Would Juzang have started over Boston or Clarke
- Thread starter rollsroyce8420
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remember hell, I was there, watching us lose to Wisconsin.
but that wasn't really the point of my post. It was about a false belief that UK is the kind of school that can keep a really talented player on the bench.
Can we stop acting like Juzang was this good last year?? Or that anyone expected him to make this big of a jump from year 1 to year 2?
We can be upset that he transferred but it’s ridiculous the people that are acting like he was heinously robbed of big minutes last year. He wasn’t this good last year, he worked at his game and improved to get where he is this year. If he had come back to UK and was better than Boston/Clarke, then yes I believe he would have been the starter. Stop using one season of Boston playing over Allen to support this argument. Just one year prior Cal planted Khalil Whitney on the bench for Quickley, if you’re trying to say he’s gonna start the 5-star freshman no matter what. And we were gonna suck this year regardless of how many minutes Boston and Allen played.
We can be upset that he transferred but it’s ridiculous the people that are acting like he was heinously robbed of big minutes last year. He wasn’t this good last year, he worked at his game and improved to get where he is this year. If he had come back to UK and was better than Boston/Clarke, then yes I believe he would have been the starter. Stop using one season of Boston playing over Allen to support this argument. Just one year prior Cal planted Khalil Whitney on the bench for Quickley, if you’re trying to say he’s gonna start the 5-star freshman no matter what. And we were gonna suck this year regardless of how many minutes Boston and Allen played.
LOL. He wouldn't have got the chance. He has a long leash at UCLA. Not having to look at the bench for your replacement and playing freely is a big deal.
So I have brought this up in other threads and this raises an interesting question. When Cal had Quickley and Quade he felt he needed another PG. Hagans was a late pickup and was a good player at least on defense that first year, but what if Hagans never comes and Quade and Quickley becomes the player he became or close by the end of his Freshman year. My point is you could have had Quickley or Maxey at PG last year and Juzang has opportunity for a lot more minutes at the 3. Hagans, Whitney, Clarke etc. were great athletes put not great basketball players that have really burned Cal the last couple of years.
There is simply no way you could have watched this past season, with the leash Cal gave Boston, and thought that Juzang would have started over him. Absolutely no way.
you can argue both sides by providing specific examples, but its hard to argue against Cal has a belief in certain players and others he does not, and that belief doesn't have to be validated by their play on the court during the game.
We've seen that on multiple occasions over the past few years and Cal has defended it multiple times over the years.
He got away with it for the most part until this year.
Now his credibility and judgement has taken a severe hit, especially when the player he doesn't believe in , plays in a game where he gets thrown out and torches the team for 23 points
We've seen that on multiple occasions over the past few years and Cal has defended it multiple times over the years.
He got away with it for the most part until this year.
Now his credibility and judgement has taken a severe hit, especially when the player he doesn't believe in , plays in a game where he gets thrown out and torches the team for 23 points
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If Juzang was as good at UK as he is at UCLA, then yes 100% he would play here.
Boston was given a short-leash because we absolutely NEEDED him if we had any semblance of being a good team. Dontaie Allen last year was nowhere near as good as Juzang is now (although I think he can be), so I don’t think Cal sitting Allen automatically means he would sit Juzang. Should Allen have played more? Yes of course. But let’s not act like Allen was even close to the same level this past year as Juzang.
I continue to think its wrong to believe the year hinged on whether Boston contributed at his expected level or not. What we do know is that Cal put an emphasis on a disproportionate amount of playing time for Boston and we had the worst season in UK history.
Certainly had Boston lit it up we would have had a better season, but to say we had to make the investment in Boston at the expense of our season in order to have any shot of doing something in March is just speculation and not based on any data points I can see.
We do have one very important data point, Boston was benched and we won a close game, to a team we lost to later on when Boston wasn't benched, correct?
Good post, but I disagree. Cal has a bad habit of trying to put square pegs in round holes, Skal, Sarr, and takes entirely too long to see it don’t work. By then you are halfway or more into the year. Cal is too slow to adjust, even when he tries
Yeah, cause Booker wasn’t getting abused on defense at all. Smh
You really think Cal should have benched Aaron Harrison in a tight final four game? REALLY?
Unknowable but I do know that Booker had been ice cold for like a month or more and absolutely was getting torched on defense that game. And we probably win the game regardless if the shot clock violation was called on them. They were gassed until that happened.
when you have 5 months with a player you can't think in terms of years of progression.
