Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead
I like your optimism on Diarra! I am wondering how you see him scoring? He doesn't seem to be a back to the basket guy and his perimeter skills seem somewhat limited. He reminds me a little of Scott with a better outside shot. He has a nice outside stroke but I would almost rather play small in emergencies with a guy like Williams who can both shoot and break a guy down to get in the lane. How much do we lose on D if we play with Evans as our makeshift 4 over Scott or Diarra? I think we gain more on offense than we would lose on D.
I am just curious really. I am trying to figure out where Diarra fits in on the offensive side because I don't know enough about his game.
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I don't really know about Diarra's back to the basket game. I just know that he has good touch from what I have seen. There's something there to work with, especially bc he is 6'9" with good length and athleticism. Chad has mentioned his ability to run the floor too. And if I recall, some of the recruiting sites even had him listed as a SF. Sounds like a potential matchup problem for AAC teams to me. After a couple years playing with our guys, I don't really have any reason to believe he won't hold his own at minimum. I won't predict how many PPG we'll get out of him bc I haven't seen anything other than random clips of him shooting and dunking...but I trust that we brought him in for a reason. I mean, we were linked to Carlton Bragg but took a commitment from Diarra instead. That tells me the staff believes in him. I guess we'll see how he develops, but it seems to me that he has the tools to be a starter and contributor here.
I don't disagree about going small with Cumberland, Evans, and Williams as the mix and match 2-4s in small lineups. But I don't think that can be a full-time thing. So say we were to get Harris, or a pretty good PG to replace Broome and Jenifer...We would have that player, Cumberland, Williams, T Moore, Scott, Diarra, Nsoseme, Brooks, plus whoever else we'd bring in over the next 2 years. If we maintain our 1 HR type guy per class, I don't really see Diarra needing to score more than 8-10 PPG anyway. That may be getting too ahead of ourselves. But if he is a matchup problem on offense with his size and range, and a guy who can switch everything and cover a ton of ground of defense, he'll be a net positive player just based on that alone. And that doesn't account for any development he could make in the post over his time here. And Lord knows we have enough big guys for him to battle against everyday in practice in the meantime.