BC Calfan said:
"I don't think we were in trouble when Ryan Forehan-Kelly was playing or AJ Diggs, Connor Famulener or Alex Pribble.
Sorry KAB, we were in trouble w those guys. One of Braun's faults was his usage of walk-onsrfk notwithstanding. AJ Diggs era was cringeworthy.
A.J. Diggs was one of my favorite players off the bench. A starter he was not. But if you are behind in the game, and need possessions, and need the ball, Diggs would get it for you. Put him in the game, and in no more than a minute or two, he would have his first steal. He made teams adjust for him, keep the ball away from the guy he was guarding. Of course he had so many other weaknesses, he'd get overwhelmed and be out of the game in 5 minutes time.
Diggs wasn't "cringeworthy" for me. What was cringeworthy was the two years of Wyking Jones' regime. The team was awful. Almost every strategy or tactic made me cringe. I left Haas, and watched on TV, and then it deteriorated from there, from watching 40 minutes to watching 10, and then not watching games at all, as I couldn't bear to see them.
What makes me cringe even more than a walk-on who can't cut the mustard, is a recruit, a player using up a scholarship and not living up to his ranking, and some to their hype before they arrived on campus.
Gary Franklin
Circus King
Stephen Domingo
Don Coleman (Wyking's "go-to guy")
Kahlil Johnson
D.J. Seely
Shahar Gordon
Gabriel Hughes
Jamal Sampson
Erik Bond
Nikola Knesevic
Kaileb Rodriguez
Sean Jackson
Emerson Murray
Eric McCullough
Kennedy Winston
There are more, but I only went back as far as recruit rankings go. I would take a walk on like Robert Thurman or a Jeff Powers over anyone on that list, and I'd take AJ or Forehan-Kelly over most of them. I wondered if I should put Sampson on the list, but since he made me cringe several times a game, I put him on. I know there are some Sampson-lovers, but compared to the hype that preceded him, he was a flop at Cal, left early, and was a flop everywhere he went in the NBA. Couldn't be depended on to make wide-open two-footer.
SFCityBear