1 of 1- Gwmayhem
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The Importance, Or Lack Thereof, Of Continuity
A little over a year ago, GW fans received fantastic news. Rafael Castro wasn't going anywhere else to finish his college basketball career. A legitimate conference POY candidate opted to stay at GW. But wait, there was more. Trey Autry decided to stick around. As did Christian Jones. Ty Bevins showed some promise as a freshman and he was returning too. And, after missing over a year, Garrett Johnson would be spending another season in Foggy Bottom. Castro-Autry-Jones-Bevins-Johnson would be the core returnees to the 2025-26 Revs. If that doesn't sound like a lot, you are so 2023. Today, having five players coming back who were expected to play a role seems huge. Guys who know how to play with one another. Who understand their strengths and weaknesses. How could this not be regarded as a competitive advantage?
Well, here's how. First, what if the 5 guys aren't all they are cracked up to be? Injuries certainly played a role with Slim, Garrett and Ty. But injuries aside, did any of the 5 truly take the leap that we wanted to see? Slim remained a great defender and rebounder but I'm unconvinced that his offense substantially improved from the prior season. Garrett could not recapture his shooting stroke from two seasons ago. Christian was very hit or miss, often a hit against lesser opponents, as was the case a season ago. Trey really seemed poised for a greater role on the heels of his heroic performance in the A10 tournament win over Fordham in 2025, but a consistent upgrade never truly materialized. Ty either regressed, had a lingering injury, was recruited over, or perhaps all of the above.
Then there is also the matter of playing with new teammates. Just because 5 key returnees were retained (which really became 4 since Ty played so little) doesn't mean there weren't huge adjustments learning to play with Dinkins, Hunger, Marshall, Aranguren, and Bubu.
By contrast, 2026-27 will essentially be a brand new team joining Jean and to a lesser extent, redshirt Jalen Rougier-Roane (who at least practiced with last year's team). Instead of five players getting used to playing with five new players, we will now essentially have a team where everyone must get used to playing with everyone else. Does this necessarily place next year's team at a competitive disadvantage? I'm not convinced of this. First, we don't know yet but maybe next year's team will be that much more talented that it can rapidly overcome the lack of experience playing with one another. Second, since we didn't see huge developmental strides among last year's returnees, perhaps the continuity advantage is a bit overrated?
At the end of the day, basketball is basketball and this may all boil down to "the best teams win the most" regardless of any experience playing together. This team will convene in July which will give it four months of learning about one another before Opening Night. The way this sport has changed, I suspect that will be more than enough time to overcome any lack of continuity issues. How do you see it?
- GWRising
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Re: The Importance, Or Lack Thereof, Of Continuity
In this day and age continuity is less important because of wholesale roster changes most everywhere. Rather than use the word "continuity", I would prefer to use the word "cohesion". The question facing GW and every program is how quickly you can take a lot of new faces and get them to play together. The challenge facing every coach is how to take a significant number of players coming from different program cultures and different schemes and get them to buy-in to your program/scheme. This is especially true where for NIL purposes the name on the back of the jersey means more than the name on the front. Unfortunately, it seems NIL has put a premium on working to get numbers rather than working to win championships. So there is another c word that is relevant - "character". You need to find talented high character guys who care about winning. Those are harder to find these days.
All that said, you won't know how it will work at GW until you see how it all works. It could be a banner year or a complete bust. Unless you have insight into the character and cohesion of the roster, there is really no way to predict outcomes.
- GW0509
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Re: The Importance, Or Lack Thereof, Of Continuity
While I agree with the overall conclusion of GWRising that ultimately what matters is cohesion as opposed to continuity, I do think there are some worthwhile questions to be raised about Caputo's ability to bring the different parts together.
I must admit I am a bit envious of the way Tony Skinn seemingly can take a whole crop of new players and have them playing strong team defense seemingly right away. Now it may just be that Mason has a much better method of evaluating talent such that their players are more amenable to playing together, but I think it's more likely that he's better than Caputo at that task.
