Greg Monroe is your new bicycle

[jerseyhoya34]

Nov 22, 2008 21:07:20 GMT -5 blueandgray said:

can someone who was at the game tell me how greg scored his fg's?

what impressed me most in the j'ville game was watching greg drive and dunk, score on an allet-oop, score on a drop step move and his most impressive move IMO the turnaround baseline jumper from 10 feet out.

It was mostly layups/dunks/FT's again today. He hasn't needed to take a mid-range shot because he has been getting ridiculous position. Greg takes the path of least resistance.

[gujake]

Greg is the perfect fit for our system, just perfect.

Offensively, he really can do it all. He has incredible vision, and sets his teammates up beautifully. EVERYBODY is better off when Greg is on the court. He is fluid, always finishes, and most surprisingly to me after watching him this summer, he has some very polished post moves. He clearly put in a lot of work in that area.

Defensively, I am impressed, but I do think we need to temper our enthusiasm a little bit. He is undoubtedly a terrific off-the-ball defender; he is great at help defense and anticipation. I'm not convinced yet that he is a great on-the-ball defender, though. We really won't be able to tell until we start playing teams with legitimate centers and, as we know, freshmen bigs always struggle defensively to some extent.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb at all when I say that Greg is pretty clearly our best player.

[grokamok]

Gotta go with easyed, here. From what we've seen, he obviously has the size, skill and confidence to be a star. However, that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be producing the same results against top-level competition, and there will be plenty of that this year.

We've got a bunch of top-level college athletes on the team, and in two games this year Monroe has shown himself to be at their level or above, so there is every reason to believe he'll produce against tougher opponents just as well as our returning athletes performed against such competition last year. However, last year in the one game I saw him play against a top-level big (Aminu -- now at Wake Forest), he seemed not to be putting his heart into the game, allowing his opponent to out-hustle and out-power him on a number of occasions. I hope that was something of a fluke -- perhaps he was a bit under the weather. In any case, heart was something Jeff brought almost all the time; we suffered in the few games he seemed less driven.

One can't expect a player to be able to bring it all the time in every game and there's near-certainty that there will be a let-down at some point. We've got a really good group of players, though, and we can reasonably expect that the team will be able to pick up a good deal of the slack when any one of them is having an off day.

It's way too early to anoint Greg the next coming. On can certainly hope, though, and I can't wait to see him take on our bigger OOC opponents, not to mention the rest of the Big East!

[tashoya]

Yes... too early to annoint Greg. However, he's not my new bicycle, he's my new Ferrari.

[SirSaxa]

Love all the positives about Greg... thanks everyone.

OK, so we are excited... it's only been two pre-season games.... but, what the heck. The guy has been VERY impressive!

Personally, I am still concerned about interior depth and rebounding against top Big East foes.
But for now.... let it Roll baby!

[FewFAC]

Here's to hoping Greg concludes that 4 years as a Hoya are necessary to make his body really NBA ready.

[ceb8]

I am very excited as well. But I need to see this consistently and against quality opponents
before I really start drinking the kool-aid. I am really looking forward to Greg's matchup vs Samardo Samuels because in every match up I followed since Greg committed to the Hoyas Samardo outperformed Greg every time. And I imagine we all know about the knocks we heard when Greg was in HS about his consistency.

Once he passes both of those tests then I will be chugging the kool-aid. But until then, great performance yesterday by the Hoyas. I can't wait to actually watch these guys during Old Spice.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Greg Monroe is a two ton man-mountain that can palm a medicine ball.

[bbb71]

Do you really think quality opponents are going to stop Monroe? You should be able to simply look at his size, build, athelticism and coordination and realize he's super-special. There is no one in college basketball as talented.

I'm looking forward to whether he can fulfill his promise as not only the BE rookie of the year, but perhaps the BE player of the year.

[zxhoya]

Well it's very early but I am pleased with his play (obviously), but it is the condition he came in at that I am most pleased with. His senior year of high school it looked as if he bulked up a little too much and it affected his play but he looks chisled now, shows his work effort and desire. Very pleased.

[lichoya68]

sorry folks his body is ready NOW man child go hoyas go greg stay for the education happy turkey folks

[Hoya TMF]

while we haven't played high level competition, what impresses those that have seen greg play live is his skill set. we haven't had a freshman this skilled since perhaps iverson.

greg can do everything. he can shoot mid-range. he can pass, block shots, rebound and score in multiple ways. he's beating bigger players off the dribble from the free throw line, and he's posting up smaller players. someone made the odom comparision, but odom doesn't play on the blocks that often. greg seems comfortable both down low and on the perimeter.

as someone else said, he is the prototypical player for this offense. thhats what makes this season so exciting. this next weekend will really give us a sense of how good we can be going into the big east season.

[strummer8526]

Did I ever tell you about the time Monroe took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Monroe takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half — until sure enough, someone constructs a bar around us. Well, the day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Monroe yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found 'em!'

[tashoya]

Here's hoping that Greg concludes that 4 years on the Hilltop will be necessary to prepare himself to be ready for the rest of his life.

[tashoya]

I heard that Greg Monroe scowled and Chuck Norris peed his pants.