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Post by beaveragain on Dec 9, 2022 20:55:45 GMT -8
All a point guard means is that they direct the offense/defense. Ari McDonald completely dominated her teams scoring and took them to the title game. But does anyone doubt that she was the teams PG? I think that the best PG's are the ones who lead their teams to victory. Whether it's passing, defending, scoring, or just leading them. How it's done is irrelevant so far as I'm concerned.
Bendu vs Martha is a battle between defense vs offense. If Bendu's shooting comes around then it isn't a contest because her defense is really good. But if it doesn't then the team may need another scorer and if Martha can keep providing that then I think we have a new starter. But I'm really pulling for Bendu putting it together.
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Post by rmancarl on Dec 10, 2022 11:21:48 GMT -8
All a point guard means is that they direct the offense/defense. Ari McDonald completely dominated her teams scoring and took them to the title game. But does anyone doubt that she was the teams PG? I think that the best PG's are the ones who lead their teams to victory. Whether it's passing, defending, scoring, or just leading them. How it's done is irrelevant so far as I'm concerned. Bendu vs Martha is a battle between defense vs offense. If Bendu's shooting comes around then it isn't a contest because her defense is really good. But if it doesn't then the team may need another scorer and if Martha can keep providing that then I think we have a new starter. But I'm really pulling for Bendu putting it together. Completely agree with you on the PG. If we only accepted what some consider a true point guard, there would only be a very few teams that actually had one. As for Bendu/Martha, Bendu has played four years as a starter in Power 5 ball, and had a redshirt year, but has never been an efficient shooter. She did have one year where she nearly shot .400 from 3, but overall she is not a great shooter. Still, I think her overall play and experience give her a big edge over Martha for minutes played. If Martha does beat her out, that is good news for the Beavs, because that would mean that Marta really is better than most of us expected. Tomorrow's game will be a big test for Martha. She's be up against some real talent at guard for the ducks.
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Post by grayman on Dec 10, 2022 21:24:33 GMT -8
TVO is a natural two. That's her skill set. I would argue that Bendu's quickness, ball-handling and passing are certainly good enough to fit in as a true point guard. And she has high level defensive skills. Between Bendu and Martha, who is just now finding her sea legs as a college basketball player, I think the Beavers are just fine at PG and definitely in a better situation than last season. Destiny Slocum was a true point guard, I'm just not sure Rueck liked her tendency to sometimes become a sort of loose cannon. I don't buy into the PG is the problem for this team. I think the lack of consistent perimeter shooting has hurt to a much higher degree and that hasn't been because the passes to open players haven't happened. Having the body and skill set of a point guard means little if you have the mind set of a scoring guard. A point guards first priority is to get their teammates involved in the offense. They do not prioritize themselves at the expense of others. Just because a player is given the option of being the primary ball handler does not mean they are operating in the role of a point guard. Slocum, when she was at Maryland and Oregon St. was primarily using her possession of the ball to dribble herself into screens to facilitate her own skill set. Using picks and screens was her primary offensive option. In doing so she she ate up considerable clock so that when her own offensive options did not materialize, she passed the ball to her shooters whe were then forced to take dificult shots with the clock running down. The shooting percentages of the players on her team reflected a real drop in 3pt shooting percentage with her on the court. Only Mik in her Jr year did not have a considerable percentage drop compared to before Slocum was at point. However, it dropped like a rock her SR year and cost her big time in her draft position. Her off guard at Maryland dropped an entire 100 points from her previous year. A good PG would have the opposite effect. I am not implying that the point needs to eliminate their own offensive game. Not hardly, in fact they need to at least be able to hit from outside to keep the opposition from dropping of them. However, Slocum's scoring guard mindset was not conducive to utilizing the skills of the players aroundher. It was not just a coincidence that Oregon St over achieved until Slocum became the point.Then they suddenly became underachievers. Well, Slocum definitely tried to get out and push the pace, which I don't think SR liked very much. Maybe she dribbled too much at times. You saw a somewhat selfish player that hurt her teams. I saw a dynamic player that fit the type I believed OSU needed to continue to succeed at a high level. I'm not sure either view is completely wrong or right. What I do know is that in 2018-19, Slocum led the team in scoring with 15.4 points a game and finished with 153 assists and 97 turnovers. Compare that to Sydney Wiese's senior season in which she led OSU with 15.4 points with 154 assists and 97 turnovers. In 2019-20, Slocum tied with Mikayla Pivec as the team leader with 14.9 points. Slocum had 150 assists with 76 turnovers in 948 minutes while Pivec had 145 and 76 in 1,091 minutes played. Aleah Goodman led the team with 16.2 ppg and had 98 assists and 47 TOs in the shortened 20-21 season. I guess you can throw in TVO from last season, though she wasn't really the point for quite a few games. She led the team with 13.7 pts and had 94 assists and 91 turnovers. Pivec had 165 assists with 94 turnovers in 2017-18 but did not lead the team in scoring. So we can see that the point guard more often than not leads OSU in scoring and that Slocum had two of the best seasons, at least statistically, at the position. The Beavers were also 26-8 and 23-9 in her two seasons.
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