Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Insight into Humphrey and other links

Matt Humphrey's departure surprised many but not Heights writer Austin Tedesco. In this column he paints a picture of a guy who was very frustrated and separate from his teammates. Great job by Austin and I encourage other on campus reporters to leverage their time and access to write the same sorts of stories.


There were a few BC related names on Tom Lemming's Top 100 list. But at this point I don't really expect Spaz to land any of them.


Chris Kreider and the Rangers agreed to terms. He will join the team on Wednesday.


Coach Johnson is now focused on building his own recruiting pipeline. It will be interesting to see how he handles the players that were leaning towards BC under Crawley.

7 comments:

EL MIZ said...

great piece from austin tedesco. the strong BC writing, from mike lupica to kevin armstrong and now to tedesco! really interesting that he never really fit in. humphrey sounds like the classic "irrational confidence guy" to borrow a bill simmons term. it is too bad he apparently overvalues himself, as he's probably going to make the next level by "accepting who he is" as greg popovich would say, and making an impact as a great defender and rebounder from the 2. oh well -- we march on with the rising sophs and new recruits.

matthew2 said...

Without knowing either coach D or Humphrey personally, I still respect the way he handled it. I've never seen a player work harder than that while being distraught and angry with a coach. I suppose coach would deesrve some credit as well for coexisting with a player whose style he did not buy into.

@timstwrt said...

Sounds like a really terrific coaching job by the great Steve Donahue. Apparently there's more to coaching hard than yelling on the sidelines...perhaps in the future he might talk to his players about their roles.

EL MIZ said...

sometimes i wonder if people read the articles or just post their opinions over and over again.

(A) humphrey thinks he's a scorer. it was clear watching him this year that he isn't. stats back this up: 35% FG every season over 3 seasons with 2 different teams -- that is woefully bad. humphrey's delusional comparison to kemba walker -- 43% from the field his last yr, and his worst year was 40%, 5 % points higher than humph's career best.
(B) humphrey would "stand by himself" during practices and not engage with his teammates.

if the guy isn't talking to his teammates, and thinks he should be the #1 scoring option when he lacks that skillset...one can only conclude this is a coaching problem! LOL.

matthew2, i agree -- reading this now, it is really impressive that humphrey buckled down, started playing the way donahue wanted him to, and really made an impact. if only he realized his impact as a hustler/defender is far greater than his impact making, on average, 7 out of every 20 shots.

@timstwrt said...

"'What do you think Coach Donahue wants from you on the team? What role do you think he has in mind for you?'

'I haven’t really talked to him....'"

Joseph said...

And why Tim, do you believe that? It seems to be rather self serving and the fact is, if he started to play the Coach's way, something must have been said by someone. I believe that the coach is quite a bit more mature than the player and knows a little more about what the team has to do to grow. Don't forget the background of the player. Pay attention to what Miz writes. It might help you to be a little more incisive.

EL MIZ said...

"Once Humphrey realized Donahue wouldn’t stand for that play out of the junior forward, he adjusted his game to at least stay on the court. Humphrey began shooting a lot less in January, and instead became a reliable defender and excellent rebounder. He kept his starting spot and solid playing time with the adjustment, but his new role killed him."

perhaps Humphrey deduced via osmosis that he needed to stop chucking. my guess is Donahue told him, and Humph was in denial. He wants to be Kemba Walker, not Iman Shumpert.