Well, as you might expect from a public scrimmage, there was a lot of fun had tonight in the Big Blue Nation. The Blue/White Scrimmage is now a historical fact.
Some questions were answered. Others remain. But overall, there was a lot positive from this intra-squad tussle. Here are the main things I noticed:
- Wall and Bledsoe together are scary as heck in this offense. Nobody could stop them.
- John Wall is as advertised, but he really needs to work on his perimeter game, it is a significant weakness.
- Eric Bledsoe's perimeter game is better than it was. Early progress is a good thing.
- Patrick Patterson is showing signs of having small forward skills. That's really great to see.
- DeMarcus Cousins is a big, big boy. And he plays like one. But he is quite a bit more athletic than he looks.
- Darius Miller was invisible in the first half, and awesome in the second. I don't know what that means.
- Darnell Dodson can shoot, but he's no Jodie Meeks.
- The athleticism on this team is absolutely remarkable. Perhaps the most athletic college team, top to bottom, ever assembled.
- Jon Hood really looks like a contributor this year. He was fearless.
- Perry Stevenson was completely invisible the whole game. Ramon Harris was not.
- I think we can pretty well figure out who the stars are going to be.
- Josh Harrellson can still shoot, and he makes good decisions more often than not. But he has to go to the basket a lot more strongly against the likes of this team.
- Speed, speed, speed. This team is going to wear folks down in a hurry.
- This team has the ability to be great defensively. Will they?
- Did I mention Patrick Patterson was the man?
- Mark Krebs can shoot a little.
- DeAndre Liggins has a chance to be pretty good in this system.
Overall, I thought the practice was sloppy but fun, and I expect this team to get a lot better. Our athleticism and talent will carry us until we run up against the big boys, but hopefully by then, these guys will have some kind of clue. Even though they tried to execute Calipari's system, most of the time they didn't do a great job. We saw flashes of what makes the DDM so great, but it wasn't a consistent theme.
I do like the way that the team played with respect to effort and pace. I thought overall the team really played hard, and did good work. I expect Cal to get them to the point of competence, if not a well-oiled machine, pretty quickly. This was all good fun, and way more interesting than Big Blue Madness from a basketball standpoint.
I can't wait to see us play our first real game. Go Cats!