MCIGuy
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Anyone here? What am I supposed to update?
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Post by MCIGuy on Aug 7, 2019 8:56:03 GMT -5
I may be out of line and this may not be the place for this but is Aidan Curran serious about handing out report card grades to Hoya players for this recent Kenner League period?
Look, I’m not trying to hate on the guy (unlike what he does with some former and current players) and I appreciate anyone who made it to Georgetown this summer at all to give the rest of us some sort of understanding of how the fellas faired. But I think one has to attend a whole lot more days and see a lot more games before they should feel comfortable in grading the food and quality of the air conditioning at Kenner, let alone the players. There were five weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) in total which games were held and a handful of Friday night specials too. On the average day four contests were played in succession and virtually every one of those contests had a current Hoya participating. So we are talking about around 13 actual days of play in McD throughout July and early August and based on Curran’s own twitter feed he appeared to have made it out to the KL three, four, perhaps five days. Max. How is that enough time to make legit evaluations? He didn’t even lead his report with a disclaimer about how many days he missed; you have to find out that info by reading some of the individual write-ups (and we know some won’t even go that far; they’ll just glimpse at the final grade score).
Don’t get me wrong. Its not as if Curran owed us his summer wasting weekends spending time sitting on uncomfortable benches watching semi-real basketball. He’s not being paid, he is simply doing a service for other fans. That said he and the Hoyas247 site did promote that he would be giving detailed updates for each game he sat through each weekend on his twitter page. That promotion thus was essentially a promise, a way of increasing interest no doubt for 247. But he only fulfilled this promise one time, the very first day of Kenner League. By the second day his tweeting had decreased markedly and by the second weekend he couldn’t make it at all. When he returned for one day of the third weekend he was already referring to Kenner League fatigue. I believe during that same week he had been in the building for three toughly contested games but only tweeted about four times altogether for that entire afternoon.
It was clear that he didn’t really have the motivation to tweet non-stop throughout these contests and I couldn’t blame him. It must be a pain. But as a guy who was part of the operation for Hoya 247 and had started a weekly podcast (which has fallen to the side it seems as well at this point), I did not understand how he would show up halfway through the second half of game and still felt he could comment on how guys had played. Not to mention leaving the gym when there were two games left to be played but the guys you were most interested in had already finished for the day. Hey, its summer. You have a life. There are better things to do. I ain’t arguing that. But again how do your justify handing out any grades? One does a disservice to the players (for better or worse) and to one’s own brand/opinion when one has such an incomplete picture of how people looked on court. I don’t think one needs 100% perfect attendance to type out evaluations. VV1983 of Casual Hoya did not make any Friday games and missed out on all of the final weekend of championship play when most players didn’t show up. But no one can deny that he had seen enough to have ascertain a more rock solid opinion.
And there were people on twitter like MrDCSportsSr who saw a lot of games stretched out throughout the entire period, tweeting repeatedly during the days they were there, who were able to share insight on how the players looked throughout the course of their KL run. In the case of MrDCSportsSr he was unimpressed with Yurtseven last summer but thought the world of him this summer. He also perceived Pickett getting stronger, better and more effective as the weeks stretched on the past weeks. Even if his evaluation of Pickett had been more negative I would still find it more valuable because he had actually caught more of the games Pickett appeared in. Curran on the other hand caught about a contest and a half of Pickett but felt comfortable in giving a dismissive grade to him. In the same token he probably drastically underrated Garder’s play (even though he was overall favorable of it) because he claims he only saw him once, during the first weekend. That means, by all reports, he never saw Gardner at his best. So why not just give an incomplete rating? Mr Curran, I know you were trying to do your best but come on.
Sigh. Rant over. Has the season started yet?
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Post by bigelephant on Aug 7, 2019 9:47:26 GMT -5
You are right and you are wrong. His "grades" are not really taken seriously but as just a piece of the puzzle. I saw about 6 KL games and I agree and disagree with his analysis on some players on others they were pretty much on the target. 247 is DIFFERENT STORY WHICH i KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. Sorry about the caps. It's all in fun and just a summer league. I looked to him for validation of what I saw. Sometimes I got it and sometimes I didn't. No harm.
