Nothing too exciting, but confirmation of 10-11 scrimmage observations. We rotated lots of sets. Played two abbreviated halves. JG dominated, as others noted, but part of that was him playing in most of the lineups, and their defense not being too intense in that setting. He drove well and shot well. We looked pretty loose with assignments on defense, but rebounded extremely well on defensive end. Ament and Estrella were limited in minutes but both played well. Ament is a little behind the curve on defense, but has added muscle and weight, and wasn’t afraid to mix it up. His length and lift mean he’s a shooting mismatch on just about anyone. Lots of chemistry coming out of JG and the bigs passing well. Estrella really sees the court and kicks out and feeds others a lot. Wing play remains out of sync with both Burg and Amari playing catch up at both ends. Coaches are protective of JP still, but all think he won’t be limited in season at all. Echoing my sentiments from last year’s preseason, Estrella can be a great addition. He has the finesse and passing game we’ve been missing from our 4/5. He has a rare skill set with his abilities at both ends. Gillespie is ALL SEC caliber, and a real catalyst. The Walter Clayton analogy is apt and interestingly we look a lot like that team top to bottom. Not many teams will be able to handle twelve rounds with our bigs. We are going to really wear teams down underneath. One big negative that lingers from past years, we did not handle quick perimeter passing and defending the three on the wings. There were several runs of outside shooting that we didn’t get to in time. Overall it sounded like an early scrimmage should with mistakes and promise.
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