Saturday was a frustrating day for the men’s basketball team. Up 16 points with 14:43 remaining in the game, the Vandals saw their lead disappear and ended up losing by only one point for a final score of 68-67.
The exasperation was visible in the players faces when the final buzzer sounded and palpable in the postgame press conference. The Vandals are having a rough go with all of these new players on the team. The Vandals have 12 new faces on the court to replace many players on the team from last year. The only returning players this year were Stephen Madison, Ty Egbert, Connor Hill and Joe Kammerer.
With the way the season is going, Don Verlin’s job certainly could be on the line if he can’t get things moving in the right direction by the WAC Tournament.
What the problem really comes down to though is the lack of production from the team’s big men.
It was already known before the season started that the team was going to have to try and find someone to replace the offensive force that was Kyle Barone — the 2013 WAC Player of the Year. The Vandals have been unsuccessful finding a player to put up the numbers that he did last season.
Kammerer, the team’s starting center, is only averaging 2.5 points per game and 2.6 rebounds per game. Those are numbers of someone that should be coming off the bench. Backup Paulin Mpawe has the same number of rebounds per game and he plays six minutes less on average.
Meanwhile, Bira Seck has been starting at the four spot and is averaging 5.0 points per game and 5.1 rebounds per game. While those aren’t great numbers, they still are a little better than Kammerer’s, and he only plays on average of one more minute per game.
It’s obvious by now that the Vandals aren’t going to be able to find the production that they had with Barone, but there still might be a solution if the Vandals want to be able to be successful the rest of the season.
Four of the team’s top five scorers are playing the guard position. The only non-guard in the top five is Stephen Madison. He leads the team with 17.9 points per game while also leading the team in rebounds with 7.7 per game.
This team isn’t one that should try and force it into the paint because they don’t have the talent down low to run an offense that revolved around getting the ball down there. The team has talent when it comes to working the ball around and finding the open shot.
The Vandals need to play to their strengths if they want to be successful, even if that means losing a little bit of size down low to gain quickness on the outside.
The team could find success by bumping Seck and Madison down to the four and five. That opens up the backcourt and the three to any combination of the top four guards on the team in Mike Scott, Glen Dean, Sekou Wiggs and Hill.
All of them deserve to start on this team. Kammerer, Mpawe and even Egbert meanwhile can come in off the bench when it’s time to give the starters a break.
With three guards starting and the other coming off the bench as the go-to sixth man, the team might be able to salvage this season and even get that elusive tournament win that has be evading Verlin in his Vandal coaching career.
Rick Clark can be reached at [email protected]