Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
1/11/2025 4:18 PM
"Shereef, get it together or I'm putting in the freshman." -Jeff Boals soon, hopefully.
I don't get the calls for Elliot. What's her show?
At least Reef is an elite defender. Given our struggles on D, removing our best defender from the rotation in favor of a freshman that hasn't shown much of anything doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
There is a spot for Elliott in this rotation where he can get minutes for Mitchell and Elmore. The kid can rebound and he’s smooth. I’m hoping today shows Boals and he can squeeze in minutes for Elliott to spell Reef and Elmore.
He's shown some interesting flashes, for sure, but just not convinced there's a ton he does better than Reef and Elmore. Stretching the rotation to 9 guys is fine in against bad teams, but when push comes to shove and games matter, even very deep teams tend to play 8 man rotations.
I'm much more inclined to give Reef the minutes he needs to play his way back to the level he was at last year. He has to get a lot closer to his ceiling for us to win the conference, and there's host far less upside in Elliot's minutes this season. Find Elliot minutes to develop against the bottom half of the league, but if he takes minutes in games that matter from our best on-ball defender, who also scores efficiently, that seems like a pretty poor choice.