Honestly, I wasn't really expecting much from Kading this year in terms of production in stats. All of his stats actually dropped from his freshman year to his sophmore year and instead of progressing into a player with a defined role he was nothing more then someone who would steal minutes from the main guys. His stats this year, in playing almost twice as many minutes, is insignifcantly better and he's marginally productive at best. He's a 4 playing out of position, but he isn't in any way a back to the basket player and he can't create with the ball. IMHO Kading can help us out by hitting an occasional 3 and crashing the boards for rebounds, if he doesn't hit 3's he does nothing in terms of scoring, and his rebounding just isn't very good at all, he doesn't have an aggressive mentality that I see. Werner honestly has impressed me more than Kading, hes a blue collar type player that works hard and finds ways to contribute outside of stats.
LA and Dupree aren't getting any assists because 1)there's nobody to dish to inside when they drive 2)our offense doesn't move the ball at all 3)our shooters can't hit open shots, everything they make from outside is off their own dribble.
I'm just throwing this out there and I know there are so many variables to considering how different and young our team looks, but so far I have not been impressed at all with the coaching being implemented from Richman as far as scheme. Our offense looks like a carbon copy of Saul's, without the talent. There's no ball movement or set plays, nobody sets screens, it's 4 guys standing around doing nothing and 1 guy just looking to see what happens with the ball. It's not hard to guard your player when he doesn't move. Our defense is just brutal, we have gone from a program that had a salty defensive identity to a soft complacent defense that doesn't seem to take pride in what they do.
Hopefully alot of this is just the youth, because it's really hard to cheer for a team tht doesn't play hard and seems to just go through the motions and to me that's what it looks like.
I would love to be wrong, but we play UND this Saturday, and if we don't hit our perimeter shots or start hot, I think it could be an ugly evening.