Having watched Kretchman for the past several years, I'd say that's a
little bit of a stretch, but I understand why their coach would say that. That being said, Kretchman is easily one of the top 2 or 3 points guards in the NSIC, but, as far as being the best PG in D2 goes, Justin Pitts down at Northwest Missouri State (a junior from the MIAA conference in Missouri whose team is currently #1 in the country) will probably be the National Player of the Year this season. I'd pick him 10 times out of 10 over Kretchman and
probably over just about anyone in the NSIC.
Kretchman and Augie's Jordan Spencer are both probably top 3 point guards in the conference, maybe even #1 and #2, depending on how you want to order them. They put up comparable numbers, with Spencer averaging more assists but Kretchmann putting out a better assist-to-turnover ratio and Kretchman being a slightly better 3-point shooter. In my opinion, Kretchman is working with more overall talent this year than Spencer in terms of his team's starting 1-5 spots, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Kretchman himself is a very, very good point guard. Plus he's usually pretty clutch in tight games and high-pressure situations.
Lien is also very good. It's a really good topic for discussion, as has been noted already. Are these guys good because they were able to play right away and get in-game experience early in their careers (I believe both have been pretty key players since coming in as freshmen), or would they have ended up being just as good redshirting for a season at a school like NDSU and getting better against their D1-level teammates in practice for a year or two before starting to get decent in-game minutes? Always tough to tell.
Either way, both would probably get some minutes at NDSU at this stage in their careers, but how much they'd play and how much impact they'd make is hard to tell (obviously). Unless you guys are like Jackrabbit fans who think any D2 kid, no matter how talented or highly-accoladed he may be, would be a perennial benchwarmer at a school so high and mighty as SDSU. But so far that's not what the discussion on this message board indicates. Which I always appreciate about you guys.
As far as Arvidson goes, I'm
almost positive he had a season-ending injury a year or two ago which, as someone mentioned, might have contributed to his lower minutes until this latter part of his career.
Thanks for letting me jump in on here. Due to the mandatory week-long break D2s are required to take, our message board gets a little quiet this time of year.