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LCPolo18
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,406
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Post by LCPolo18 on Aug 7, 2019 11:03:11 GMT -5
I may be out of line and this may not be the place for this but is Aidan Curran serious about handing out report card grades to Hoya players for this recent Kenner League period? Look, I’m not trying to hate on the guy (unlike what he does with some former and current players) and I appreciate anyone who made it to Georgetown this summer at all to give the rest of us some sort of understanding of how the fellas faired. But I think one has to attend a whole lot more days and see a lot more games before they should feel comfortable in grading the food and quality of the air conditioning at Kenner, let alone the players. There were five weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) in total which games were held and a handful of Friday night specials too. On the average day four contests were played in succession and virtually every one of those contests had a current Hoya participating. So we are talking about around 13 actual days of play in McD throughout July and early August and based on Curran’s own twitter feed he appeared to have made it out to the KL three, four, perhaps five days. Max. How is that enough time to make legit evaluations? He didn’t even lead his report with a disclaimer about how many days he missed; you have to find out that info by reading some of the individual write-ups (and we know some won’t even go that far; they’ll just glimpse at the final grade score). Don’t get me wrong. Its not as if Curran owed us his summer wasting weekends spending time sitting on uncomfortable benches watching semi-real basketball. He’s not being paid, he is simply doing a service for other fans. That said he and the Hoyas247 site did promote that he would be giving detailed updates for each game he sat through each weekend on his twitter page. That promotion thus was essentially a promise, a way of increasing interest no doubt for 247. But he only fulfilled this promise one time, the very first day of Kenner League. By the second day his tweeting had decreased markedly and by the second weekend he couldn’t make it at all. When he returned for one day of the third weekend he was already referring to Kenner League fatigue. I believe during that same week he had been in the building for three toughly contested games but only tweeted about four times altogether for that entire afternoon. It was clear that he didn’t really have the motivation to tweet non-stop throughout these contests and I couldn’t blame him. It must be a pain. But as a guy who was part of the operation for Hoya 247 and had started a weekly podcast (which has fallen to the side it seems as well at this point), I did not understand how he would show up halfway through the second half of game and still felt he could comment on how guys had played. Not to mention leaving the gym when there were two games left to be played but the guys you were most interested in had already finished for the day. Hey, its summer. You have a life. There are better things to do. I ain’t arguing that. But again how do your justify handing out any grades? One does a disservice to the players (for better or worse) and to one’s own brand/opinion when one has such an incomplete picture of how people looked on court. I don’t think one needs 100% perfect attendance to type out evaluations. VV1983 of Casual Hoya did not make any Friday games and missed out on all of the final weekend of championship play when most players didn’t show up. But no one can deny that he had seen enough to have ascertain a more rock solid opinion. And there were people on twitter like MrDCSportsSr who saw a lot of games stretched out throughout the entire period, tweeting repeatedly during the days they were there, who were able to share insight on how the players looked throughout the course of their KL run. In the case of MrDCSportsSr he was unimpressed with Yurtseven last summer but thought the world of him this summer. He also perceived Pickett getting stronger, better and more effective as the weeks stretched on the past weeks. Even if his evaluation of Pickett had been more negative I would still find it more valuable because he had actually caught more of the games Pickett appeared in. Curran on the other hand caught about a contest and a half of Pickett but felt comfortable in giving a dismissive grade to him. In the same token he probably drastically underrated Garder’s play (even though he was overall favorable of it) because he claims he only saw him once, during the first weekend. That means, by all reports, he never saw Gardner at his best. So why not just give an incomplete rating? Mr Curran, I know you were trying to do your best but come on. Sigh. Rant over. Has the season started yet? I'm personally just happy to have Hoyas related content out there. I don't always agree with Curran, but I do appreciate the amount of coverage he puts out, which is more than many of the other outlets. Covering Kenner can be tough, which is why I have the utmost respect for vv83 and his recaps every year. I went to about half of the games the first weekend but had commitments out of town the rest of the month. However between seeing those games, reading vv's recaps, and watching the highlight videos, I generally had the same observations as Curran other than probably bumping Pickett and Gardner up a grade. One other note, Curran wasn't just tweeting and taking notes during the games, but he also had a press pass to take photos at the games he attended and he was mostly doing that at the games I attended.
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MCIGuy
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Anyone here? What am I supposed to update?
