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Welcome to The Final Four Is Not on the Schedule discussion board. A forum for the serious and casual MSU fan. Opinions welcome – stay respectful.
There has been a shocking lack of discussion around the big man addition. I think the main reason for this is most people are chalking it up to an insurance plan/backup guy. I think it’s important to note here, my personal opinions are my own, and I am not influenced by reading other opinions or comments. I’m interested to hear and read those things, but I make up my own mind 100%, with supplemental facts to aid in that.
When Braden Burke was brought in, THAT was an insurance plan. The previous season they lost both Ben Carter and Gavin Schilling before the season started. That led to a miserable season of guys like Kenny Goins guarding the likes of Isaac Haas. Izzo basically brought in Burke to ensure nothing like that ever happens again. We all knew it, and then Burke basically never played.
In my opinion, Zapala is not that situation at all. I was going to be very worried and concerned if Izzo rode into the season with Cooper and Kohler. They have not convinced anyone they can produce at this level, and the only real sliver of hope is simply that they'd make a big jump this year. Maybe that happens, maybe Kohler and Cooper play 85% of the minutes at C.
But, I am very low on these two players. Just go look at every metric, every piece of film. It’s a *lot* more bad than good. I really don’t see a world where Kohler is a starting C on a championship team, I don’t think you can completely discount his injury but he played over half the season and was the very least impactful roster piece on the team, per Torvik. Hes got a nice offensive game, but is such a liability on defense and winning battles at the rim, that I don’t think he could ever offset the net-negatives with offense.
Cooper is the better option to me, he won the starting spot at the end of the season, rightfully so in my opinion. But unfortunately, it is very evident that basketball wasn’t his first sport. His natural gifts allow him to compete, but the years of refining his game with the ball in his hands is not there and I don’t know if it ever really would be. Go look at his stat lines in the tournament games this season. Go look at his stats against sub-100 ranked teams. It’s not just bad, it’s downright terrible.
That leads us to Zapala. 7 footer, decent offensive game, natural basketball player, rim runner, cerebral to at least some degree. The reasonable response from most people is that he played at Longwood, no big schools wanted him, and he didn’t even average 10 ppg. I couldn't even tell you what state Longwood was in, let alone care about their basketball conference. Usually, a player moving up from a lower conference will struggle, even if they averaged 20 ppg at the mid major level. To expect him to struggle at the high major level is beyond fair, from that perspective.
The argument that he couldn’t get on the court at Utah St is another valid one, it’s not really a great sign. If things don’t work out with him, I think you could easily look back and say “hey we probably should have seen this coming right?”
But, the truth is, I felt all of those things JUST as everyone else did. I had the same reaction: complete confusion. But, I did what I do every single time, I go to the tape. And my guilty pleasure is watching full games in entirety. I want to see the mistakes, I want to see the off-ball battles. And I will tell you what, when I started watching tape, I was actually surprised. If you are familiar with Ant Wright on social media, he did a breakdown of Zapala and he said almost the exact same thing as me.
I went and watched the full games, in entirety, of Longwood vs St Bonaventure, Dayton, and Houston. There’s no question, the Houston tape wasn’t super impressive but it was also one of the best teams in the country, and he still had a better stat line in that one game than Kohler and Cooper’s two tournament games stats, all added together.
I highly recommend you watch the St Bonaventure game, while it was very early in the season, we have never seen anything even remotely close to that from Kohler or Cooper. Not in the same universe. Go watch the Dayton game and tell me this guy is purely an insurance plan.
I realize I am in the strong minority right now, but I genuinely believe it’s possible we see Zapala win the starting spot at some point in the season. Not based on hope, based on tape and stats. He is not a person we will *hope* takes a jump and *hopefully* can provide a scoring punch. He can, he can do that. And if that actually does happen, and he does provide a scoring punch, think about how that opens up things for Booker. Think about how it opens up the entire team.
I just wanted to start a dialogue, and please remember these are my opinions, I don’t mean to degrade any players unfairly.
I realize this was lengthy but it’s also born out of frustration. Why is no one talking about him?
Please give me your thoughts, I would genuinely love if someone convinced me I was wrong.
I am more hopeful that Kohler can be a solid starter on a championship team than many other fans are. I attribute our recent lack of conference success more to Hoggard’s play. I believe a great PG can help players like Cooper and Kohler. I bet Tillman would not have been nearly as effective at MSU had he not been paired with Winston, and I do not say this to diminish Tillman’s play. He is one of my top 5 favorite Spartans. I bet Izzo had to spend a great deal of energy in to coercing Hoggard to play Spartan basketball, and that won’t be a problem for Fears.
My prediction for next year as far as the bigs go is that all of them will play much better. I would also not be surprised if the new freshman big plays a positive role.
@hazelmotes Kohler averaged 2/2 and played more than half the season. Cooper averaged 3/4. We are hoping for a BIG jump. And it’s just hope, you have to agree right?
Of course. Maybe Rod and Eric can do an episode about players who have had the biggest jumps from one year to the next. Costello? Suton? Namick? Neitzel? It could be that both players have shown all they have, but I believe that Cooper’s limited coming into the program may mean that his development will be slower. Kohler has shown some flashes of being a good rebounder; his defense improved from his first to second year, and he works really hard. Another thing that might help both of them is that Booker has put on more weight and muscle. Last year they had to cover the other team’s biggest guy but Booker playing inside may help them on offense and on defense. I would not be surprised if both Kohler and Booker shot close to 35% from 3 next year. If that happens, it will open things up down low for either of them.
The biggest reason for my optimism is that Izzo did not feel the need to replace them. If Izzo believes in them, then I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think it was a coincidence that we did not have any real successful big men while Hoggard was our PG. We shall see.
@hazelmotes you have faith in two players that haven’t proven themselves yet. Thats fair. But it brings me back to the original point of the post, Zapala absolutely has the potential to win the spot.
No one is talking about him at all, I’ve been watching a lot of Kohler and Cooper tape in recent days. It’s a whole lot of existing, very little impact. I don’t see why a 7 footer couldn’t come in and take the spot right away from them.
Everyone wanted a starting center to come in, and that might have happened. I find it to be a bit of groupthink that so many people are just penciling him as an insurance plan. Cooper and Kohler averaged 3/4 and 2/2. I mean just think about those numbers, why couldn’t he beat them for the spot?
I have not ruled out Zapala, and I like what I’ve heard about him. I just haven’t seen enough of him to know what to expect. I am glad that the team is going to Spain to get some experience. Maybe we will hear some good things or even see some video of him playing with the team.
@hazelmotes the takes are going to be flying after that Spain trip, you’re right