Top Players:
1. Brandon Knight: 21 points (7-13 FGs, 2-5 3Pt, 5-5 FTs), 3 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 blocks. Who cares if he didn't rack up Wall-like dime numbers? Knight is a scorer and will be against any player he opposes this season. I can't wait until he faces another top tier point guard and proves this point to everyone for good. His jumper is beautiful. Just plain gorgeous. And he's a fantastic layer-upper, too ... which real basketball fans understand. He plays all the angles perfect and seems to know exactly what he needs to accomplish with the basketball 95% of the time. People are discounting this kid's athleticism just because they don't think he'd match Wall's numbers at a football combine, but this Knight is a sneaky freak athlete in his own respect. I'd almost mark him down today as an All-American at the end of the season. As I said last time, his production's only going to go up from here.
2. Darius Miller: 15 points (6-7 FGs, 3-4 3PT), 5 rebounds, 4 assists, 5 steals, 4 blocks. Darius owned this game from the tip. He almost broke the stat sheet by getting close to an old Andrei Kirilenko/Shawn Marion 5x5. Add in the fact he only missed one of his seven shots, including three triples ... sickness. Nothing else to say besides that this is a perfect Miller game if there is one. Gave the team any and everything that they needed.
3. Doron Lamb: 13 points (4-5 FGs, 3-4 3PT, 2-2 FTs), 3 rebounds, 1 assist. In my opinion, our NY-representer didn't make a single mistake while he was on the floor. He filled in great once again as our spot-minutes secondary point guard and even better as our designated sharp shooter. Where he was taking his shots from in the exhibition games had fans scared that he wasn't the long ball shooter that everyone hyped him up to be, but Lamb made a statement against Portland, making threes look like lay-ups. He showed great restrain in picking his spots (that's how you wind up with 13 points on 5 shot attempts) and definitely didn't look like a freshman out there. Lamb can definitely be an X-factor all season as our resident "Microwave" off the bench if he proves his understanding of the game is already as developed as it's looked in the early going.
4. Terrence Jones: 12 points (5-14 FGs, 0-2 3PT, 2-5 FTs), 5 rebounds, 3 assist, 2 blocks. He made the first basket of the game and then struggled mightily after that. Foul trouble and an errant jumper plagued him, but he came back pretty nice in the second half to put up some highlights on both sides of the ball. He threw down a sick pump faking blow-by jam along the baseline, showcasing his bread and butter in being able to create unguardable mismatch situations on the floor at any given moment. TJ took the same kinds of shots that netted him 28 against ETSU, so you can't fault him in that department. He's just gotta make em from here on out against better opponents. Look for him to do exactly that. As a final note, his penchant for on-man shot blocking has been a notable surprise for me. Very few non-7-foot freaks can pull that off consistently.
5. DeAndre Liggins: 6 points (1-4 FGs, 0-1 3PT, 4-4 FTs), 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal. Our resident Kobe-stopper wasn't any kind of aggressive in taking shots himself tonight ... prolly cuz he was 100% intent on destroying All-NCAA shooter Jared Stohl into missing 7 of his 9 shots. Owned. Dre really is the do-anything, unselfish-to-a-fault glue guy who fits into Coach's on-court philosophy brilliantly. All he needs to do is smack his teammates around a little more to get him some shots on nights where he's rendering the other team's best player useless.
6. Josh Harrellson: 6 points (3-4 FGs), 12 rebounds. After a foul prone start to the season, Jorts came into Oregon and fulfilled everyone's hopes for his best case scenario in production on a game-by-game basis. He grabbed every single board that he could have, he didn't turn the ball over, and he actually was aggressive on his limited touches and put back opportunities. We don't need Harrellson to be Enes Kanter and score any amount of points consistently. We just need him to be a big body on the floor that the other team actually recognizes as a big body. Here's hoping that the rest of Josh's senior year brings a lot more of these kinds of games.
... and Free Enes.
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so what did ya think about whatever the heck i wrote?