Posts: 9,425
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Post by MCIGuy on Aug 7, 2019 12:34:48 GMT -5
I'm personally just happy to have Hoyas related content out there. I don't always agree with Curran, but I do appreciate the amount of coverage he puts out, which is more than many of the other outlets. Covering Kenner can be tough, which is why I have the utmost respect for vv83 and his recaps every year. I went to about half of the games the first weekend but had commitments out of town the rest of the month. However between seeing those games, reading vv's recaps, and watching the highlight videos, I generally had the same observations as Curran other than probably bumping Pickett and Gardner up a grade. One other note, Curran wasn't just tweeting and taking notes during the games, but he also had a press pass to take photos at the games he attended and he was mostly doing that at the games I attended. 1-I read something about him taking photos but that still doesn’t explain how he saw Gardner once unless even if his photo activities were limited to one afternoon or the weekend Gardner didn’t play. 2-Let me repeat it was the Hoyas247 site itself which promoted going to Curran’s twitter page to get live, continuous, tweet updates regarding the games played and the players’ performances. So its not as if I’m asking anyone to take on a burden that they hadn’t already promised to do anyhow. 3-The posting of a story regarding grade scores for the KL performances of current Hoyas is done primarily for clicks and more eyeballs. That’s perfectly fine so long as one has attended the vast majority of at least most of the games before making evaluations. But if you make about a third of the games then all of the opinions and grading (both positive and negative) can be fraudulent from the standpoint of providing readers a COMPLETE picture. So while Curran may be spot on about how he feels regarding, say Pickett’s flaws and where he falls in the pecking order this coming season, his grading on his summer play is misleading because he missed Picket’s better performances. That makes the collective evaluations really incomplete and somewhat misleading for the folks who are interested in other people’s takes.
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hoyaboya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 12,340
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Post by hoyaboya on Aug 7, 2019 13:45:17 GMT -5
I'm personally just happy to have Hoyas related content out there. I don't always agree with Curran, but I do appreciate the amount of coverage he puts out, which is more than many of the other outlets. Covering Kenner can be tough, which is why I have the utmost respect for vv83 and his recaps every year. I went to about half of the games the first weekend but had commitments out of town the rest of the month. However between seeing those games, reading vv's recaps, and watching the highlight videos, I generally had the same observations as Curran other than probably bumping Pickett and Gardner up a grade. One other note, Curran wasn't just tweeting and taking notes during the games, but he also had a press pass to take photos at the games he attended and he was mostly doing that at the games I attended. 1-I read something about him taking photos but that still doesn’t explain how he saw Gardner once unless even if his photo activities were limited to one afternoon or the weekend Gardner didn’t play. 2-Let me repeat it was the Hoyas247 site itself which promoted going to Curran’s twitter page to get live, continuous, tweet updates regarding the games played and the players’ performances. So its not as if I’m asking anyone to take on a burden that they hadn’t already promised to do anyhow. 3-The posting of a story regarding grade scores for the KL performances of current Hoyas is done primarily for clicks and more eyeballs. That’s perfectly fine so long as one has attended the vast majority of at least most of the games before making evaluations. But if you make about a third of the games then all of the opinions and grading (both positive and negative) can be fraudulent from the standpoint of providing readers a COMPLETE picture. So while Curran may be spot on about how he feels regarding, say Pickett’s flaws and where he falls in the pecking order this coming season, his grading on his summer play is misleading because he missed Picket’s better performances. That makes the collective evaluations really incomplete and somewhat misleading for the folks who are interested in other people’s takes. Get off my lawn! For the record, I agree with the posters who say they appreciate when Hoyas content is put out there by anybody - there is far less information on Georgetown basketball than most other high major programs which have much larger fan bases and more media-friendly basketball administrations.
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lichoya68
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
OK YOUNGINS ARE HERE AND ARE VERY VERY GOOD cant wait GO HOYAS
Posts: 17,438
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Post by lichoya68 on Aug 7, 2019 13:59:34 GMT -5
i went to a heckofalot of kenner games weve got game we got seven newbies three or four will play ALOT and four about seven foot young men yup FOUR SEVEN FOOTERS. so im excited but only kenner buti was really excited last year re kenner and i quess my thoughts about josh and mac and james were pretty positive and pretty freaking accurate just a thought go hoyas im VERY excited great year coming meanarywayup. ps GARDNER A BEAST a bigger jabril philly tough was out with a boot for a while but with the few games back i saw wowwwwoowowowowowwo
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lichoya68
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
OK YOUNGINS ARE HERE AND ARE VERY VERY GOOD cant wait GO HOYAS
Posts: 17,438
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Post by lichoya68 on Aug 7, 2019 14:00:22 GMT -5
yup go hoyas win one by one by at least one and have some fun FUN COMING HOYAS
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LCPolo18
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,406
