Not to turn this into a 2005 title game thread... but if the refs wouldn't have raped James Augustine with foul calls all game, Illinois would have won. Dude played 9 minutes.
5 fouls in 9 minutes for Augustine, but 1 foul in 34 minutes for May?
Last edited by HighJump31; 07-24-2012 at 09:17 PM.
Same excuse I hear all the time from Illinois fans. And my friends wonder why I hate Illinois and their fans....
May was by FAR a better player then Augustine. I've watched the game 5-6 times and Illinois couldn't handle May down low. Plain and simple.
May was good in that game, and in the tourney. But I still think Illinois was the better team, and I'm not even an Illini fan. The problem was that Illinois was guard heavy. When you have a guard heavy team, you have a lot of exciting and fast basketball.
and then you're screwed when one of your bigs gets in foul troubleOriginally Posted by Crystallas
Zack hates us
Yeah, but Augustine wasn't very good at doing anything. Webber should have had some kind of plan in place, but he didn't. It was basically let Brown get hot, and win games.
he was decent..a double digit scorer and a good rebounder, nothing fantastic..but at least he gives you some flexibility in the offense..
you take away the only remote post option you have, the defense has an easier time with focus..and it hurts depth-wise
I'll disagree with that statement all day long. Augustine was a tremendous rebounder. He's one of 12 Big Ten players ever with 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. Not to mention school records in rebounds and FG percentage. 1st team All-Big Ten his senior year. He was very good at doing a lot of things.
I don't know. Every time I saw him play, he looked like a klutz out there. But IIRC, he wasn't exactly playing a lot of elite competition either. And if he did, he had a lot of players able to provide a ton of distractions. Plus, his PG was D-Will. I mean, what big-man ISN'T going to get a lot of good looks with Deron watching the floor?
He failed as a pro for a reason IMO, and that's because he wasn't that good. He was 6'10", it's not like teams throw away bigs that quick.
You might be right that I'm hard and unfair on him, but I won't budge and say that his statistics matched the reality of his play. He was not very good.
hmmmm....maybe not in two seasons...but there are quite a few big men who are just scrapped away,go to europe, do absolutely nothing,etc.
i would say 6'10 is pretty average if you're talking about big men..maybe a little taller than average
You can't teach height. 6'10" is good enough to play 3 positions, and he apparently had all of the accolades to make him a desirable project. Anyways, if we're being real here, height only goes so far anyways. Wingspan + height is really the stretch factor. Just being tall, you're right, 6'10" could possibly be average.
I'm by no means saying Augustine is (was) better than Sean May. I'm saying Augustine was much better than Jack Ingram, who played the majority of the minutes for the Illini that night.
And I'm by no means saying he was an All-American type talent, but being first team All-Big Ten his senior year (without Deron Williams, Luther Head and Roger Powell) surely has to make him better than "not very good". Mike Tisdale could be considered "not very good" but Augustine was leaps and bounds better than Tisdale.
And Crys, your statement "He failed as a pro for a reason IMO, and that's because he wasn't that good.", there are a lot of "good" college big men that don't make it in the pros, and a lot that aren't taken that high in the draft. JaJuan Johnson last year is a perfect example of that.
Sure as a pro Augustine can be considered not very good, but as a college player he shouldn't even be in a discussion of players that aren't very good.
uhh,judging by your analysis and our consensus, i would never see augustin playing 3 positions(maybe PF and C but he'd be slightly undersized at center)
i agree on the wingspan thing...because essentially it's a hands-on sport..and so you're getting rebounds by reaching, making and taking shots by a release point,which is dictated by your wingspan...blocking shots..etc.
That's because you're blurring the lines here. You first said 6'10" players, now you're swapping for Augustine specifically.
I'll give you that, being the Illini's best option at the position and the time. I still don't like him or his game.
wut?
maybe i need to outline this(out of my own benefit because i am confused)
you said "he's 6'10, it's not like teams throw away bigs that quickly"
to which i said "6'10 is a pretty average height for a big man"
then you said "6'10 is good for defending three positions"
to which i said "ya, but i dont think a guy like augustine fits into that category"
to me, it seemed like you were connecting augustine to other bigs in the first response to make a point...partly by the fact of his height
i didn't say being 6'10 doesn't have it perks...i just said if you're a guy with not great perimeter skills like augustine then you're probably going to be playing in the post, and for a big, 6'10 is pretty average in height
Right, when you said 6'10" is average(maybe above) when talking about "big men", that is when the 6'10" issue strayed off Augustine in the specifics, and the point moved onto the "big-men" and height factor. That is where I said 6'10" is a good height for 3 positions.
well, i was referencing the fact that augustine was 6'10 and a big man....so his height wasn't anything special...
whatever...
anywho, i think the idea is that a guy like augustine, from a physical perspective, is not really that covetable....
never was a good NBA player
now in college? he was alright..he had a very good senior year,after d will left
For those of you downgrading Augustine, I forgot how awesome Sean May was in the NBA.
