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« on: January 16, 2012, 11:30:46 am »
I don't have enough knowledge of Stony Brook's personal or basketball in general to give an answer. What I will say is that last season, when things were going wrong, the message boards were busting Pikiell's chops for rotating guys in out to much in a similar fashion as you're suggesting claiming that the players needed to get comfortable with one another on the court. I'll admit that I shared that belief last season, and I was wrong because, as you pointed out, that lead to Pikiell finding Hayes and salvaging the season with solid run. I definitely like that Stony Brook plays 10 guys every night. We have the best depth and defense in the conference and I think the 10 man rotation is a big part of that-guys get better with minutes and fresh legs close out on shooters better and have a quicker first step. Also, guys like McAllister and Bracey both have the talent to be very good at this level, but they're only going to better with playing time. They need to adjust to speed of the game and get comfortable on the court.
I also want to stick up for the Stony Brook coaching staff. They seem to take a lot of heat and almost all of it seems unfounded to me. First off, it's remarkable how much the staff has gotten out of their players looking back at the last several seasons and looking at where the players were coming into the program. El Amin went from the third leading scoring on a division 2 JUCO team to America East player of the year. Al Rapier, despite some unwarranted message board hype, only averaged 6 boards and 5 pts a game as a JUCO and now is one of the most dynamic bigs in the America East. The leap in Coley's game over the last year has been astronomical. I don't think any team in the conference has done a better job developing talent over the last four or five years. Secondly, I've never really questioned Pikiell's in game coaching, and actually think he seems to do very well with x's and o's coming out of time outs and such.