I very nearly spit out my drink. You felt as a recruit and after his freshman year that John Shurna was an All-American and one of the probably 25 or so best players in all of college basketball? He was what he was and never got better?
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I very nearly spit out my drink. You felt as a recruit and after his freshman year that John Shurna was an All-American and one of the probably 25 or so best players in all of college basketball? He was what he was and never got better?
He should have scored 30 points a game if he had improved. Had to settle for all-American.
Where did I say he had not improved or that he came here as an AA? All I said was that his improvement was not as much as some here would suggest. Let us start by looking at his Soph-Sr years. Stats pretty similar. There was some tightening of his game so he had slightly more steals and blocks and slightly fewer turnovers but would you say he was drastically different player? I would suggest that while he was a bit better in a couple areas but he was basically the same player. Better? Yes but major difference? No. So then we get to Frosh year. There was a major difference in minutes played so the only way to view his game is to adjust it for minutes played. Again, stats show he was a similar player. There was about a 20% difference in points per 40 minutes played but with others on the team, he was more of a secondary option and he took fewer shots per time played than he did in following years. Adjust his shots taken per 40 minutes to something similar to what was taken in his Soph -Sr years and things get much closer.
You could argue his body was not ready for 35 mpg as a Frosh or that he was not getting the shots because he was not as adept at getting open. But I would argue he could have handled a lot more than the 18 mpg he got. Had guys like Coble and Moore not been on the team at the time he likely would have gotten those extra minutes and potentially the extra shots as well. End result is yes there was an improvement but it was closer to 10-15%. which I would suggest that while it is definitely improvement, it is not what I would call major improvement. It definitely is the difference between nothing and all BIG or AA HM.
Shurna was great but he was no Vedran Vukusic. That said, someone has done some serious work on Shurna's wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shurna
His minutes were doubled because a couple guys that played a lot were no longer with the team. Easy to increase numbers significantly under those circumstances.
I feel like we can stop beating the dead horse... I think the point has been made here haha. The votes have come in and it is about 10 to 1.
I don't think this is the hill you want to die on.
I think you are having to make an awful lot of assumptions that I don't agree with. He made "The Leap" from his freshman to sophomore year, from lanky kid with potential to fully-formed elite player, then over the next three years improved his shot selection, three point percentage, defense, rebounding, strength, handle, and ability to finish in traffic, all while being the focal point of opposing game plans. He developed exactly as you would want your best player and leader to develop. The only other NU player I can think of in the last two decades of NU hoops who just kept getting better and better is Reggie Hearn.
What is an example of a college player who made the major improvements you speak of?
No one is saying that BC is a great defensive or a defensive-minded coach, but he wasn't stupid; he knew that his team needed to play the best defense that it could in order to give itself the best chance to win.
Problem was, BC didn't have a lot of talent on the defensive end (not that he had that much talent on the O-end either), which is why he pretty much stuck to the 1-3-1 zone (and had his players fall back on D rather than try for rebounds).
But for much of his tenure, players like Moore, Coble and Shurna were typical at the 2, 3 and 4 spots.
Every now and then, BC would have a Hachad or Nash to man the top of the 1-3-1, but there would be too many holes at other positions (Juice did pretty well on the defensive end despite his limited height/reach, as seen in his steal rate, but there was only so much he could do).
It wasn't until the injury-plagued 2012-13 season that BC could field a team mostly w/ + defenders.
Cobb, Hearn, Crawford and Swop would have meant that the only position deficient on D would have been at the 5 (usually there would be 3 or even 4 spots on the floor deficient on the D-end).
In addition, there's a reason why BC lamented the loss of Lumpkin - as he was expecting Sanjay to be a contributor on the defensive end.
W/ such a lineup, the 'Cats could have switched back and forth from man to the 1-3-1 zone; w/ the zone being even more effective ('Cuse running their zone D is more challenging for opposing offenses due to the level of talent) and definitely would have been the best defensive team fielded by BC.
It is when you consider that opposing defenses keyed on stopping Coble, Juice and Moore when Shurna was a frosh
After that, defenses started to key on John, esp. during his SR year, when Juice was no longer around.
Makes Shurna's improvement in his 3P% shot (from .347 to a blistering .440) is even more impressive (efficiency tends to go down when taking more shots, and esp. when you're the man and expected to carry the load and take shots even when not the most opportune ones) considering the circumstances.
Stick a SR Shurna on the 2016-17 team and his efficiency would have improved (opposing defenses wouldn't have been able to focus just on Shurna and he could have been more selective in his shot selection, even if that meant taking fewer shots).
Like Juice didn't play thru being banged up?
And BMac wasn't playing that great even before he got banged up; and what's BMac's excuse for being less efficient his JR season (when he had, by far, his worst 3P shooting %)?
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Nice try. But, Carmody sucked and I'd be glad that he and his disrespect for recruiting, defense, and rebounding is gone forever. Except the painful memories still haunt me and I expect they always will until we win our first NCAA title.
Except for one or two recruits that he couldn’t get through admissions, that talent deficit was a self-inflicted problem.
Indeed. It would have helped if he would have been on campus for Frank Kaminsky's visit with his NU alumni parents.
I admire his gumption not to play the sickening recruiting game we see playing out in court right now but if you refuse to recruit then you’d better win big... and he only did that in the Ivy League. I don’t think you can practically refuse to recruit in a P5 conference.
Showing up for a kid's official visit isn't my idea of gumption or part of some sickening recruiting game. The Adidas crap going on is totally irrelevant.
No one who refuses to recruit can win big. And he did practically refused to recruit in a P5 conference. And we gave him 13 years. Woe be unto us that allowed this to happen.
I wonder if he was just a lousy pitchman and his idea to combat that issue was to get out of the way and let the assistants handle it?
While he also sucked at it, Carmody also didn’t like recruiting. Double whammy.
