Sat Oct 4th at 11:00
Women at 10:00
Good that they slotted it right before a football game (Dartmouth) - something they had gotten away from in recent years. This will be very interesting 7 new players.
Looking forward to this.
How do they look?
It’s always hard to tell much from the scrimmage. What is clear is that Evan Roberts will be one of the best players in the Ivy League. Shot 7-9 often assisted from AJ Levine, and scored 20 of the White Team’s 47 points in 15 minutes of play. Other notables for White.—Cam Thrower back from deep doghouse to score 10 points and 3 rebounds and Lucas Lueth 8 points and 5 rebounds.
For Red, wearing the classic Penn Maroon and “Pennsylvania” across the front (so did White), Zanoni played well with 6 of 9 and 14 points.
Jay Jones has some ability, with a few nice dishes and got rebounds. Did not see to much from the freshmen. Penn will have some decisions to make, Not sure we saw enough to tell who will be starters except for Levine and Roberts.
Power has a bad elbow. Rumors of possible surgery that would keep him out for months. Altman in a boot. No word on the severity of that.
Roberts was on fire. Nobody could guard him. White (blue) had most of the projected minutes with Roberts Levine lueth Augie and some good minutes from Jones who was the only frosh with minutes. Keep an eye on him. Thrower quietly had a very good day too. lueth looked great. A true 4 who can score and put the ball on the floor if need be.
On the other side. Zanoni was what we remember. He will get minutes off the bench. Same with polonoski. He was trying to guard Roberts. Williams got most of the point minutes. Reliable but no real threat to score. Massung flashed at times but may be crowded out of major minutes. Oberti and Walter, same as last year. Foster was disappointing. I expected more from him. Sacantlebury didn’t dress. Not sure why. Did not see Ubochi.
Observations: Of the 10 starters only one, Leuth, was a new guy.
Massung and Zanoni looked good.
Power, Altman, Ubohi, and Scantlebury did not dress. altman has a brokern bone in a foot.
Kruse is relatively athletic for a guy 6’11’
Jay Jones played point.
The ball moved faster and the players were noticeably more agressive.
“Fran called a timeout during the second half to lecture the players. Donahue never took part in this event.
The teams played two bigs frequently
The crowd was much larger than last year.
Roberts shot VERY well. Levine showed no signs of scoring more.
Kruse looked athletic in warmups - very tentative in the game during his brief time on the court. The one outside shot he took was very blockable despite his length. Low release point and feet barely off the floor. Massung and Thrower were the most pleasant surprises.
Really unfortunate to hear about Power. Hope he gets healthy soon. Hearing that it’s mostly same guys getting most of the play (especially due to injuries on the frosh or transfers who were expected to play a part from go) isn’t ideal. I think Roberts will be really good but we’ll need more to be at all competitive. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
Maybe someone else here has more solid information on Power, all I have is chatter at this point. As for Altman, I think we all know that has a wide range of prognoses for a basketball player. I think it is the highly exceptional freshman that can expect big minutes but, as we have seen ,some develop quickly by the time we get to January. Admittedly, it is just the scrimmage, but this one was different from ones I have attended in the past. Much more intensity and defense. Makes me confident that we have a few useful observations, and one of them is that Lueth will make a difference. More importantly though - it’s not just new players. It’s a very different system at both ends and atmosphere around the program. I came away with optimism.
Nice piece from Jonathan Tannenwald on the scrimmage:
If I had to guess, the white team is the current first team and the red team is the second team. White: Gerhart, Lueth, Roberts, Thrower, Levine.
Red: Oberti, walter, polonowski, zanoni, Williams
Bench for white was the 3 freshman (Jones, Kruse, Kamin). Bench for red was Massung and Foster.
White dominated when the starters were in, more than doubling red. Roberts scored more than red on his own while the starters were in. Red closed the gap considerably once the bench players came in.
Echoing some points others have made, Lueth looked very good. He won’t score a ton, but he does a lot of other things and even has a nice stroke from 3. I thought the defensive intensity was higher. We seemed to play with a more traditional point guard than Donahue did. Levine for white and Williams for red. Backups were Jones for white and Massung for red. Roberts was playing off the ball.
Kruse back to being listed at 6’11”. Was only 6’9” on the first online roster. Hopefully he is a surprise because there are definitely backup big minutes available for someone to step up.
He is a work in progress from what I saw. I would much rather we work him in slowly
Good news is that he was pretty active and aggressive. But definitely raw. Kamin similar. I think Jones is the most likely of the healthy freshmen to play initially.
I’m with you on pretty much everything you said above. At the same time, I expected more from Kruse, given the buzz around him. Based on the very small sample over the weekend, I expect his value this year would come at the defensive end. I remarked when I saw the lineups that the white team was unexpectedly stacked - although if Power and Altman had been available to the Reds, I think it would have been more of a contest. I also agree that we may see a lot of Jones at the point by the time we get to league play.