedy should return fairly soon, and that should help a lot. But I think Madsen needs to account for the possibility that these players could reaggravate injuries and may require a somewhat lighter load after their return. Askew and Celestine were in boots on Friday; even when they come back Madsen will probably need to be careful with them for quite a while. Same with Kennedy, though I'd be a tad less concerned with an injury to the non-shooting hand than with a foot injury (which will take a constant pounding). So this implies that we should develop a deeper bench.
(3) Point Guard Issues
Askew did some good things in the Bakersfield game, but many on BI have noted his uneven play and some think he is not well suited as a point guard on this team. I share these concerns....I think this is a weak spot in our roster construction.
Now that Askew is out for a while, we'll need another PG solution anyway, but best case is we develop someone else or another way to play that addresses this issue. I think we need to try to develop Pavlovic and see what he can do for us. Even if he does not become the starting PG, I think we'll need him to provide relief there -- a lot more than Madsen has used him so far. I'm not necessarily bullish that Vlad is ready, but we know he's a hard worker and a relentless defender -- so let's see how quickly he can adjust to this level. I'm not sure if Rodney Brown could be a point guard, but even if not, without a top PG we'll probably need more ball handlers, so this makes me want to see Brown get a big boost in minutes a lot more than I want to see Bowser pick up the slack.
(4) We Need to Raise Our Ceiling....Calling Rodney Brown
I don't think we're as good as I expected AND we have injuries. To become a much, much better team by March we need to hit gold on some player development. To me, the biggest potential upside from what we've seen so far comes from Rodney Brown. Madsen didn't play him much in the first 3 games....unsurprisingly, he probably didn't think Brown was ready yet. I propose that we give Brown heavy minutes now and use the remaining non-conference games to see what he can provide and how we might change our approach to take advantage. Now we should do this for anyone Madsen thinks can make a big leap (I already argued for more minutes for Vlad above). So I'm cool with whoever Mark wants to take a shot on, but it seems to me that Brown is the most obvious candidate outside our current rotation to make a big leap.
(5) Issues With Our Bigs -- Maybe Larson Could Help
I won't pretend to really understand what the issues have been with our defense. Fardaws seems a bit slow defensively and he can definitely be exploited by clever coaches. Larson is a different kind of big man than Fardaws or Okafor. But I'm told Gus can shoot the 3 (as can Fardaws) so I have a sense that we need to change what we're doing and maybe having another shooter out there who is also a rebounder on defense could help in certain situations. Now Larson seems more like someone who could spell Newell more than a sub for Fardaws or Okafor. But my supposition is that we need a much deeper rotation than it seemed like 2 weeks ago, so I'm really just saying I think Gus Larson might be able to find a role and it's wroth giving him some minutes to find out.
(6) Other Options
Clearly Madsen felt that Bowser was the most ready to step on short notice in against Montana State when Askew and Celestine became unavailable. I'm wondering what others think, but my sense is that Bowser is not really a guy with a huge untapped ceiling. Can he improve and contribute? Surely. But he's not the guy I'm counting on to step up and save our season.
Could Wrenn Robinson be a guy who could get some time at point guard and maybe take some of that burden off others? I really have no idea. Does anyone feel optimistic about that?
Keonte Kennedy will surely be a key player when he returns. He's not a point guard, but could we see more ball handling from him than we expected? Seems like that's a decent possibility.
Lastly, Jalen Cone has tried to be a PG before. He certainly has speed and a handle, but would having to run the offense take away from what he does best? I'm not sure, but I think we can expect Cone to play some PG for us until Askew returns.
Conclusion
Whatever we do, my hope is that when Askew and Celestine return our team has more players who are in a position to contribute, and hopefully one, two or three guys who have really stepped up from what we were expecting before. Tyson looks to be an incredible all-around player, turnovers against Montana St. notwithstanding. Clearly he will be a huge part of whatever success we have, and he could step up too. But I was already expecting huge contributions from Tyson, so I'm not looking at him as one of the key swing factors in whether we make the Big Dance, make the NIT, fall somewhat short, or, heaven forbid, face plant vs. our earlier expectations.
I know this is a long posted advocating for things that may already be obvious to many Cal fans. But I'm really interested in what people think the outlook is, and what we might try personnel-wise and schematically to try to achieve some of our loftier goals. I'm not saying we'll reach the NCAA tournament, but I think it should still be our goal until it's clear that it won't happen. Then our goal can be the NIT, but this team is built with key players in their final year of eligibility, so while we clearly also want to develop our team for future years, there's a strong element of "win now" that is inherent in the roster that Madsen has put together.
Even though there have been some disappointments so far, there's no way in hell I was typing out a post like this last year under Mark Fox. So we've come a long way, baby. In Madsen I trust!
