We All Love Ed.....but

We all love Ed as a player ,student - athlete, and future alum.
We long for his return next year .
So nothing in this post should be interpreted as a knock on Ed.
But we have seen that in his absence Q has blossomed , players have stepped up, the ball movement has vastly improved, and one has a sense of a team, not Ed plus 4.
Having Ed play the point was by default, but having a player with Ed's skill set at the point was not good.
Ed is a scoring machine who has to get to the basket.
When a scoring machine has the ball his focus is on scoring, not distributing.
When you play alongside a scoring machine you give him the first opportunity to score. If the ball comes to you it is not because you are open but because he is covered.
Imagine the team we would have with Q at the point, and Ed constantly in motion looking for an opening.
Everyone else would/could be in motion.
With Ed in motion It takes the pressure off of Bluett and Macura.
It can open up the base line for better opportunities for the Bigs.
That's what I see for next year!

Agree with all of this. I think if Ed does come back next year, him being at the 2 with q at the 1 gives the team the best chance at winning.

All good and fine except.....Ed was averaging 5 assists per game until his injury. Now I realize that a big part of this was because he had the ball in his hands so much, but we shouldn't get the idea that he was "just a scorer". I can remember many games where he didn't score a whole lot, but did have quite a few assists. A lot of where he plays in the future may well be determined by just how fully he comes back from the injury. His quickness pre-injury was extraordinary, but we don't know yet if that will be the case in the future. I hope he uses some of his recovery and rehab time to study film and see just how much a dependable shot would mean to his game and to team success. For one thing, it might mean that he doesn't have to take so much abuse because he is always driving to the rim and getting knocked onto the floor. He has the physical build of someone like a Reggie Miller, I just wish he had a shooting ability that was 1/2 of Reggie's.

Yeah, strange to say the least.

Lets get a few more games under Q's belt before we get too far ahead of ourselves........

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Originally Posted by bleedXblue

Yeah, strange to say the least.

Lets get a few more games under Q's belt before we get too far ahead of ourselves........

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Exactly. Teams have been devising ways for 2 years to try to stop Sumner. It will get tougher as teams study Goodin's tendencies and devise ways to stop him. He is a virtual unknown to our opponents now because none of them have ever faced him before and the sample size is small.

We easily could be riding a three game losing streak since Ed got hurt. All three games were in doubt late (the St. John's game despite having a big lead when Ed went down). We've got a razor-thin margin at this point. I'm thrilled with the wins and the way Q's been playing, but let's not kid ourselves that we're somehow better since Ed went down.

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Originally Posted by GoMuskies

We easily could be riding a three game losing streak since Ed got hurt. All three games were in doubt late (the St. John's game despite having a big lead when Ed went down). We've got a razor-thin margin at this point. I'm thrilled with the wins and the way Q's been playing, but let's not kid ourselves that we're somehow better since Ed went down.

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No where in the original post did it say that we were better with Ed going down. However, if people don't think our offense is running better since q took over the point, they either haven't been watching or they just don't want to disrespect ed which I can understand.

We do have a very small sample size so let's see how the rest of the season plays out. However as of today, it looks like it may be better for the team next year for ed to play the 2. That's more of utilizing ed's strengths not knocking him. I think he will actually be a better point in the NBA where there is a lot more isolation play, I just think that maybe in college, his best position may be at the 2.

Is the offense running better,or are we just shooting better from three-point range? Knocking 3s down at 40% and 45.5% (vs. a season average of 34.7%) always makes the offense look good.

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Originally Posted by GoMuskies

Is the offense running better,or are we just shooting better from three-point range? Knocking 3s down at 40% and 45.5% (vs. a season average of 34.7%) always makes the offense look good.

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You could argue that one follows the other; our ball movement has created more space for open looks. I personally attribute it to Q's more traditional point style, but I concede the sample size is very small and can't yet be deemed the effect.

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Originally Posted by Xville

No where in the original post did it say that we were better with Ed going down. However, if people don't think our offense is running better since q took over the point, they either haven't been watching or they just don't want to disrespect ed which I can understand.

We do have a very small sample size so let's see how the rest of the season plays out. However as of today, it looks like it may be better for the team next year for ed to play the 2. That's more of utilizing ed's strengths not knocking him. I think he will actually be a better point in the NBA where there is a lot more isolation play, I just think that maybe in college, his best position may be at the 2.

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I think this is more in line with the point. We talked about it several times just a couple weeks ago and actually specifically after the first Creighton game that Mack wasn't running nearly enough sets. IMO the offense they're running now could have been done with Ed the whole time. Mack just thought it would be taking away the advantage of Ed's skill set would be my guess. And I think we would have seen more of Q running the point and Ed going to the 2 as Q got more and more comfortable. Selfishly hope Ed comes back because it'll be sad if that's that last we see him in an X uniform. Especially because of how much talent and potential he has compared to those in X's history