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Post by LCPolo18 on Aug 7, 2019 14:34:44 GMT -5
I'm personally just happy to have Hoyas related content out there. I don't always agree with Curran, but I do appreciate the amount of coverage he puts out, which is more than many of the other outlets. Covering Kenner can be tough, which is why I have the utmost respect for vv83 and his recaps every year. I went to about half of the games the first weekend but had commitments out of town the rest of the month. However between seeing those games, reading vv's recaps, and watching the highlight videos, I generally had the same observations as Curran other than probably bumping Pickett and Gardner up a grade. One other note, Curran wasn't just tweeting and taking notes during the games, but he also had a press pass to take photos at the games he attended and he was mostly doing that at the games I attended. 1-I read something about him taking photos but that still doesn’t explain how he saw Gardner once unless even if his photo activities were limited to one afternoon or the weekend Gardner didn’t play. 2-Let me repeat it was the Hoyas247 site itself which promoted going to Curran’s twitter page to get live, continuous, tweet updates regarding the games played and the players’ performances. So its not as if I’m asking anyone to take on a burden that they hadn’t already promised to do anyhow. 3-The posting of a story regarding grade scores for the KL performances of current Hoyas is done primarily for clicks and more eyeballs. That’s perfectly fine so long as one has attended the vast majority of at least most of the games before making evaluations. But if you make about a third of the games then all of the opinions and grading (both positive and negative) can be fraudulent from the standpoint of providing readers a COMPLETE picture. So while Curran may be spot on about how he feels regarding, say Pickett’s flaws and where he falls in the pecking order this coming season, his grading on his summer play is misleading because he missed Picket’s better performances. That makes the collective evaluations really incomplete and somewhat misleading for the folks who are interested in other people’s takes. 1. If Curran went to all of the games on 7/6 and 7/7, the first couple of games on 7/20, and the games on 7/27, then it definitely makes sense. Gardner's team only played one game the first weekend, the team played in the later half of 7/20, and Gardner didn't play 7/27. And at least Curran was up front about only having seen him once. 2. Below is the tweet you're referring to, which says he would be tweeting the first weekend. And he did tweet throughout Saturday and Sunday, he provided recaps of the weekend, and he provided numerous pictures. There wasn't a promise that he would be at every game, so if that was your expectation, it wasn't in line with the "promise". Even a tweet from 7/20 says he was only going to a couple of the games. 247sports.com/college/georgetown/Article/Kenner-League-Day-1-Observations-133472688/247sports.com/college/georgetown/Article/Kenner-League-Day-2-Observations-133490843/3. I get it, and maybe he should have made more disclaimers about how many times he saw players. But seeing each player play in 1-4 Kenner games is probably more than 98% of Hoya fans out there, so the insights are going to be helpful to them. If you're upset about Pickett's grade, which I agree could have been a little higher, think about it this way. One of the issues with Pickett last season was consistency. The fact that he had really good and really bad Kenner games shows that he still needs to work on that consistency. As I mentioned before, covering Kenner league is tough. Imagine showing up for the first game on 7/27 expecting to see Akinjo, Gardner, Yurtseven, and Allen, only to find out Gardner, Yurtseven, and Allen aren't playing.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 15:50:10 GMT -5
I agree with MCI... It's not the best idea to make definitive statements on players when you have an incomplete picture..
You can't say player x is the same as he was last year when you only saw him a couple times. I don't do it when evaluating recruits. I would never do it on the recruiting board because it leads to bad evaluations, and if you care about giving an honest assessment it's not the way to do it.
You can still provide valuable content without going there. It's not a this or that scenario.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 15:59:55 GMT -5
I'll also add, context matters. Kenner isn't really close to what guys will be facing when the regular season starts. Some players look great in that setting, and awful in a more structured environment. That's why when we talk about recruits we mention "college buckets".
AJ Wilson was Kenner MVP and he looked terrific this summer. He averaged less than 4ppg at George Mason last year. Tbf maybe he got a lot better, but I think that environment benefits a kid like him who isn't extremely skilled, but freakishly athletic, and very aggressive overall.
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LCPolo18
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,406
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Post by LCPolo18 on Aug 7, 2019 16:44:52 GMT -5
I agree with MCI... It's not the best idea to make definitive statements on players when you have an incomplete picture.. You can't say player x is the same as he was last year when you only saw him a couple times. I don't do it when evaluating recruits. I would never do it on the recruiting board because it leads to bad evaluations, and if you care about giving an honest assessment it's not the way to do it. You can still provide valuable content without going there. It's not a this or that scenario. I guess my point is, doesn't he give enough of a disclaimer of his evaluation? If he had removed the grades and just called the article "My Kenner Observations From the 12 Games I Saw" would it have been better?
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HOYAPLAYA
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
IT'S TIME FOR A RUNNNNNNN!!!!!!
