It's late May. Nothing's going on athletically now that the school is on break. So...
Of the 33 recruits who committed to Seth Greenberg, if you were to build a team of 13 to play Buzz's style of basketball, who would you pick?
Your post options:
Gene Swindle 6-11
JVZ 6-10
Coleman Collins 6-9
Terrance Vinson 6-9
Cheick Diakite 6-9
Hyman Taylor 6-9
Cadarian Raines 6-9
Lew Witcher 6-8
Victor Davila 6-8
CJ Barksdale 6-8
Jeff Allen 6-7
Your Wings:
Deron Washington 6-7
Justin Holt 6-7
Terrell Bell 6-7
Manny Atkins 6-7
Jarrell Eddie 6-7
DFS 6-7
JT Thompson 6-6
AD Vassallo 6-6
Wynton Witherspoon 6-6
Dorenzo Hudson 6-5
Darrian Pellum 6-5
Ben Boggs 6-4
Robert Brown 6-4
Your Point Guards:
Jamon Gordon 6-3
Marquie Cooke 6-3
Malcolm Delaney 6-3
Zabian Dowdell 6-2
Erick Greene 6-2
Tyrone Garland 6-1
Marquis Rankin 6-1
Nigel Munson 6-1
Hank Thorns 5-9
Comments
You would have to think Delany and Erick Greene would be no brainers. They could shoot, drive, create their own shot and get to the foul line.
Delaney and 4 Deron Washingtons.
Montrezl Harrell
Dorian Finney-Smith
edit: whoops he's on there, didn't see him at first due to the initials
Erick Green
Malcolm Delaney
Jeff Allen
Deron Washington
Coleman Collins
Bench:
AD Vassallo
Zabian Dowdell
Jamon Gordon--these 3 could all be excellent first off the bench
Cheick Diakite
JT Thompson
Lewis Witcher
Nigel Munson
Victor Davila in the Greg Donlon role
Jeff King. /s
ill tell you someone on the list that ended up being a pretty good ball player at lesalle. ty garland. although for some reason he could never figure out how to shoot in bburg to save his life hes a guy a followed and watched have moments where he was unguardable.
He saw a better chance for an NCAA berth at La Salle
He was terrible at VT. I remember going to an early season game his freshman year, he caught the ball wide open and I screamed "NO DONT SHOOT". Half the arena started laughing (it was pretty empty) and he just froze.
Robert Brown is another one that was terrible in BBurg. After he announced his transfer intent I played against him at McComas, still couldn't hit anything against regular guys. Somehow was good enough to take down Iowa State.
Malcolm Delaney
Erick Greene
Zabian Dowdell
Jamon Gordon
Deron Washington
Jarrell Eddie
Dorenzo Hudson
AD Vassallo
JT Thompson
Jeff Allen
CJ Barksdale
Cadarian Raines
Cheick Diakite
Starting 5:
Greene
Delaney
Washington
Allen
Raines
I would swap out Dowdell for Greene but otherwise there is not argument with this list.
D. Hudson would have been a big help against the zone with his ability to hit the elbow jumper.
Yeah, I was back and forth between Dowdell and Greene in my starting 5, figured you really couldn't lose between the 2 though
Half of those big guys wouldn't fit on the team just due to personality. Allen might fit the system but Buzz would butt heads with him. Same with Raines and Barksdale.
Deron, Delaney, Greene and Eddie would be great, as would Dowdell. Vasallo would fit in any system today, and a healthy JT Thompson actually would fit too.
I also can't fathom Allen and Buzz working harmoniously.
Quit hand-cussin!
Steph Curry :(
Steph Curry college stats(vs opponents like Charleston, Furman, GA Southern, Wofford, The Citadel):
2006-2007 - 21.5 ppg; 2.8 assists; 46% fg, 40% 3pt
2007-2008 - 25.9ppg; 2.9 assists; 48% fg; 44% 3pt
2008-2009 - 28.6 ppg; 5.6 assists; 45%fg; 38% 3pt
Zabian Dowdell (vs ACC schedule)
2006-2007 - 17.4 ppg; 3.1 assists; 46% fg; 38% 3pt
AD Vassallo
2007-2008 - 16.9 ppg; 2.2 assists; 44% fg; 39% 3pt
2008-2009 - 19.1 ppg; 2.6 assists; 45% fg; 36% 3pt
Malcolm Delaney
2008-2009 - 18.1 ppg; 4.5 assists; 38% fg; 35% 3pt
Sure Steph is one of the greats now, in the NBA, but there is nothing to indicate that in college he would have done any better than the guys we had on our roster.
he was a better shooter than all of the guys we had on our roster and generated those stats as the only serious threat Davidson had.
paired with other good shooters, an excellent transition game, and superb spacing and ball movement; i.e., buzzketball; he would have been unstoppable.
Greenberg's blunder with the Currys is perhaps the biggest in college sports recruiting history
Agreed as modified. He was not at the start, as evidenced by reports of the practice he had with VT during his recruiting cycle.