What's most frustrating about the cohesion discussion is that Caputo does not run some "system" offense like say Moody at Richmond that takes time to gel. He should be able to be more adaptable at finding the best way of using the pieces he brings in. Yet, it seems like we take wild swings between having a strong offense or a strong defense.
- dmvpiranha
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Re: The Importance, Or Lack Thereof, Of Continuity
You bring up a good point about developmental strides. Guys like Autry never really showed the more diversified offensive game that I somehow still feel like he's capable of. Bevins may have had more upside in a larger role but the writing was on the wall when it came to his playing time before the season even started. I unfortunately get the same vibes from Rougier-Roane given the transfer additions + the fact that he hasn't really been fully healthy going back to his HS days.
CJ was to me the most pivotal player going into last year and unfortunately he did not take large enough strides forward as a player. Having a big like Slim is undoubtedly a luxury, but a team's success really comes from the backcourt. Every year under CC, guard play has always felt mediocre/not good enough. I still have those feelings with the current team makeup.
I do agree to an extent that a "pure PG" would be a worthwhile addition given the number of combo guards on the roster (instead of a guy like Phillips who I don't get the sense is a guy who plays a lot by conference play - now a lot seems riding on N'Landu right away), but just as important as that is getting a leader and a guy who can create his own shot down the stretch of games. It's TBD whether Aranguren can be the former, and the latter has been missing since JB left. With little continuity, having a leader to bring everyone together becomes that much more important. On paper, Witherspoon feels like an upgrade over previous teams as a potential dynamic bucket getter in the backcourt but GW's season comes down to him becoming a much more efficient player than his Pitt days.
GW0509 wrote:
Yet, it seems like we take wild swings between having a strong offense or a strong defense.
That's something that I feel like we don't talk enough when it comes to CC. It seems like he overcompensates from one year to the next with his recruiting. Year 3 saw a fall off offensively, so he added more guys that were offensively minded than defensively. This year it feels like he's really addressed the defense with maybe fewer outright shooters.
- H&R..71
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Re: The Importance, Or Lack Thereof, Of Continuity
The continuity factor is all but gone these days, with CC being the only common denominator for this team. What makes someone a great coach? What qualities did Auerbach and Wooden have that separated them? How did Dusty May and Brad Stevens work miracles. Yes, having access to the superior talent helped, but there had to be more. Auerbach loved one speedy ball handler with a longer tough defensive minded 2, a lanky long wiry wing at the 3, a bruiser at the 4, and a track star at center like Russell, Cowens, and Parish. They all ran the floor on breaks and owned the boards. They had playbooks, drills, conditioning and fundamental discipline ingrained.
One measure I found interesting was how Noel Brown did at St. Bon in a new system with Schmidt. He had a specific role with defined footwork and looked his best. Was it his coming of age or the new system?
Same for Autry this year. Will they get him open looks in their scheme, or is he going to have to force the issue like last year?
One thing I know for sure is that CC has had the attention of his teams and they always came to play minus a few stinker games. I hope his playbook, philosophy, motivation, and fundamental skill building shines bright. The talent is sure to be improved.
- Gwmayhem
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Re: The Importance, Or Lack Thereof, Of Continuity
I'm fine replacing continuity with cohesion but the underlying assumption was that greater continuity ought to lead to a better chance at achieving cohesion. Nevertheless, this is a more nuanced discussion than simply stating that continuity is a thing of the past and that the better teams will be the more cohesive ones. Again, I'll go back to this past season when returning a core group of 4-5 players arguably should have provided GW with a competitive advantage over many schools. This seems to have been negated either because there were still many new rotation players to get used to playing with, the core players did not develop as hoped, or both.
An interesting team to look at this coming year is SLU. They will have four returning starters from a highly successful team and are appearing on many pre-season Top 20 or Top 25 lists. However, they will need to learn to play without their best player in Avila, plus a new bench to a large extent. The pre-season forecasts are undoubtedly and are understandably due in part to last year's success and the number of returning starters. However, in this day and age, does returning 4 starters while losing your best player really an advantage? It certainly seems like it should, but as last summer's GW hype illustrated, that may not necessarily be the case.
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