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Post by HOYAPLAYA on Aug 7, 2019 16:53:03 GMT -5
Its funny because I read the grades and had similar thoughts. It seems like the grades could have been established in June without even watching a game. I struggle on how Mac gets an A- while shooting the same miserable percentage from deep and displaying pretty much what we have already know he is capable of doing and our other shooting guard Blair gets a B- with a bunch of dialogue about his 3 pt shooting results. Look, we all have our more favored players and I appreciate the effort but outside of Yurt (which the board would have likely erupted if he hadn't got the highest grade), it feels like the order/grading was not exactly influenced by performance.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2019 17:21:33 GMT -5
I agree with MCI... It's not the best idea to make definitive statements on players when you have an incomplete picture.. You can't say player x is the same as he was last year when you only saw him a couple times. I don't do it when evaluating recruits. I would never do it on the recruiting board because it leads to bad evaluations, and if you care about giving an honest assessment it's not the way to do it. You can still provide valuable content without going there. It's not a this or that scenario. I guess my point is, doesn't he give enough of a disclaimer of his evaluation? If he had removed the grades and just called the article "My Kenner Observations From the 12 Games I Saw" would it have been better? Yeah, a little. Mainly because it's not really fair to grade anyone on 2 games. I think when you read the entire paragraph on Pickett you see why it's problematic in my view. While that small disclaimer makes it a bit better I think the overall tone was too negative based on such a small sample size. Overall I think it's important to remember that we share these platforms with players, recruits, and their families, so tone matters imo. You can call a kid fat, or you can say he needs to work on his conditioning. You're basically saying the same thing but the tone is significantly different. Fwiw I'm not saying anything that I haven't told Aidan directly. Overall I think he does a lot of great work, and mostly provides really good content.
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MCIGuy
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Anyone here? What am I supposed to update?
Posts: 9,425
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Post by MCIGuy on Aug 7, 2019 17:42:33 GMT -5
Hello, Hoya Talkers. My apologies for having clogged this page with my fretting, but I’m going to give it one more try and address some feedback from posts over the past few hours and let it end there (on my part at least).
I appreciate those relaying to me just how tough it is for people to cover the Kenner League, but there is no need. I already understand that. I think I may have even mentioned it in my first post today when I tried to make it clear it’s a tough task to ask of anyone.I know how difficult it can be because I did it myself for years back in the day. Some may remember. Long, extended posts of mine in which I tried to convey a kinda Day In the Life at the Kenner League vibe (where did the Girl In Grey go). I would include stats (hoping they were right), actual commentary of sequences of games and my two cents on how Hoya players did. Yes, it was often a pain in the neck. If you don’t mind me sharing a sob story I would add one summer I was without wheels and had to take public transportation to get all the way from the other side of the city to catch the games. Then I would take a seat, sit on a bleacher and with a thing called a notebook and pen, write all my info down, head home 6 plus hours later (again public transportation) and sat at my computer tying to put a somewhat cohesive report together of what I witnessed.
So I get it too in terms of knowing the inconvenience of this task. Don’t think I criticized Mr. Curran on that front anyway. And because I’ve been in those shoes I have been one to tell folks on this board to cool their jets when they get impatient about not seeing reports immediately regarding KL games. I also haven’t spent time critiquing the quality or brevity of any coverage. When I don’t go in person, I’m always grateful to get whatever info I can.
Also I don’t expect anyone to catch EVERY game during a KL summer. I don’t hold it against vv1983 (the guy who does the coverage for Casual Hoya) for not making every game (particularly Friday games) nor do I hold it against anyone who has a life and won’t chain themselves to McD for an entire five weekends. This hasn’t been my argument.
I offer a mea culpa if I was wrong about this plan of Curran to live tweet for most of the KL. I could have sworn I read that somewhere. I knew ahead of time he wasn’t going to be around for the second weekend because he mentioned that in a tweet and during the first actual episode of the 247 Hoya podcast. Perhaps it was during the podcast that I got the idea he was going to be a heavy presence on twitter for the entire KL run except for week 2. I may have to go back and listen. Certainly not long after week 2 when he returned, Curran mentioned he was getting Kenner fatigue and was likely not going to be as engaged with it, so at the very least I could make the argument that he too had an idea to provide more time dedicated to tweeting. But if I am wrong about that then that’s on me.
In regards to Garner’s schedule, he played:
July 6th July 13th July 14th July 19th July 20th July 21st
He missed the entire fourth weekend due to rumored injury but returned as one of the few Hoyas to suit up for the playoffs on the fifth weekend. The third weekend stretch (from the 19th thru 21st) was by all reports Gardner’s best showing. So I’m confused at the suggestion there was a limited opportunity to see him play this summer when he was a presence for four out of five weeks.