Absolutely agree. As the player he became at Davidson, he would've killed it under Buzz, if the chemistry fit. (You never know with Buzz, he's an odd duck.)
True only in hindsight. With the information Greenburg had at the time (during his recruiting cycle), he wasn't an ACC-caliber player.
of course...what-if and hindsight is what this thread is all about
and Seth signed quite a few non-ACC caliber players...
I know this thread is about how these guys would have done with Buzz, but, looking at what it was..Greenbergketball?...would he have been paired with other good shooters? an excellent transition game, and superb spacing and ball movement? Good shooters, yeah, the others...debatable.
Against better competition, if you put Curry on our roster in place of the guards we had during those years (Dowdell, Vassallo, Delaney), I really don't think he would have been any more impressive than the guys we had.
Curry was undersized coming out of high school, didn't play AAU, and only had offers from Davidson, (pre- Shaka Smart) VCU, and Winthrop, so it's not like anyone else was really high on him either...also, due to several early commitments, we had no scholarships for him to play as a freshman. (He wouldn't have played much as a freshman anyways, with Dowdell and Gordon leading the backcourt). He was offered a 4 year scholarship, to redshirt his freshman year, but Steph decided not to go that route.
Should Greenberg have pulled a scholarship away from one of the early commitments in order to give it to an unproven kid not generating a whole lot of excitement, who wouldn't play much that year anyways?
This is the first I've heard that Steph was actually offered a scholarship. Everything I've read says he was offered a walk-on spot.
Edit: NM, I see what you're driving at. Walk-on (no scholarship) as a redshirt, then scholarship after that.
he was the 7th pick in the NBA draft...the others, not so much
I loved Zabe, AD and Malcolm but 28.6 points and 5.6 assists per game is significantly better than any of the stats our players posted... That's roughly equivalent to 40 points of offensive production game in and game out. That's half of a high scoring college game from one player.
Again, look at who Steph was playing against. There is no reason to think he would have those same numbers against ACC opponents (unless you look at his NBA production, which there was no way of imagining in 2005 when he was a high schooler)
Also, maybe the perceived snub from all the big dogs is what gave him the motivation to prove everyone wrong. Nothing to say he would have developed into the same player he is today if he had come to VT
I think it's a fair point to note that he did this without better players around him to take pressure off of him. He was the main focus defensively for his opponents, and he still racked up pretty good numbers. As an ACC player, with a better supporting cast, defenses would not have been able to key exclusively on him, and he may well have been able to put up similar numbers.
We'll never know, though. This can be argued back and forth ad infinitum.
Fair enough.
I just think dumping on Greenberg for not stripping a scholarship away from someone who had already committed in order to give it to Curry, basically just on name alone, because he didn't want to redshirt for a year that he would barely play anyways is a little overboard.
I agree. In hindsight, it was the wrong call. With what information he had at the time, it was a tough choice, and he did what he thought was best.
In 5 NCAA tournament games (FR & SO seasons) he went for 31.6ppg, 3.4apg, 45.9%fg, 42.4% 3p against the likes of Maryland, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Wisconsin and Kansas. Curry was just fine in college.
pretty small sample size of decent competition
UHH...this is not decent. This is elite production against Five Premier programs. Greenberg not securing the Curry's commitments especially Steph was his biggest blunder.
At least we learned our lesson and didn't miss on the second Curry...
The obvious guys are AD, Delaney, and Greene. JT would be fantastic, Deron is a rich mans Chris Clarke, and Bell was the perfect wing.
In the games Bell was able to contribute on the offensive end, those teams could and did beat the best teams in the country.
Deron would have been a great player in Buzz' system. He was a bigger version of Clarke.
Buzz really needs a Terrell Bell, a lockdown guy on the perimeter. I know it's the in-style to complain about the size of Buzz's teams but I'm much, much more concerned about how bad the defenders are. Very few guys who lock a guy down. Even Devin Wilson, lauded for being too good of a defender to not play, was merely adequate. Maybe it's coaching because defensive fundamentals seem poor across the board. Terrell Bell maybe would be a bad defender under Buzz.
I know he was a James Johnson guy and he was only with the program for 1 year, but I liked what I saw out of Malik Müller. He left when Buzz came to town, so maybe he wasn't a fit as an OKG, but thought there was promise there that Buzz would have liked.
Starters:
Erick Greene
Malcolm Delaney
Jarrell Eddie
Deron Washington
Jeff Allen
Bench:
Coleman Collins
Cadarian Raines
CJ Barksdale
DFS
JT Thompson
AD Vassallo
Jamon Gordon
Zabian Dowdell
Zabe, Jamon, Deron, and A.D. (not foul)
Zabian Dowdell
Jamon Gordon
Deron
JT Thompson
Coleman Collins
Steph Curry and Seth Curry
Oh wait....
Malcolm Delaney is criminally underrated/underappreciated by casual VT fans. That guy was consistently great during his time here, and would be dynamite in Buzz's system.
Raines and Jeff allen with guys like J Rob feeding them my god the thought of that offense