Does Wiggins become our point forward?
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Some have brought up Carmelo. After thinking about it, given all of the concerns with Tharpe, does Self try running everything through Wiggins? At least most of the time? He looks inside for the big men first. He breaks down the defense and then either takes it to the hole, or dishes off? Tharpe, or whomever brings the ball up the court, but maybe Wiggins does that part of the time. I know his ball handling skills could be better, but is he the other option we’re looking for? Ride him as far as he can take us. Is this completely crazy? Desperate times make us all think of desperate measures.
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@Hawk8086 If Wiggins is playing pt, we lose him on the boards.
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@Hawk8086 It’s not a bad idea, as outside-the-box thinking goes. A couple of problems: first, he absolutely does not look to dish off the drive. Not a big deal, as Tharpe doesn’t do so with any great regularity and Mason never does (sometimes Mason drives, gets in trouble, then looks to dish as a bailout, but that’s not the same thing as driving with the intent to draw defenders and then pass. Mason’s drives that lead to passes usually result in turnovers), and Frankamp doesn’t drive at all, so nothing really lost there, but we should at least clear up that misconception that he drives looking to dish. HEM has posted some nice numbers on this.
Today is a prime example of why I don’t believe it would work. Despite having the ball in his hands an increased number of times, he had 2 assists. Don’t get me wrong, I am as impressed with his performance today as anybody. But either because he just doesn’t look for his teammates at some point in the possession, or because his teammates find themselves standing around watching him, or because Self’s offense just isn’t designed for it, whatever the case we just don’t see Wiggins creating opportunities for others.
Another big problem is turnovers. Wiggins is turnover prone anyway. The announcers during the WVU game kept bringing up the scouting report on forcing Wiggins to his left in order to create turnovers. If a middling team like WVU can cause problems for him, you can bet teams we’ll face in the NCAA tournament would do the same and then some.
Now at this point I’m definitely in favor of running a great deal of our offense FOR him. Not through him, as again I don’t believe he’s there yet in terms of being a person the rest of the offense can flow through. But there should be tremendous focus on running offense FOR him. He should be taking no less than 20 shots/game. Now that doesn’t mean he’ll end the game with 20 FGA, as he’ll get fouled on a good number of the shots he takes.
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@icthawkfan316 We must remember that Andrew is a freshman. Marvelous stat sheet today, other than the assist line and the five turnovers. He continues to polish his various skills, and has compiled extraordinary first year numbers. Just not enough games remaining for him to focus steadily on the assist thing along with defense, scoring, blocks, steals…the things he gradually has come to do so proficiently at the college level. Jayhawk TIME is not going to stand still long enough for him to arrive at the point where he can do it all.
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@REHawk Oh for sure. Trust me it wasn’t intended to be as much of a criticism of him as it was to illustrate what I view as the lack of feasibility of him as a point forward for the rest of this season. I fully believe, maybe as early as next year, he could be capable of doing so were he to stay in college.
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@icthawkfan316 Running more of our offense for him is probably the answer. We can’t change who we are by not looking inside, but maybe late in the shot clock, if we haven’t earlier gotten anything inside, isolate AW instead of the PG.
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I hope the comments above are made in the spirit of thinking outside the box and not seriously. Wiggins can dribble the ball in the open court and when no one is guarding as well as anyone else, but then, so can Perry. and most any other player. The problem is when he gets in traffic, he loses the ball more often than not; this is the weakest part of his game and the part that a point guard must absolute master.
As far as Wiggins not having enough assists, I am sure that once KU got so far behind, Coach Self told him to take any available open shots or drive to the basket and score or at least draw the foul, and this is exactly what he did.
In any case, his role as 3 is to score and rebound and get to the line as much as possible, and assist are not his primary responsibility. Considering that no one other than Perry was scoring consistently, taking the open shot or driving to the hoop was the logical thing to do. Had he passed the ball more often he would still have the same number of assist and we lose by 20 points.
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You are correct. While not plausible, we do need the offense to go through him more often. Maybe isolate at the end of the shot clock. Watching Wiggins yesterday reminded me of one player carrying the team like I haven’t seen since, maybe, 26 years ago? Of course, that guy was a senior.
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I’m a little late to this thread … but I actually think that using Wiggins to initiate the offense for a number of possessions makes sense. I’d like using the flat 4 look with Wiggins at the top a few times, depending on match-ups. Perhaps with a few specific plays where he would pass off the initial drive, and a couple others where he would either drive or shoot. Nice arrow to have in the quiver.