My contention was and remains the grading. That’s mostly it. When they do such grading on Casual Hoya I don’t take exception because the dude or dudes over there make it out to most of the games, write about all the Hoyas who participated in said games, keep tracks of their stats to provide those stats on the site for public consumption, and give breakdowns in each writeup in which they touch upon the good and bad aspects of each player’s performance. On Casual they also use that info to write about how each player is performing as the summer progresses, whether they are getting any better or worse. Sorry to be blunt about this but that gives them a certain credence in their work to people like myself that I don’t get during this (admittedly first year attempt) evaluation by Curran. This isn’t to say Curran’s opinions of what he saw is wrong or that his predictions are off track. Instead I’m critical of him giving final grades as if he paid close attention to the product all summer long. Why is this so had to understand? This is like a critic grading a play despite only having seen one of its three acts. “Well, you see I’ve never been all that impressed with the playwright’s work before so I don’t need to catch the last two thirds of the play to give my verdict.” That’s pretty much how this grading comes across. And this explains, in my opinion, why Curran raves about Alexander’s ball-handling but doesn’t touch upon Garner’s even though most people were of the opinion that Garner was superior on that front. Gardner apparently showed off that skill increasingly after the first weekend but if one doesn’t catch those games how would one know?
By the way Curran’s views aren’t being served up on some rinky-dink message board. He is now one of the people in control of the few Hoya basketball devoted websites (Hoyas 247) for large public consumption. When he puts up grades he is bound to draw attention from more casual fans or curious types who don’t keep up with all the details like we do. His report may be the lone source people gain info on KL performances that then becomes the basis from which they try to make informed opinions of their own. And, yeah, based on Curran’s writeup I couldn’t blame such people from coming to a conclusion that Pickett did next to nothing and showed no growth whatsoever. If Curran had come to such a tough opinion after observing Pickett for most of the summer then so be it. Nothing wrong with an honest judgment. But doing so despite having been absent, based on his tweeting, during Pickett’s better games? Well, that’s doing him a little dirty as far as I’m concerned. And I would think that even if one is not convinced of Pickett as a player whatsoever, one would agree that that’s an unfair way to evaluate his summer showing. In fact its unfair to all the guys, even the ones Curran praises. It would be preferable to give a disclaimer at the beginning, get rid of the overall takeaway of the players’ summer accomplishment and toss out the grades altogether since he is working with incomplete scores. Just my two cents. But maybe some of you feel different. Apparently some of you do.
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LCPolo18
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,406
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Post by LCPolo18 on Aug 7, 2019 18:24:29 GMT -5
I guess my point is, doesn't he give enough of a disclaimer of his evaluation? If he had removed the grades and just called the article "My Kenner Observations From the 12 Games I Saw" would it have been better? Yeah, a little. Mainly because it's not really fair to grade anyone on 2 games. I think when you read the entire paragraph on Pickett you see why it's problematic in my view. While that small disclaimer makes it a bit better I think the overall tone was too negative based on such a small sample size. Overall I think it's important to remember that we share these platforms with players, recruits, and their families, so tone matters imo. You can call a kid fat, or you can say he needs to work on his conditioning. You're basically saying the same thing but the tone is significantly different. Fwiw I'm not saying anything that I haven't told Aidan directly. Overall I think he does a lot of great work, and mostly provides really good content. Yeah, and like I mentioned in my first post, I don't always agree with Curran but I do appreciate the amount of coverage he puts out. I'm with you that I feel like he's overly negative towards certain players given his platform. I don't have a problem with being critical of Curran's evaluations or the format of the article. I just felt like MCI was being overly dismissive of and had overly high expectations of someone who spent 4-5 days watching and reporting on Kenner for the benefit of all of the fans.
