UrsaMajor;842853121 said:
Please learn to read (or re-learn if you forgot). No one is saying freshmen can't be good; what I am saying (and the stats bear it out) is that no one plays as well as a freshman as they did in high school; the opponents are bigger and faster and what constitutes a good shot in college isn't the same as in high school (i.e., the window of "being open" is shorter). Jordan Mathews was a 45+% 3-point shooter in hs, and shot 39% (still good) at Cal as a freshman. Relying on mostly freshman for scoring is dicey. Not that they can't do it, but expecting them to carry the load is not something I'd bet the house on.
As for Lee--you're right, he's a 5th year senior and should be able to be productive; otoh, he has never shown that much of an offensive game before (although perhaps he hasn't had that much of a chance before) and if he does so, it will be a bonus. At this point, Don Coleman has shown one move only: a bull rush to the hoop. At times that can be successful, but until he develops a lot more versatility, he's likely to be limited. Yes, he had a couple of good games, but overall, he averaged 4.5 ppg on 37% shooting (even on 2's he only shot 43%). Even in the CSUB game, while he had 26 points, he shot 7-19. Shredding is a bit of an overstatement.
Look, I want those players to succeed as much as you do, but let's try to be a teensy-tiny bit realistic.
I am a little puzzled by your posts on this subject. Is caltagjohnson trying to pump some sunshine here any less realistic than Shocky going so overly negative in his evaluation of the shooting ability of our freshman recruits? Shocky was seemingly not talking like the rest of us are, making predictions never having seen these players in action. Apparently he has seen this shooting on display in person, and even if they did not shoot well the days Shcocky was there, I still was surprised when Shocky went off like this.
I'd agree with your point about freshmen not shooting as well as freshmen as they did in high school. I do not agree with your comment that "NO ONE plays as well as freshmen as they did in high school." Playing well and shooting well are two different animals.
Statistics from high school are meaningless for comparison purposes. One major factor you don't mention for freshmen not shooting as well in college is simply that not only is their competition bigger and better, but so are their own teammates. He will get far fewer scoring opportunities as a freshman, because he has to share the ball with other very talented players. And he will have to share minutes with these players as well. In high school, he was usually the go-to guy, and he took most of the shots, and played a lot more minutes than he will in college. There usually was no one behind the star player, pressing him to take some of his minutes.
It has been a long time since I went to a high school game. Do they now play in short spurts like in college? In college there are timeouts seemingly every couple of minutes, and many coaches substitute liberally. A shooter needs to shoot, needs to get in a rhythm, and it is hard to do that if your teammates are also doing a lot of the shooting, or your coach is giving you a breather, or the game is often stopped for timeouts.
Another factor you don't mention is that the college stage is bigger, and the pressure is much greater than playing in front of 200 kids and parents in a high school gym. There have been some players who played well as freshmen, perhaps even better than in high school, but they are rare. The usual scenario was played out two years ago, when Cal was predicted by a couple on this board to be a Final Four team, largely on the basis of landing Ivan Rabb and Jaylen Brown. Neither played as well as freshmen as they had in high school. You could not say they had bad years, but they proved the point that even as talented as they were, being a dominant player as a freshman is no easy trick.
Finally, playing well as a college freshman does not mean the same thing as playing well in high school. If a star player scores 10 points less or shoots 5-10% lower in college, he can still be considered to have played well in college if he fits into an offense without detracting from it (making too many mistakes) and passes well, or plays defense well or rebounds well.