Power Forwards/Stretch 4s of the Bill Self era peak offseason pt 4
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T-Rob. This was a foregone conclusion. The best rebounder of the Self era and one of the best scorers too. Plus the way he demanded double-teams was invaluable to our offense. Came up big against misery and lead us to a final 4.
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Jalen Wilson. A hot take of mine (many will disagree) is that Perry Ellis might actually be the second-best player on the list (I will explain why below). But J-Will just has too much going for him for me not to rank him at two. He had a 20ppg season, was a good rebounder, a solid defender, could handle the ball, and, oh yeah, he was a national champion.
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Perry Ellis. I really like Perry’s game. By his senior year he had an elite understanding of opposing offenses and was able to help our defense get organized in the perfect formation. Furthermore, he could switch onto any guard, rebound, and on offense he would both stretch the floor and give us a post-scoring presence. Plus he was consistent and often commanded double-teams. Like I said, all things considered I think he might actually be the second-best player on this list.
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Darrell Arthur. This is another player I think is so underrated. He had such a solid all-around game, a great blend of strength, length, and quickness, and was a key contributor in 2008’s balanced offense and suffocating defense. Along with Chalmers, Rush, Collins, and arguably even D-Block (who will be ranked with the centers), Arthur is one of those guys from the 2008 team who could have been a star scorer on a less-balanced team.
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Svi. This is Svi being rated as a stretch 4. I wrote about why I like him so much yesterday. To summarize: shooting, senior year defense, and heroics against Duke.
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Josh Jackson (could have been a wing but he played the 4). He was unguardable when playing well. I decided not to rank him higher than 6 because of inconsistent defense and costly turnovers against Oregon in the elite 8.
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Marcus Morris. This is another player who might have a case to be ranked higher. But its just that everyone above him is so good and Marcus had a bad attitude that I think hurt the team. Plus he choked against VCU.
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Kevin Young. I had a hard time ordering Kevin Young, Dedric Lawson, and KJ. KY and KJ are elite defenders who don’t do much on offense, while Lawson was an elite offensive player who was bad at defense. I ended up going with KY first because he saw more team success as a starter than either Dedric or KY.
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Dedric Lawson. He is ahead of KJ because he is a better rebounder.
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KJ Adams
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Christian Moody. I like Moody, but he just didn’t have the talent to be as good as anyone else on this list.
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Heavy Marcus slander here. T-Rob goes above him but they are both in a tier on their own above the rest of the group.
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@MR11 If it was just on-court play I would likely put Marcus at number 2. However, I am also counting factors such as leadership and locker room influence. In 2011 Marcus was our unquestioned leader, and he failed miserably in his responsibility of rallying the troops when VCU hit a few lucky threes against us. Our team was clearly shell-shocked, and that is completely on Marcus.
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There was a time the twins felt unstoppable. VCU was a shocking loss. But i think it safe to blame that loss on Morningstar, Reed and Selby who were a combined 3-21.
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I think we lost the VCU game the moment we ran through their huddle and lit their fire instead of ours
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@Jhawk69 Would you qualify any of these guys as PFs? They were pretty goood
What about Wayne Simien? Darnell Jackson? Julian Wright?
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@rockchalkjayhawk Yeah but I will rank them with the 5s tomorrow
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Perry is too high. He was a below average defender, playmaker, and rebounder. You talk about Marcus Morris in March, but Perry was worse in March. The loss to Stanford, 9 points on 3/10 shooting and 4 points on 1/5 shooting in the 2016 Villanova loss. Those are unacceptable performances from someone who was supposed to be a top player. I would flip him and Marcus.
There’s a reason why he’s one of the guys on this list who never really sniffed the NBA.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 You have a valid case and your opinion is probably worth twice as much as mine. I will defend my case anyways. With Marcus my rationale was more based on his off-court character and his leadership and how it effected the team than it was his performance on the court. Regarding Perry, I agree he wasn’t good against Stanford, but against Nova he was double teamed constantly as Nova’s strategy was to count on us not making open 3s (which worked), so I don’t really blame him for that one.
