The Unofficial Furman Football Page

Roster updated on Furmanpaladins.com. Good size on 3 of the freshmen. 6’5, 6’6 , 6’10. Can they wheel and deal and shake and bake?

Colin Kenney announced on social media that he will redshirt the upcoming season because of a hip laberal tear. Wishing him a speedy recovery!

cavedweller2 wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:02 pm

Roster updated on Furmanpaladins.com. Good size on 3 of the freshmen. 6’5, 6’6 , 6’10. Can they wheel and deal and shake and bake?

Size matters but can they put it in the basket? We’ll find out in a month.

apaladin wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:09 pm

cavedweller2 wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:02 pm

Roster updated on Furmanpaladins.com. Good size on 3 of the freshmen. 6’5, 6’6 , 6’10. Can they wheel and deal and shake and bake?

Size matters but can they put it in the basket? We’ll find out in a month.

Quite a few players can shoot on the roster already. For the freshmen I would think defense and rebounding and low turnover ball-handling will determine their playing time.

Refresh my memory. Who are the quite a few?

Furmanoid wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 08, 2021 6:22 am

Refresh my memory. Who are the quite a few?

Alex Hunter hit over 40% of his threes last season. That was an improvement over his already solid shooting his first three years. Jalen Slawson hit 37%, his best percentage of his career, and showed steady improvement. Jaylon Pugh hit over 40%, which he has done each year on the squad. Jonny Lawrence was over 41%, best on the team, even if in limited playing time. Mike Bothwell was under 28%, but I think that was an anomaly - maybe related to all the practice and preparation disruptions last season- and I expect he will be back closer to the 38% he shot the previous year. I think Joe Anderson will show he is a better shooter than the 28% he shot as a freshman. And Conley Garrison hit 40% of his three pointers while averaging over 17ppg on his previous team.

That is seven players I think will shoot in the upper 30 to low 40 percent range this season.

I think seven is quite a few. And maybe there are eight. Richey said in a podcast that freshman JP Pegues had the best shooting percentage of all in preseason workouts.

Oh, OK. I forgot that we dominated the conference and won the tournament. I mean, how could we not?

Furmanoid wrote:Oh, OK. I forgot that we dominated the conference and won the tournament. I mean, how could we not?

So anytime anyone lists statistics or has an opinion we’re just gonna shut it down with the fact that we didn’t win the conference tournament last year? What’s the point of talking about anything lol. Just cause you’re wrong about something doesn’t mean you can just say we didn’t win the tournament last year and suddenly be right

Yes, that was pretty uncool of me. But the frustrating thing is the way Furman basketball has made such a compelling case AGAINST the use of statistics for the past few years. Do you watch the games? Have you not seen the incredible dry streaks when nobody could throw the ball into the ocean? And have you noticed that those usually strike when we play good or decent teams? OK, maybe it’s just incredibly bad luck. Or maybe we just let the wrong guys shoot. But that can’t be seeing as how we have a Mt. Rushmore coach. Or MAYBE the stats are misleading.

If you want to argue that offensively we improve by losing Mounce and Gurley go ahead, but I’m skeptical despite what statistics say.

A couple of years ago we had a guy who was 15th nationally in 3 point attempts and was unranked in 3 pt percentage for most of the season. But when I pointed that out I was lambasted for paying so much attention to percentages. So maybe that converted me to the anti analytics camp.

Furmanoid wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 08, 2021 11:34 pm

Oh, OK. I forgot that we dominated the conference and won the tournament. I mean, how could we not?

It is much more beneficial to look forward than to chronically look backwards and whine. Negativity is a contaminant and it runs rampant on this board. I choose to look forward.

I’m just trying to follow the logic here. I guess the idea is that Pugh and Lawrence should have been the marquee players but their touches were limited because of Gurley and Mounce. Now with those guys out of the way they’ll show out, and the team will be vastly improved. OK, if you say so. But just in case, I hope some of the new guys can shoot, and I’m pretty sure they can. I think Hunter will show out.