I think the fans see it as we want a short leash - or at least the same amount as any player, while Cal thinks he only has 5 months, he has to pick the guys he is going to run with and stick with them until it becomes so obvious he can't. Also, he usually has enough team talent to absorb those issues without it being obvious. When it starts getting obvious he goes to this bag of canned responses - blame me, not the kids, they're just freshmen, we're young, etc.,
This year however was just off the rails with that philosophy....and he was wrong
and he wanted to antagonize the fans about it
They do believe it and no facts will change their mind.
Cal absolutely would’ve started both Boston and Clarke ahead of Juzang. Promoting the draft stock of his five star NBA prospects is a cornerstone of his system.
If you listened to the comments from Juzang's father on the special CBS did on him this weekend, you would have heard that the Juzang family felt like JJ was being limited based on his skill set by being relegated to being a spot up shooter. It was a big reason why he transferred. So whether you or I believe it or not, the Juzang family felt like he wasn't going to be able to become the player he's capable of being at Kentucky based on the way Calipari wanted to use him.
Or maybe if Cal has went zone for a few minutes so Booker would not be on Kaminsky? Or uses a timeout before three shot clocks?
Of course I do. I also realize that Cal started a guy that couldn't shoot, drive, defend or rebound over an eventual All American.
Nope my post stated if he had benched them. I never said he should have. I understood why he stayed with them.
Cal will be on social media bragging about JJ and act like he did him a favor by allowing him to transfer.
And he did. JJ would have been sitting behind Boston all year. A leopard doesn't suddenly change their spots
That's fair. It seems like he didn't want to have to compete for shots/minutes and wanted to go somewhere to be THE guy where he could have free rein to play exactly how he wanted to. Tough situation because you're never gonna complain about getting a player like Boston and Clarke if you can at the moment, nobody knew they'd turn out as such busts and most players we've gotten of that caliber have turned out to be very good players. If that's the reason why he left, I don't really have a problem with it. Definitely unfortunate though. Just don't think you can blame Cal for wanting to bring in additional talented players. No one knew whether it be Cal, recruiting experts, other coaches, NBA scouts, fans, etc. that Boston and Clarke would be this bad, and Juzang would be this good.
Hindsight is 20/20
he would have been in the rotation
when Clarke went down he would have started
as many times as JJ has stated how homesick he was, it seems like so many just ignore his own words
he was not coming back regardless of whether he was going to start and play 40 minutes a game
And once Cal realized that, he took him out. The OP was asking whether Juzang would have started over Clarke & Boston. I said yes, EVENTUALLY. What happened with Whitney/Quickley justifies my point.
thats all just speculation
we could easily say that had Cal made a Boston like investment in Juzang (I'm not saying he should) that Juzang would have put his being homesick aside ( assuming that isn't a smoke screen just to protect him and the coach) and been happy being a focal point of the program.
as to him starting when Clarke got hurt, was Clarke even starting then?
Yeah man I just don't think we were gonna be a good team this year regardless. Just the fact that we're discussing how minutes adjustments affected close games between a mediocre Mississippi state teams says it all. No distribution of Allen/Boston minutes would have any drastic impact on how good our team is
But you're also missing that Juzang just wasn't that good last year. Neither you nor I nor anyone would have predicted him to improve this much. So obviously Cal making a massive investment in Juzang would have been a bad move that made no sense at the time.
Again, hindsight is 20/20
We have examples of this recently. Who were the 2 players? Kahlil Whitney and Immanuel Quickley. Whitney started the season at the 3 spot. He proved again and again that he was a liability. Quickley came off the bench to start the season. He came in and proved what he could do. Within 7-8 games, Whitney was no longer starting and Quickley went on to be the best offensive player on the team.
I expect that is exactly what would have happened with Juzang this season. Boston and Clarke would have been the starters on day one, but eventually Juzang would have become a starter and one of those guys would have sat the bench.
It wasn't just homesick, though. That's a nice way for the Juzang family to soften the transfer (It's not you, it's me ...) but the Juzang family also said they thought he was being limited in the way Cal was using him, they obviously didn't see that changing.
not on those two alone, however collectively as a team I think we had a team that could at a minimum be well above .500, finish 3rd overall in the SEC and made the tournament.
Is that UK standards? not even close but its not a complete dismantling of our program either.
