CTG's strategy is to find high school guys who'll fit the program culture and don't have massive egos. They seem to understand they need patience and will probably have to wait their turn before getting meaningful minutes.
Yep, I should have also given credit to Rueben. He is the one most responsible for his performance on court and improvements to his game.
So here's the $64K question: Will Rioux be the next big man to make a jump and contribute? Does he fit the mold of the high school player without an ego willing to bide this time and learn as much as possible until his opportunities materialize in signficant playing time?
Hope that turns out to be the case, but just don’t have a lot of reason to believe he will. Great kid but he just doesn’t have the lateral quickness or quickness in general to be able to guard guys that will be much faster than him.
For Rioux we need UF Health to work on a wonder drug to speed up and heighten his motor functions. He has all the basic skills, the game just moves too fast for him.
I don't see him ever getting meaningful minutes. I do hope he improves enough to come in for specific situations or matchups and give a few quality minutes. Heck, maybe even in a desperation end-of-game thing like a length-of-the-floor inbounds pass when we have 2 seconds and are down by 2. He's a HUGE target to throw to. Post him at the free throw line with two hot-shooting guards on the wings and see what happens.
true, but he became a real star here. Early on we all had our doubts about him in the SEC, especially as a point guard.
He was player of the year in his conference at Iona. Pitino signed 2 no-name guards in Clayton and Dannis Jenkins and turned them into stars. Jenkins is playing really well for the Pistons.
Golden said earlier this season he won't put him in the game before the 2 or 3 minute mark (this season in blowouts) because he does not have the stamina to last longer than that. Pretty grim if he's been through 1.5 years of conditioning program at UF and still can't play more than 2-3 minutes at a time. He's just likely too big to ever play meaningful basketball unfortunately.
I don't buy the stamina part, but his reaction time on the court is way too slow to play Division one basketball.
Speaking of the last few minutes, I was surprised Rueben hit the bench for a minute and a half of game time at the 4:30-ish mark. Was really holding my breath -- while he was catching his. [wink]
