Mike, do you know if Taylor is practicing with the guards or the forwards? This article calls him a guard. I've always assumed he'll be playing almost exclusively at forward for this season because Joe and Judah will take 60-70 of the guard minutes with Symir and maybe Copeland getting the rest. But on Devendorf’s show yesterday, Red talked about most of the freshmen. The only one he never mentioned was Taylor, and Red coaches the forwards. I figured Bunch and Taylor would be getting most of the minutes at the three and splitting them pretty evenly, no matter who starts. I'm wondering if that's wrong.
For those who didn't see the show, I'll give a recap of some of his comments about this season. Red was asked what freshman has been the biggest surprise. Like almost everyone else, he said Copeland. Lot of people are raving about him. I probably watched about fifteen games of Copeland's at Nike and IMG and I never expected to hear the comments about him I've been hearing--that he's very competitive and a strong defender. Sometimes I think they’ve mixed him up with someone else. He was always a lackadaisical defender at best, and a player who seemed more interested in entertaining than competing. He has changed.
Eric asked Red who was the second biggest surprise and he said the same guy that everyone else has been saying--Carey. Red said he didn't play high school or AAU for a year and a half but he's been very surprising. For both the tip-off events, Jesse was on one team and Carey and Hima the other. I'm pretty sure Carey started at both events. Carey might actually be the backup center, with Hima the third. We'll find out soon enough.
Red said Bunch is an elite shooter and repeated the word elite a second time with emphasis. Said he's one of the most elite shooters we've ever brought into the program. He said when he's shooting it he brings the team to another level. One interesting thing to me is Red did not qualify it with "when he has his feet set" as I have in the past. I've seen many clips of Chris over the past year of him working out with his personal coach. A year ago they worked more on catch and shoot. But in recent months they've done a lot of work on putting it on the floor, working on several different moves to create space and shooting a jumper. It will be interesting to see if that translates positively in games. One thing Chris has going for him is he has a good amount of cockiness about his shooting ability. I don't think we see anything like the loss of confidence we saw with Benny last season. I realized after the Dome event that my thinking that Taylor would be the starter because he's the more polished player was wrong. Bunch looks very likely to be the starter. But I've only seen positive comments about Taylor. I don't think it's the case that he's disappointing, but that Bunch is an aggressive scorer and has impressed.
Red spoke highly of Joe's ability at the two. He said he's always moving and he's even making more plays for others at the two than he did at the one because he's attacking closeouts with defenders on the move rather than trying to get around a defender squared up right in front of him.
Devendorf commented that he saw Benny recently and he's 6'10" now. Mike Waters had written that after the Dome event but without explanation, and I thought he must've been imagining it, maybe some added muscle made him seem that way. But Red confirmed it and said Benny has grown. It seems Benny had a bit of a growth spurt at 19-20 years old. Don't know how but we'll take it.
One other point of emphasis from Red was how competitive all the freshmen are. He told Kris Joseph the practices remind him of when Kris was there with Dion, MCW, CJ, Brandon, etc, when the team was loaded with talent and the young guys were trying to take the vets' minutes away from them. I've heard more than a half dozen other coaches, players, and media comment about how intense and competitive our practices are this season. Practices and games are two very different things, of course, but this team has the potential to surprise a lot of people this season.
Now let’s go beat Clemson.
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