To quote Bull Durham, “Million dollar arm and a 10 cent brain.”
He may be an elite talent, but Herb Pope is a danger to any team that is already good. When Jim Calhoun, Bob Huggins and John Calipari are backing off a kid you know there are issues.
That Pitt may or may not have still been involved with Pope was a very disturbing thing. Thankfully that is in the past as Pope has gone to New Mexico State with Reggie Theus (hat tip MoE).
“Revis also hinted that the Panthers are tinkering with a special defensive gameplan intended to stop WVU’s read-option offense, which accounts for 318.22 yards per game to lead the Big East and ranks second nationally.”
“We’ve got something for that, Revis said. Trust me, we’ve got something for that this week. We’ve been practicing on this for months now, even at the end of camp. We’re well prepared for this game.”
All I have to say what the hell is going on here?
They have been practicing for months?
They haven’t been able to stop the little sisters of the poor, Pat White and Steve Slaton will be the 2 fastest players they have seen all year.
We are in deep shit, no doubt about it.
If i’m off base you can bust my balls.
Had he come to Pitt, I’d say he’d have been at least an even money bet to become the next Chris Taft: a guy with loads of talent who underacheived, still made the NBA based on his potential, then disappeared. That he chose a school in basketball Siberia pretty much spells it out.
That said, I still would have taken a chance on the guy. He’d immediately be the most athletic guy on the team, and with Kendall gone next year, they’ll be without a true power forward, anyway. The guy most certainly is a headcase, but isn’t part of the staff’s, at the risk of sounding cliched, to shape young minds and bodies and bring out the best in them? With someone as talented as he is, wouldn’t you at least want to give that a shot, if you’re Jamie Dixon?
our recent stategy of trying to get the other guy tired out from running up and down the field…
Pray for rain, and hopefully WVU’s OC features the pass like they did 2 years ago.
It was another nice performance against much better competition than we are used to playing this early. The team seems very close and they all seem to be cheering for each other. Even the kids who are competing for minutes like Cook and Benjamin. I look forward to our next game on Friday, but our first test should be Saturday versus Umass.
I say: WVU edges Pitt 58-24
What? We have some “special” defense prepared for WVU? Let me change my answer.
WVU edges Pitt: 65-24
I think our special defense can hold slaton and White to under 400 only because neither one of them will be playing in the 4th quarter.
To follow-up on your comments about Pope, I can see why he’s intriguing. He could bring a star power that Pitt has honestly lacked since they’ve again become competitive. I just think the guy reeks of ‘bad news.’
I live in Pittsburgh, but am not from here so I don’t follow all the hype about high-school sports in the area. When I heard about him, they had one of his playoff games last year on Comcast On Demand, so I took a look. The guy was amazing – he ended up with close to 30 points (I think more than half of those were free throws – and he shot like 90% from the stripe), had about 15 rebounds, and played an all-around great game. Five years ago, I would have said, “Give me that player – I don’t care how many problems he has.” But it looks like Pitt is turning into the type of program that will be good year in and year out…simply based on the system they play – emphasis on defense, smart shot selection, and buying into a team mentality.
While I don’t think Pope would destroy that (just as Taft didn’t destroy it), I think he could affect it. I think he’d affect it MORE than Taft because he seems to be more of a scorer. I don’t know if he could buy into playing team ball.
I’m not saying I would have hated it if he came here, I just don’t think they really need him.