Last night was the first time I was able to attend a game this year. This team has a decent starting 5. Artis, Harris, Wilms, Barrett, Thomas. After that there is not much. Jones has some potential, Barnes, and Cameron are not ready for this level of basketball. Flaggert and Touchet are very average at best. There is nothing else. When Flaggert is your first sub off the bench you know you're in trouble. Flaggert is slow and always seems to be out of position. Touchet is a decent ball handler but is afraid to shoot. The offense is nonexistent. Artis is doing his best to get the ball inside to Wilms and Thomas but when you don't have any consistent shooters from the outside, the defense just collapses on them. Everything seems forced, which results in either a bad shot or a turnover. Thomas, Wilms, Omega, and Artis played ok last night but they can't get it done on their own. Our problem which has already been stated is that we have no one on the bench that can step in and score. How can Eastern Shore have better players than UTEP? They were bigger, stronger, and more athletic. We need to recruit athletes like we used to have. They may not have been 3 and 4 star kids but they played like they were. We need kids that have skills that compliment each other on the court. We don't need 7 guards that have similar skill sets. We need a center that can defend and rebound like Antonio Davis. We need the Kent Lockhart type of kids that do the dirty work on the floor. We need a couple of lock down defenders like Washburn, a point guard like Eddie Rivera, a shooting guard like Gillespie, and forwards like Chris Sandle or Omar Thomas. We need athletes like Juden Smith roaming the baseline. We need to get away from recruiting sites and go after basketball players regardless of what the experts think. We did much better when the coaches had to actually go out and find players in person rather than looking for them on a computer. Sandle and Thomas were only 6'5" kids who played with heart which made up for their lack of physical size. In a nutshell the team we have right now will not win more than 5 or 6 games this year. The kids are trying but they cannot physically measure up to any other school on their schedule. Coach Floyd is not getting it done and quite frankly it wouldn't matter who the coach is at this point. Is he responsible for this mess? Yes without a doubt. The assistant coaches who he hired aren't getting it done either. All of them need to go, even if it means losing some of our in coming players. We need to start from scratch and build a team with a mix of freshman, transfers, and JUCO players that can do different things on the court. We need a coach that can teach defense and runs an up tempo offense that excites the fan base. Until then we will continue to lose to schools that in the past would have left beaten and embarrassed. Now we are the one's being embarrassed on our own court.