Augustine was a very good college player, but he was too short to play center in the NBA and not strong/athletic enough to play power forward. Happens to many good college players.
I think Illinois was better than UNC. But UNC was probably the most athletic team in the NCAA, and what hurt Illinois most was that UNC was uncharacteristically hot from 3. They shot 9-16. The officiating was terrible, but I think Illinois could have outscored UNC regardless except for UNC's long range shooting that night.
it perplexes that big men still want to go to unc with roy...please, can someone name me a successful big man in the nba from roy?
nick collison
raef lafrentz
sean may
brandan wright
tyler hansbrough
ed davis
wayne simien(though he didn't put him in the nba directly)
drew gooden(scary thought that this might be his best)
there are some more, but that's a pretty bad list
i guess it's the system that hypes them up in college so much, only to see them crash and burn in the pros
Roy Williams is one of my least favorite coaches of all-time, but I'm going to defend him here. One, not many big men are successful in the NBA to begin with. Two, those that are successful in today's NBA are usually athletic/defensive centers. I think all of those guys you listed were more of a scoring big man, especially from the outside. Even Sean May had a decent outside shot. None of them had great height...the only one that did was Greg Ostertag, who was vastly overrated in college but ended up having a mildly decent NBA career. I think of those listed, Collison is probably the best guy because he was also a banger, whereas guys like Lafrentz and Gooden were pretty soft.
So, I think Roy's system requires big men with a soft touch, and that skillset doesn't really translate to the NBA.
true,but i'm considering roy's supposed reputation with them(the fact that he gets so many high ranked ones) and even with a large sample size of successful big men in college, few if any have done anything substantial in the nba
hell, duke for all it's shortcomings with big men recently(might hurt we haven't had a top 10 big man in recruiting since mcroberts who was in an awful hs class), still has brand and boozer, and hell laettner made an all star game lmao
florida has david lee,horford,and noah
ucla has love(maybe not the best example,considering he was ranked high in a good class...but then again roy has gotten big men close to that highly ranked in good classes so)
texas has lamarcus aldridge
kentucky has anthony davis,demarcus cousins,chuck hayes,
georgetown has roy hibbert,jeff green,greg monroe
michigan state has zach randolph..wow
uconn has villaneuva(though he isn't that good now) and okafor(this is a pretty bad list,considering)
but i guess the big idea is that roy tailors his offense to bigs,and emphasizes refining skills...and gets these big men often rated very highly in the draft and taken highly(could be wrong, but most of the guys i listed were either top 10 picks or mid-late lottery,except for maybe simien) and they dont live up
it seems like a re-occurring theme
hell, the names i listed for the respective schools do not take into account some of the successful bigs that retired recently or went to the NBA since roy's tenure began at KU in 1988(i wish i could see some holistic review of all of roy's bigs put into the nba since 1988)
lafrentz was 6'11...ed wasn't a bad height at 6'10...drew gooden was also a good size for a PF at 6'10
i see your point about alot of successful big men are athletic or defensive centers..though i dont think ed davis or gooden or sean may were every really going to be centers in the nba...lafrentz i could see
i would say brandan wright was a pretty decent athlete
there are quite a few decent pfs that aren't great athletes(love,nowitzki,lee,gasol,scola,boozer,etc. )...even with centers you got guys like pekovic,gasol,kaman,and bargnani that aren't great athletes...
but i do think being good on defense and being athletic does you benefit in the nba and often correlates to success
that's kind of my point...i think roy got them accustomed to using a soft touch and having an up tempo offense really put them in good situations to score...alot of the big men have good skills, but the fact is it just doesn't translate well to the nba
zeller might be ok in the nba because he's big and can run the floor well...not so sure about henson..he might be a guy of the bench you want to block a few shots,get a few dirt boards..and get out
I agree with your point, but you also seemed to imply that Williams was a bad coach and these Kansas guys were just a product of hype. I would disagree with both of those implications. Williams is a good college coach and his players are good college players. Williams the coach is overhyped at this point, but I think his players (outside of Sean May) were all the real deal in college.
not at all....i think roy is a pretty good coach, but he's a little overrated
i think a lot of the bigs mentioned were pretty good in college..it's just,again, that roy's system along with most of the big's skill sets, just don't translate very well, even if they are rated highly on the draft board
gooden was pretty good, but he was NPOY in college and arguably might have been roy's best big man
roy seems to run a rather rigid,up tempo system that requires big men with solid skill sets,hands,and can run the floor and post up...and point guards who can execute an up tempo offense...
in the case of 2009-2010 when unc collapsed, it had quite a bit to do with the fact that roy had a terrible PG in larry drew II and had a tough time adjusting the offense,because it was obvious the up tempo style was a disaster with LDII
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