2007-2008 Season

Position Battles

Here are some thoughts on the point guard and small forward positions and who should get the minutes. These are the two positions that are really up for grabs on the team. Sadly they are up for grabs because there really isn’t a great option at either position it seems. All the players at the one and three have deficiencies in their game. Would be interested in your thoughts in this one as well so leave some comments!

Small Forward

Ron Coleman is doing nothing. Against Penn State he shot 0-2, had 0 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 turnover in 17 minutes. Jevohn Shepherd had 2-5 shooting, 2 rebounds, 4 points, 3 assists, 1 turnover in just 13 minutes. Anthony Wright playing some three and some four was 5-7 (3-5 3pt), 3 rebounds, 13 points, 2 TO in 23 minutes.

By the numbers Anthony played 10 minutes at the SF along side DeShawn Sims. I don’t think this has happened often this year and it will be interesting if Beilein continues to go with that look.

Anthony Wright is playing the best out of this group by far, however Jevohn Shepherd has started to do some things that are encouraging. Shepherd has done a very good job rebounding and getting to the hole.

The question is who should start. I would start Shepherd at the three and play him around 20 minutes per game. Give Wright 10 minutes each backing up the three and four and then give Ron what’s left (about 10 minutes at the three).

Point Guard

The Kelvin Grady debate is a big one on the message boards. Kelvin Grady provides a hope for future improvement for a lot of fans and one argument is to play him more often because of his youth. However he still struggles to be consistent, sometimes he looks great, other times he has trouble making simple passes and running the offense.

Kelvin’s defense has big holes, and was one of the biggest reasons that his playing time started decreasing and first. He has the potential to make the biggest spark at any time on the offense but also lacks consistency.

On the contrary there is CJ Lee, a vocal leader who plays tough D and is a good scrappy hustle player. CJ doesn’t give us much on offense but he can run the offense (although he is not much of a threat to score). Merritt is a mystery, he has had some good games (Northwestern comes to mind) but he also seems very limited both defensively and offensively. The thing about Merritt is that he has been coming off the bench before CJ so Merritt must be performing better in practice.

I would like to see Kelvin and CJ split these minutes pretty equally because I think they both bring something to the table that can help us (look at the run that finally got us over the hump against PSU).

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