He did struggle shooting today but, as you alluded to, he was still a positive player in the game. Likely our best perimeter defender or soon will be. Made some nice off ball rotations and also was good about going over the top of screens on shooters. Some of our more experienced were having problems with that. Loved that rebound (maybe it was a steal) push and laser pass half the court right up the gut to Vince.
Excellent point. He plays so smart. If Carsen can play that smart he would be better as he is so good physically. Let's hope takes Dakotas lead.
The thing Dakota does so well is he plays great off ball defense. It is very similar to playing post defense. As a post defender, if you don't put the work in off the ball, a good post player is going to be able to establish good position. You see this a lot with Swanigan and Haas off the ball and being able to get good shots within 6 feet of the bucket. Watch Mathias off the ball some time and you'll see a player who is putting the work in off the ball to deny a pass to a good wing player. CBoogie is a great defender one pass away but needs to improve more off the ball. Once he does, he will take a major step forward and he appears to be a much higher IQ basketball player than most freshman coming in. When you keep adding players that have high ceilings and have high basketball IQ's (Mathias, Biggie, CBoogie, Cline, PJT), you get a team that passes the ball as well as Purdue does. A team that passes up good shots for great shots.
I think what you are eluding to is that as a starter, Vince tended to look for his own shots...which I think is a totally fair assumption. CMP has long stated that when Vince allows the game to come to him and work within the offense, he is a totally different player. Some times it is hard to see because Vince is a some what of a smooth and laid back type of player (not really an emotional guy on the court) but it was painfully obvious that Vince was shot hunting and forcing the issue the first few games.
I'm really not sure what is meant by "natural 4", but I do tend to think that Painter's offense tends to work best with 3 guards and a highly versatile 4 with great vision (such as Hummel, Edwards, or this year's version of Swanigan).
