Nope this team will ride and die with Taylor and Phelps. The idea Phelps should come off the bench for who?

The problem with lowering his minutes is they have to go to someone else. I think he's very obviously better than Carter, Hefner, Manny and Wilcher.

I also think Wade plays a lot better with him on the court compared to the others and our defense is way better. Manny is a decent defender and Carter can be sometimes but I think he's better than both.

He just needs to shoot less and/or finish better around the basket. He got himself some good looks yesterday and couldn't finish. He also should basically never shoot threes unless the shot clock is under 5 seconds.

To be clear I'm not saying the guy's been brilliant or anything, but I think he's clearly our best option out there most of the time.

Was one of the more sought after portal gourds. Maybe missing the preseason didn't help.

bobinator said:

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The problem with lowering his minutes is they have to go to someone else. I think he's very obviously better than Carter, Hefner, Manny and Wilcher.

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I think this is a really fair point that I hadn't put enough thought into. If implemented I a few minutes to each of them could easily eat up 10 minutes. I'd lean towards Manny and Carter being the main recipients if cutting Phelps minutes becomes necessary.

bobinator said:

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I also think Wade plays a lot better with him on the court compared to the others and our defense is way better. Manny is a decent defender and Carter can be sometimes but I think he's better than both.

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I'm seeing Wade get less opportunities to take better shots with Phelps on the court. Their combined efficiency has to improve though. Might make sense to start looking at their combined stats as a pair for a clearer picture on how Phelps is improving.

bobinator said:

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He just needs to shoot less and/or finish better around the basket. He got himself some good looks yesterday and couldn't finish. He also should basically never shoot threes unless the shot clock is under 5 seconds.

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Can you call coach and let him know please!

bobinator said:

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To be clear I'm not saying the guy's been brilliant or anything, but I think he's clearly our best option out there most of the time.

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He might be - I'm kind of looking ahead at options for the team if he doesn't improve. He has to get us better minutes if this is going to be a special season. Sitting at home it seems so obvious what he needs to do it's frustrating to see him continue to play the same way game after game.

We've still beat two ranked teams in the last couple of weeks so he's got a lot of runway to find it. I don't think Buzz is some kind of basketball genius or anything but I trust him enough that there's a reason he's letting him play this way early in the season.

I also think there's good misses and bad misses, he had a lot of both yesterday but one thing Taylor is usually pretty good about is making sure we've got guys under the basket to rebound his misses. Phelps took some shots yesterday without anyone down there and those I really don't like.

Long way of saying I still really like Phelps. He's a tough watch at times so far but I still think he's gonna be good this season.

I think Phelps has two fans. His mom and bobinator.

Phelps played pretty sound at the end. Those were two solid looks that just rolled out.

we'll need him to figure it out if we're going to make real noise in March, not enough dependable scoring creators on this roster to consistently contend with top level teams

5 TOs, 2-9 from the field

We need him to just play all time defense and then go stand in the corner

He has to find a way to be more efficient offensively. He is a really good defender that we want to have on the floor, but he absolutely has to get better on the other end. He should not be shooting more than one or two 3s a game and only taking those if he is wide open.

What's annoying is he was 2-2 in the first half and only had one of our 14 turnovers and I thought put together one of his best halves of the season and then in the second half he was horrible from the field and had all four of our turnovers.

LB12Diamond said:

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Phelps played pretty sound at the end. Those were two solid looks that just rolled out.

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Those are worth like half a point, right?

They've been rolling out all season.

He does at times, it's just not consistent at all yet. He'll be good for a half and then terrible for a half.

He has Manny-itis right now though where he can't seem to just cruise. They're both either brilliant or terrible.

The world for a guard that's just fine.

Thrived at SMU at getting to the rim and finishing. Somehow when he does get to the rim now it feels like it never goes down. Pretty baffling from such an experienced guy.

I haven't paid attention to where on the rim he's missing when he shoots jumpshots, but I did notice he has a tendency to catch the ball, move it to his left hip, then bring it back across his body to the right side and shoot it. And I can't help but wonder if that slight momentum moving sideways is affecting his accuracy. I would guess he misses mostly on the right side of the rim.

He does still have that hand wrapped too which definitely isn't helping

He shot 152 and 136 threes in '23 and '24 and is on pace for ~116 this year with 31 attempts already. I'd love to see him finish the season with less than 100 attempts. Under 90 would be even better, but maybe unrealistic.

Insane to me the SMU staff was okay with 4.25 attempts per game from a guy who is a career 25% shooter from deep.

He's been playing great defense. My buddy reminded me Dennis kind of stunk it up on offense until the late season run.

Method Man said:

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They've been rolling out all season.

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gettin em all outta the way while we're still winning so they'll go in when we need em

What no one talks about here when you compare him to his SMU days is the team dynamics. We don't need him to be the man here. It looks like he is trying to do that and he is failing.

The team is much better and he has to find out how he can help this team not himself. Also the competition we are playing against is night and day better than at SMU. So what he did at SMU is going to be harder here. The coaches that are scouting him are much better.

Just quit forcing it and let the game come to you. You are not the man here. So just fit in and help your teammates get good shots. No one likes a ball hog especially with the miss shots and turnovers that you have.

This team would be scary good if they made just a quarter or third of all the misses that are thrown up around the rim.

2nd Generation Ag said:

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What no one talks about here when you compare him to his SMU days is the team dynamics. We don't need him to be the man here. It looks like he is trying to do that and he is failing.

The team is much better and he has to find out how he can help this team not himself. Also the competition we are playing against is night and day better than at SMU. So what he did at SMU is going to be harder here. The coaches that are scouting him are much better.

Just quit forcing it and let the game come to you. You are not the man here. So just fit in and help your teammates get good shots. No one likes a ball hog especially with the miss shots and turnovers that you have.

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Agree, Zhuric thinks he's an alpha when really what we need is a slightly better Jace Carter type performance from him. Play defense, let the game come to you on offense and don't kill the team with live ball turnovers.

Also for some of you saying "oh why isn't he as good as he was at SMU" look at the numbers... he is pretty much putting up the same type of offensive numbers he was there, the real difference is that he's up over a turnover a game from his SMU days.

My only hope with a kid like this is that in a big game when it matters and the Ags are throwing up bricks all over the place, he has a night and scores 25 and leads them to victory. Kids like this have that capability. What he doesn't have is the ability to be consistently reliable on the offensive side, which will likely lead us to a couple of losses in games where he shoots 10+ times making very few of them.