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guru
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 6,600
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Post by guru on Aug 7, 2019 20:59:00 GMT -5
Hello, Hoya Talkers. My apologies for having clogged this page with my fretting, but I’m going to give it one more try and address some feedback from posts over the past few hours and let it end there (on my part at least). I appreciate those relaying to me just how tough it is for people to cover the Kenner League, but there is no need. I already understand that. I think I may have even mentioned it in my first post today when I tried to make it clear it’s a tough task to ask of anyone.I know how difficult it can be because I did it myself for years back in the day. Some may remember. Long, extended posts of mine in which I tried to convey a kinda Day In the Life at the Kenner League vibe (where did the Girl In Grey go). I would include stats (hoping they were right), actual commentary of sequences of games and my two cents on how Hoya players did. Yes, it was often a pain in the neck. If you don’t mind me sharing a sob story I would add one summer I was without wheels and had to take public transportation to get all the way from the other side of the city to catch the games. Then I would take a seat, sit on a bleacher and with a thing called a notebook and pen, write all my info down, head home 6 plus hours later (again public transportation) and sat at my computer tying to put a somewhat cohesive report together of what I witnessed. So I get it too in terms of knowing the inconvenience of this task. Don’t think I criticized Mr. Curran on that front anyway. And because I’ve been in those shoes I have been one to tell folks on this board to cool their jets when they get impatient about not seeing reports immediately regarding KL games. I also haven’t spent time critiquing the quality or brevity of any coverage. When I don’t go in person, I’m always grateful to get whatever info I can. Also I don’t expect anyone to catch EVERY game during a KL summer. I don’t hold it against vv1983 (the guy who does the coverage for Casual Hoya) for not making every game (particularly Friday games) nor do I hold it against anyone who has a life and won’t chain themselves to McD for an entire five weekends. This hasn’t been my argument. I offer a mea culpa if I was wrong about this plan of Curran to live tweet for most of the KL. I could have sworn I read that somewhere. I knew ahead of time he wasn’t going to be around for the second weekend because he mentioned that in a tweet and during the first actual episode of the 247 Hoya podcast. Perhaps it was during the podcast that I got the idea he was going to be a heavy presence on twitter for the entire KL run except for week 2. I may have to go back and listen. Certainly not long after week 2 when he returned, Curran mentioned he was getting Kenner fatigue and was likely not going to be as engaged with it, so at the very least I could make the argument that he too had an idea to provide more time dedicated to tweeting. But if I am wrong about that then that’s on me. In regards to Garner’s schedule, he played: July 6th July 13th July 14th July 19th July 20th July 21st He missed the entire fourth weekend due to rumored injury but returned as one of the few Hoyas to suit up for the playoffs on the fifth weekend. The third weekend stretch (from the 19th thru 21st) was by all reports Gardner’s best showing. So I’m confused at the suggestion there was a limited opportunity to see him play this summer when he was a presence for four out of five weeks. My contention was and remains the grading. That’s mostly it. When they do such grading on Casual Hoya I don’t take exception because the dude or dudes over there make it out to most of the games, write about all the Hoyas who participated in said games, keep tracks of their stats to provide those stats on the site for public consumption, and give breakdowns in each writeup in which they touch upon the good and bad aspects of each player’s performance. On Casual they also use that info to write about how each player is performing as the summer progresses, whether they are getting any better or worse. Sorry to be blunt about this but that gives them a certain credence in their work to people like myself that I don’t get during this (admittedly first year attempt) evaluation by Curran. This isn’t to say Curran’s opinions of what he saw is wrong or that his predictions are off track. Instead I’m critical of him giving final grades as if he paid close attention to the product all summer long. Why is this so had to understand? This is like a critic grading a play despite only having seen one of its three acts. “Well, you see I’ve never been all that impressed with the playwright’s work before so I don’t need to catch the last two thirds of the play to give my verdict.” That’s pretty much how this grading comes across. And this explains, in my opinion, why Curran raves about Alexander’s ball-handling but doesn’t touch upon Garner’s even though most people were of the opinion that Garner was superior on that front. Gardner apparently showed off that skill increasingly after the first weekend but if one doesn’t catch those games how would one know? By the way Curran’s views aren’t being served up on some rinky-dink message board. He is now one of the people in control of the few Hoya basketball devoted websites (Hoyas 247) for large public consumption. When he puts up grades he is bound to draw attention from more casual fans or curious types who don’t keep up with all the details like we do. His report may be the lone source people gain info on KL performances that then becomes the basis from which they try to make informed opinions of their own. And, yeah, based on Curran’s writeup I couldn’t blame such people from coming to a conclusion that Pickett did next to nothing and showed no growth whatsoever. If Curran had come to such a tough opinion after observing Pickett for most of the summer then so be it. Nothing wrong with an honest judgment. But doing so despite having been absent, based on his tweeting, during Pickett’s better games? Well, that’s doing him a little dirty as far as I’m concerned. And I would think that even if one is not convinced of Pickett as a player whatsoever, one would agree that that’s an unfair way to evaluate his summer showing. In fact its unfair to all the guys, even the ones Curran praises. It would be preferable to give a disclaimer at the beginning, get rid of the overall takeaway of the players’ summer accomplishment and toss out the grades altogether since he is working with incomplete scores. Just my two cents. But maybe some of you feel different. Apparently some of you do. Holy crap. MCI’s still got it.