Coaching also helps. Coach Ritchie has a pretty good track record in growing his players into being a force to be reckoned with in their Junior and Senior years. I don't think stagnation or dwelling on the non successes of the past are part of his make up. He evaluates adjusts and improves.

Furmanoid wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 09, 2021 7:08 am

Yes, that was pretty uncool of me. But the frustrating thing is the way Furman basketball has made such a compelling case AGAINST the use of statistics for the past few years. Do you watch the games? Have you not seen the incredible dry streaks when nobody could throw the ball into the ocean? And have you noticed that those usually strike when we play good or decent teams? OK, maybe it’s just incredibly bad luck. Or maybe we just let the wrong guys shoot. But that can’t be seeing as how we have a Mt. Rushmore coach. Or MAYBE the stats are misleading.

If you want to argue that offensively we improve by losing Mounce and Gurley go ahead, but I’m skeptical despite what statistics say.

A couple of years ago we had a guy who was 15th nationally in 3 point attempts and was unranked in 3 pt percentage for most of the season. But when I pointed that out I was lambasted for paying so much attention to percentages. So maybe that converted me to the anti analytics camp.

Actually the issue is with people, such as yourself, that don't understand statistics and metrics. Numbers are just facts. It's how you understand them (or don't) that causes trouble.

All teams shoot better against weaker opponents. All teams have dry streaks. Yet you seem to think these are somehow only applicable to Furman because the staff (like every basketball staff in the country) pays attention to statistics. Do you seriously believe that? That would rank very high on the dumbest things said on this site - no small accomplishment.

And just the broader point - the comically idiotic idea that Furman is underachieving because the staff pays attention to statistics - is so wrong that it's hard to know where to begin. For one thing, it's obvious to anyone with the slightest bit of rationality that CBR has Furman playing very well for a mid-major program with limited resources. Of course, getting back to the NCAA tournament remains a source of frustration. Intentionally trying to be stupid (by ignoring statistics) is not the way to address that issue.

On top of all that, you managed to work in the strawman that other posters are saying it will help to lose Mounce and Gurley. Zero people said this, implied it, or even downplayed their departures in any way whatsoever. I'm not sure what the point of that plainly false claim was, but the bottom line is, both the prior post and this one were super embarrassing, and you should try to do a lot better.

OK now that was mean. Look Mr. Smarty Pants, people who really work with statistics, like me, understand that sample sizes matter. The two players held up as super good 3 shooters each had about 35 attempts last year. That’s not a great sample size.

And come to think of it, why was that sample size so low? If our coaches saw these guys knocking down >40% all day at practice, why weren’t we building an offense around them, hmm? Please answer me that. Why were these awesome 40+% shooters averaging about 4 ppg? Were our coaches idiots? Or could it just possibly be that those stats based on tiny samples were misleading and our coaches, unlike you, were smart enough to see that.

They were also smart enough to recognize that you don’t improve by standing pat when 1/3 of your offensive production leaves. You go out and get people which is what they did.

I admit that I don’t get this defeatist attitude that oh well, we didn’t win anything but damn, we had great stats. I find that defeatism repugnant.

Interesting choice to post in Gibberish rather than English, I'm not nearly as fluent in the former language. To the best I can figure, your point works out to something like -

1. You - the team has no shooters.
2. Other poster - here are various shooters who can potentially contribute.
3. You - everyone else is defeatist because they are happy to lose in the SoCon tournament so long as the team has "great stats" (meaning of this is undefined).

As with your other barely-coherent posts, you finish with a silly strawman that is not even close to anything ever said in this forum. You don't know what the word "defeatist" means, you don't understand statistics (I'm 100% sure of this regardless of any claims you make regarding your employment - your level of ignorance is impossible for anyone with even a basic grasp of statistical concepts), and just in general you are totally clueless with respect to college basketball and Furman's basketball program.