I know May is white and all, but by your strange ranking system he's much more of an athlete than a basketball player. He's pretty raw, but is def an above average athlete in the B10. But this is just a stupid question, we need talented, B-10 level players. Of course you need to be a good athlete to be successful in the B10 but getting some great athlete with very limited basketball skills isn't going to help us either.
First, this isn't white or black. May is an exceptional athlete and I expect him to that this year just like he was Iowa's best athlete. All indications point that Basabe is a top tier athlete that needs to hone his game. I will take a roster full of Eric May's, he plays hard, has a bit of chip on his shoulder and has nothing but good things ahead of him. There was no ranking system, May's ommision was just that, not intentional.
As far as the question at hand, every player that plays D1 basketball is just that, a basketball player at some level. The question at hand really is this, how good of a teacher is Fran McCaffery? I feel that he can get more athletic players and teach them to play and mold them into all-around basketball players.
What type of player does Coach Fran get? Does he get a good mix of fundamentalist players and athletes or favor one or the other?
In the beginning, I felt that Coach Fran was on the "athlete" side with raw basketball skills, but with the offers of late to Thomas Gipson, Uthoff, Jesperson, Ross Travis and now Josh Oglesby, it looks to be a mix.
The only reason I had Marble Jr on the basketball player side more than an athlete is this: Read any article or assessment of him, "Basketball IQ" is used all the time, he has a great mind for the game. He studies, he doesn't have the biggest frame, but he still gets the job done because he knows how to play the game.
We all know Iowa needs to add to the solid group of talent that is there, but Iowa needs an athletic frontcourt with size and physicality to compete with the other teams in the Big Ten.
The Big Ten is loaded in the senior class, if Iowa puts together a solid, not spectacular 2011 class with some size, Iowa will not be down as long as what some may believe. Iowa has a good core group and the 2010 class will get a lot of experience and a lot of growth in a hurry, put some complementary pieces with that group and year two will be interesting.
