OneKeg said:
SFCityBear said:
helltopay1 said:
dear Civil: Not may have been for him. WAS for him. Ideal back-up PG for the next two years. Nobody wins without a quality back-up PG. So---is he still coming on May 11th??
Well said. A true point guard, even if he was a back up, would have helped Cal last season. Winston was a point guard, I think, but not skilled enough to get much playing time. Don Nelson used to say PGs are a dime a dozen. I don't think it is true any more. Most guard recruits nowadays are the combo variety (which means they are probably not good enough at either position to be listed that way only), and good point guards are hard to find. Cal hasn't had one since Randle, IMO, and even he morphed into more of a scorer.
If you count Randle as a good point guard (which I also do), then wouldn't you consider Justin Cobbs (who came after Randle) as a good point guard?
The guy averaged well over 5 assists a game over his 3 years at Cal and had a better than 2:1 assist/TO ratio. Sure like Randle, Cobbs became more of a scorer too later in his career, but his senior year was also his best assist year (5.8 apg, higher than Randle had any of his years).
I can't disagree with what you say. We all have our favorites. Cobbs is certainly in that conversation. My main point was that there are fewer good point guards around today. In comparing Randle and Cobbs, it is not all in the statistics. I think Cobbs had better big men to get the ball to him, and rebound his misses in Solomon, Kravish and Kamp. He had better scorers to dish the ball to in Crabbe, and later Wallace, Mathews and Bird. He was not quick enough to defend the point well, and that job often fell to Jorge. Randle had Boykin and later MSF to get him the ball, and he had PC and Theo to dish to, primarily outside scorers. Randle's last two years, Cal averaged 76 points, while Cobbs three Cal teams averaged 70 points. I think Randle made his teammates better, slightly more often than Cobbs did. it was just an impression. Cobbs was a good shot, but Randle shot the ball better than Cobbs from three and from the free throw line. I wished that Randle had been the same point guard at Cal that he showed in his high school videos, just a collection of wonderful dishes on the run in a fast break. D1 defenses take that away from you most of the time. But he changed and adapted, and became a scorer with an eye out for someone who had a better chance to score. His teams won something, a PAC10 championship, which means a lot to me and to that Cal team. I liked Cobbs a lot, but I never fully warmed up to him. He usually had to have the ball to be successful. I have this vision of him in the last seconds of a game, taking the inbounds pass and driving coast to coast for a shot. We all remember the great shots he made, and forget the misses. It's not his fault. I realize all coaches do this now, give the ball in the last seconds to their fastest and best athlete and let him do his thing. It is very primitive basketball, and low-percentage. However, a player like him could have turned Cal's season around last year and given Wyking Jones a lot less to worry about. Right now, if Cal had that chance again, I'd take Cobbs in a New York minute.