parking really sucks on football saturdays. it was really kind of a pain in the ass to get there. hopefully someone at the AD's office will have noticed the problem and will schedule the next one of these for a tuesday morning (oops. i mean the players will have noticed and will spontaneously decide to play the next one of these...). would be much more convienent for me.
i sat behind the incomparable jmart. dude is a rock star. he had other media types and ksu AD syncophants coming up to him all game long. must be annoying for him, but he tolerated the little people with good humor. i tried to eavesdrop for a bit, but they didn't seem to be whispering the mystran's identity to each other, so i got bored with that and just watched the game.
speaking of which, it was an actual pickup game, not some scrimmage type thing. which is good, i thought. the players seemed relaxed and at least mildly competitve towards the ends of the games, not just running up and down the court trying to get in a dunk before getting pulled to the bench.
injury report: stewart on the bench with a big knee brace. kent on the bench in jeans. didn't see anything obviously wrong with kent. maybe a slight limp. still very thin.
player reviews:
martin: looked good. really, really good. pretty much hit every shot he took. looks maybe a little bigger than last year, spent some time running point, or at least bringing the ball up the court. smooth at everything he does, even if he can't jump. pretty much like last year, ksu '06-'07 is going to be the cmart show*.
afeli, bennett, colon: afeli may be the best offensive threat of the bunch, and despite huggins talking him up at his last media thing, that is much more of a comment on bennett and colon than due any great improvement of afeli. afeli does look bigger, stronger, pretty active, etc, decent vision. but his hands are still hard and he is a little lost at times, and without any real moves the rest of the time. bennett has no offense. colon has less than none. he does seem to have the best touch of the 3, but when he catches the ball he invariably puts his head down in "I WILL NOT PASS" mode and begins a clumsy, slow spin move or faceup. he is an offensive foul or turnover waiting to happen. bennett did look decent defensively. better position that you might expect from a freshman big in a pickup game and just on size alone he was causing guys to change shots. contrary to rumors though, he does not move better than you would expect for a 7'2" guy. i would guess bennett will start with afeli spelling him, but if ksu is going to score in the low post, martin or hoskins* will be posting up down there.
harris: looked like harris. maybe the bounciest guy on the court. hit some shots, missed some shots. talked some crap.
hoskins: most talkative guy there, mostly in a positive way. didn't seem to be wearing handcuffs. looked about like always.
yearby: damn this guy is built. looks great. can really jump too. too bad he is stiff as a center and only about 6'4". he mostly floated around the perimeter. he seemed very comfortable taking the 15-22' jumper. didn't hit it much though.
wright: played good on ball defense, but was mostly matched up on yearby, so it may not have been the greatest challange he's had in that regard. very active both on offense and defense. ball stuck in his hands too much on offense and didn't go in too much when he shot it. in other words just like last year.
young: i was kind of dissapointed. was the only guy around besides colon that didn't look to be in great shape. didn't really do much of anything though he played pretty much the whole time. didn't shoot, didn't defend much, didn't do anything point guardy like demand the ball or talk to his team. if he didn't jump better than most walkons, i would have assumed he was one. he just had that "i'm just happy to run up and down the court" attitude about him.
merriewether: the guy i assumed to be merriewether looked decent for a walkon. decent skills, decent athlete. nothing overly impressive, but looks like he could fill in for a few minutes at the 1 or 2 without hurting the team if injury problems ever made that neccesary.
the guy i assumed to be the new grad student is skinny, about 6'3", jumps well, decent quickness, couldn't hit a shot to save his life.
based on today*, i would assume stewart, harris, wright, hoskins and martin are going to get a lot of minutes. and the team is going to look a lot like last year.
* barring the emergence and eventual dominance of mystran.
