Sacre, Harris lead the way as Gonzaga dominates San Diego

It’s no secret that we’ve had some inconsistent play in at the 3 spot. Few knows that even though Edi will continue start, there’s no guarantee he will be consistently good so he’s trying to find other combinations that work when pangos/bell/edi are not getting it done in the back court. I just wish he would wait a little later in the game to start messing around! Sheesh, giving me heart attacks.

under the dock at the cabin and you can dis lil stockers all day long, lol.

Seriously though…I am just thrilled that Few put Pangos & Bell in the starting line up so soon earlier this season. I was afraid he would force rolling with DS and Carter all year long! So, someone must be twisting his ear a little.

The line up with DS & Pangos on the floor at the same time drives me bonkers too. DS is indeed a liability, or small fry….hey, aint that a fishin term? heheh

He’s had the PT of a savvy mid-season sophomore already.

I agree with above posters that we need to lighten the load on Pangos. Play stocks & Carter more mins. I just hate the DS & Pangos combo.

I cannot speak for Pangos or Bell but . . . my AAU teams (that I coached) generally played 24 to 40 games between Thanksgiving and the end of May. Better teams played more games as the parents were more inclined to foot the bill for travel to out of town tournaments.

My daughter (pretty good player in HS), between AAU and HS games sometimes played an average of 8 odd games a month over a 9 to 10 month period (83 games one year). The spring tournament circuit was pretty brutal (for the parents) as the kids played a minimum of 3 games each weekend (all most always out of town) and if they won (which was frequent) they would play as many as 5 games. (nothing like leaving work early on Friday and making up for it by dragging it in late on Monday). We often played every weekend (after HS games were concluded) in March, April and May. Looked to me like the girls were having the time of their lives. Can’t remember any complaints about being run down. I do remember my daughter was black and blue from head to toe sometimes – she had bruises on her bruises (bruised more so than most and played a rather physical post — just glad a social worker never saw her in the hot tub at the motel). Other than a three month period at the end of her Junior year (severe ankle injury) she never missed a start — wouldn’t think of it.

I suspect the boys did something very similar.

As for myself, you are right, I seldom played the entire game. I can only think of two times where I didn’t foul out before the game ended. I played on sprained ankles, torn ligaments in my right thumb (had to learn to shoot and dribble left handed because of this) , and once after getting absolutely no sleep — spent the entire night at a local police station getting grilled about an incident involving another individual - (I have such fond memories of those men in blue that have nothing better to do (civil rights were sometimes optional back in the 60’s) - they cut me loose at about 2 p.m. after they corralled the guy they were looking for — game started at 5 or 6 p.m. – actually played one of my better games after all that). Never missed a start.

Now I never played anywhere near the number of games that kids play today — we often played around 20 odd games a year during the season. In HS we did play a pair of tournaments after the season ended. It was a very different world back then and a very different game was played.

Motivated kids are tough — resilient — and in my experience they want to be on the floor more than anything else. You show me a basketball player that doesn’t want to play every minute of every game and I’ll show you a player that won’t be on the team next year.

You see it’s all about conditioning. We I was in school, we played football, volleyball (for about 3 weeks), basketball, track or golf, and baseball. There was no concentration on a single sport. All too often, today’s kids will concentrate their efforts in a single sport. Now that I think about it, we were probably playing some sport 11 months out of the year back in the stone age. So, in terms of time, maybe not hugely different than what kids do now when concentrating on a single sport.

Make of that what you will.

Now your comment about ‘legs’ is valid to a certain extent. A lot of 3 point shooters are adversely affected if they are fatigued. Very often a player will ‘shoot with his legs.’ An altered 3 point shot is probably the first indicator of significant fatigue — IMO. I always felt Gray would sometimes wear down at the end of games and struggle with his outside shooting. I don’t think this is a condition that develops because you play too many minutes in a season. This is a condition that is related to how much effort you are putting out early in a game and how well conditioned you are in the first place. Where Gray was concerned, he expended a lot of energy on D sometimes and his late game shooting suffered because of it.

I’m not sure this is the case with Pangos but I don’t think we have enough of a body of work to evaluate to draw any conclusions at this point in time. He has made a lot of 3’s late in games but I haven’t paid much attention to his minutes. Seems like he’s performed pretty well — I can’t think of a time where he looked gassed out there — but I could be wrong about that. Now that you brought this up, I’ll watch this more closely in the future.