MarcAg said:

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I predict Garcia makes a bigger impact in his time at A&M than Marble and Garcia will be a fan favorite. And I like Marble a lot, so not a knock on him. I think people are sleeping on Garcia. Neither is a star, but both will help you win games.

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If Garcia makes a bigger impact than Marble I think that's probably a really good thing as I feel Marble has a pretty high production floor at A&M barring an injury.

Both of these guys played 14 min per game last year in good conferences.
If you double their minutes to 28 per game:

Garcia - 8 pts, 8 rebs, 3 assts, 2 slts
Marble - 12 pts, 6 rebs

Couple things that stand out. that is some serious rebound production out of Garcia at 6'7". He'll fit right in with Obaseki and Radford as strong, athletic tough guys. 2 steals per game would have led the Aggies this year. He didn't shoot many 3s but his stroke looks fine...31% is not horrible, hopefully he could get that closer to 35%.

Marble should give us a real scoring lift...his jump hook in the post looks like it'll be a nice option. God knows we struggled at times this year to score. 59% shooting from the field makes me think he might be option #1.

My projection would be:
PG-Taylor
SG-Obaseki
SF-Radford
PF-Coleman
C-Marble

My biggest concern with this lineup would be lack of 3 point shooting since Obaseki is not a good 3 point shooter at this point. If you only have 2 shooters in the game that could be a problem...and Taylor only shot 28% this year. Hefner and Gordon off the bench will provide shooting off the bench, but you're gonna have to run much more stuff looking for post up offense, which we did none of this year.

Considering how Buzz likes to play with just one big, I could see alot of Taylor, Obaseki, Radford, Garcia and rotate Coleman or Marble being the 5th. Hendo and Javonte prolly will see less time with another quality big.

Initially, I was concerned about ball handling losing Diarra but Obaseki and Radford are solid ball handlers in addition to Taylor and Gordon can do it in a bind. Makes me think about 2 years ago when Gordon was our primary ball handler, and now he's 4th in line. that team was rough...we've come a long way.

Definitely excited about these 2 additions.

3 pt shooting is so critical and how good we can be this year will largely depend on how well we shoot.

Boots
Taylor
Hefner
Gordon

are going to have to combine to shoot 35% from 3 on average.

And who knows maybe some of the freshman get some playing time and shoot well. I know Williams and Solomon can make a 3 but it's my understanding that Pratt's strength is his outside shot. Hopefully that translates from Juco.

35% would put us near the top quarter of college teams, not sure we need to be quite that good, but it would be nice.

I feel confident Taylor and Hefner will both shoot better this year...hopefully Manny also. I'm honestly surprised Gordon didn't transfer...he really struggled the last half of the year, appeared to lose alot of confidence.

Teams close out on him extra hard because he refuses to shoot the pull up, and as a result he gets less quality open looks from 3. Dude's got a 40 inch vertical, I don't understand why he would continually get in the paint and throw it back out to the perimeter so we would have to force something late in the shot clock. Shoot the pull-up Gordon.

Might be a tad bit overrated; we were able to dominate teams in the paint during our NIT run. Our 3 point shooting was abysmal but we were still able to win by double digits.

The more important stat is FT shooting

GrayMatter said:

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Might be a tad bit overrated; we were able to dominate teams in the paint during our NIT run. Our 3 point shooting was abysmal but we were still able to win by double digits.

The more important stat is FT shooting

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3 point shooting is absolutely critical. All the analytics would suggest so. Not that FT is unimportant but a team has not won the tournament with less than a team average of 34.4% from 3 since 2013 (Louisville*).

Not that I'm saying we're competing to win the tournament (though we should have that mindset) but it shows you how hard it is to be elite without at least being good from 3. This is why Auburn and Wisconsin were almost certainly going to flame out during the tourney this year (32.0% and 31.2% from 3, respectively).

You gotta be able to shoot the 3.

My brother in law graduated from MSU in 1978 and is a massive Spartan fan. I sent him a text yesterday after Marbles tweet and asked for a scouting report. Here's his take ….

Quote:

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I'm glad he landed on a great team. He is tuff on the inside - can defend guys bigger then himself and a very good rebounder. A decent shot. We will miss him.

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No doubt the portal was good for us. I'm still not sure how I feel about Diarra leaving, but from the interest he got after entering the portal, it seems like his leaving will be a plus based on ability/potential. Loved his attitude though. Hopefully the newbies have that.

Buzz just doesn't make the 3 a huge priority vs D, grit, attitude, intangibles. I'm a fan of that as I'm just not a fan of teams that just fire away from 3 like so many. Home run or nothing.

I agree that Buzz probably won't make the 3 ball our bread and butter, but having some spacing is going to do wonders for us offensively in the half court if we can find a lineup with consistent shooters.

Boots showed what he looks like when he's hot from deep (we were damn near unstoppable), if someone else can approach 38-40% we're gonna be really dangerous.