Jabari would have had a better year with us

Seth Greenberg was on the Scott Van Pelt radio show today on ESPN radio and they were discussing Duke.



1. He said Duke was the 100th best defending team in the country (according to Kenpom) and it started with their terrible guard play



2. He said Cook couldn't or wouldn't defend



3. He said the only guard that could defend was Thornton, but he was so offensively challenged that they simply couldn't justify playing him.



4. He said Cook and Suliamon were a couple of the most uncreative guards he's seen on a very good team in a long time. They jack up threes and didn't correctly create for their pros (Hood and Parker)



5. He said Coach K has to take some blame



Seth Greenberg is the same guy that did the color on the BYU-Stanford game and is a big fan of Matt Carlino. He's also a former ACC head coach...



He also mentioned that he doesn't see parker, wiggins, embiid or the austrailian kid as transcendent pros like Lebron, Kobe, etc. He said they'll fill a role, but not worth the tanking that's being done this year in the NBA.

Interesting.



To be clear, I don't disagree that Jabari would have made us a better team. I agree that we would have likely won 30 games and would have been a 2 or a 3 seed. Watching Duke it was clear that the guards struggled defensively. It is quite possible that BYU would have had the #1 offense in the country if Jabari came here; in fact I would call it probable. However, what would that mean for the tournament?



According to Pomeroy Duke's adjusted D actually ranked 115. Their offensive rank? #1. It is unfair to pin all their defensive woes on the guards. Throughout the year Jabari was a consistently poor defender. In the game against Mercer he was the worst defender on the floor (Hood was a close second). Mercer's Gollon and Coursey, both forwards, typically combine for 18 points per game. Against Duke they scored 37 shooting 12-21 from the field making only 1 three.



So if a bad defender like Jabari comes to BYU's 102nd rated defense would that make our defense better? I'm guessing no. So in the tournament BYU would need to out score teams just like Duke needed to do. But if Jabari shot 4-14 with 4 TOs and crappy D for BYU in the tournament just like he did for Duke, Mercer would beat BYU as well.



Did Jabari choose to play with inferior guards? Probably. Although those guards shot the 3 better than our guards, shot free throws better than our guards, and had better assist to turnover ratios than our guards. He also chose a coach that is #2 among all active coaches in tournament win pct. (rose is 52nd). He chose to play in a better conference and a better overall schedule with a team that has a pretty good tournament track record. I just don't see BYU's advantages to be enough to overcome Jabari's poor tournament play.



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