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hoyainla
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Suspended
Posts: 4,719
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Post by hoyainla on Aug 7, 2019 21:45:22 GMT -5
Its funny because I read the grades and had similar thoughts. It seems like the grades could have been established in June without even watching a game. I struggle on how Mac gets an A- while shooting the same miserable percentage from deep and displaying pretty much what we have already know he is capable of doing and our other shooting guard Blair gets a B- with a bunch of dialogue about his 3 pt shooting results. Look, we all have our more favored players and I appreciate the effort but outside of Yurt (which the board would have likely erupted if he hadn't got the highest grade), it feels like the order/grading was not exactly influenced by performance. I have no problem with any writer putting their opinion out there so I had no problem with the article. I am in the camp of any info for the fans to consume is good as the info around the team is limited. I do agree though the returning players grades were in order of how popular I think the guys are to the fan base, not necessarily how they performed. There was definitely some bias baked into the grades.
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LCPolo18
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,406
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Post by LCPolo18 on Dec 1, 2019 0:13:03 GMT -5
Hello, Hoya Talkers. My apologies for having clogged this page with my fretting, but I’m going to give it one more try and address some feedback from posts over the past few hours and let it end there (on my part at least). I appreciate those relaying to me just how tough it is for people to cover the Kenner League, but there is no need. I already understand that. I think I may have even mentioned it in my first post today when I tried to make it clear it’s a tough task to ask of anyone.I know how difficult it can be because I did it myself for years back in the day. Some may remember. Long, extended posts of mine in which I tried to convey a kinda Day In the Life at the Kenner League vibe (where did the Girl In Grey go). I would include stats (hoping they were right), actual commentary of sequences of games and my two cents on how Hoya players did. Yes, it was often a pain in the neck. If you don’t mind me sharing a sob story I would add one summer I was without wheels and had to take public transportation to get all the way from the other side of the city to catch the games. Then I would take a seat, sit on a bleacher and with a thing called a notebook and pen, write all my info down, head home 6 plus hours later (again public transportation) and sat at my computer tying to put a somewhat cohesive report together of what I witnessed. So I get it too in terms of knowing the inconvenience of this task. Don’t think I criticized Mr. Curran on that front anyway. And because I’ve been in those shoes I have been one to tell folks on this board to cool their jets when they get impatient about not seeing reports immediately regarding KL games. I also haven’t spent time critiquing the quality or brevity of any coverage. When I don’t go in person, I’m always grateful to get whatever info I can. Also I don’t expect anyone to catch EVERY game during a KL summer. I don’t hold it against vv1983 (the guy who does the coverage for Casual Hoya) for not making every game (particularly Friday games) nor do I hold it against anyone who has a life and won’t chain themselves to McD for an entire five weekends. This hasn’t been my argument. I offer a mea culpa if I was wrong about this plan of Curran to live tweet for most of the KL. I could have sworn I read that somewhere. I knew ahead of time he wasn’t going to be around for the second weekend because he mentioned that in a tweet and during the first actual episode of the 247 Hoya podcast. Perhaps it was during the podcast that I got the idea he was going to be a heavy presence on twitter for the entire KL run except for week 2. I may have to go back and listen. Certainly not long after week 2 when he returned, Curran mentioned he was getting Kenner fatigue and was likely not going to be as engaged with it, so at the very least I could make the argument that he too had an idea to provide more time dedicated to tweeting. But if I am wrong about that then that’s on me. In regards to Garner’s schedule, he played: July 6th July 13th July 14th July 19th July 20th July 21st He missed the entire fourth weekend due to rumored injury but returned as one of the few Hoyas to suit up for the playoffs on the fifth weekend. The third weekend stretch (from the 19th thru 21st) was by all reports Gardner’s best showing. So I’m confused at the suggestion there was a limited opportunity to see him play this summer when he was a presence for four out of five weeks. My contention was and remains the grading. That’s mostly it. When they do such grading on Casual Hoya I don’t take exception because the dude or dudes over there make it out to most of the games, write about all the Hoyas who participated in said games, keep tracks of their stats to provide those stats on the site for public consumption, and give breakdowns in each writeup in which they touch upon the good and bad aspects of each player’s performance. On Casual they also use that info to write about how each player is performing as the summer progresses, whether they are getting any better or worse. Sorry to be blunt about this but that gives them a certain credence in their work to people like myself that I don’t get during this (admittedly first year attempt) evaluation by Curran. This isn’t to say Curran’s opinions of what he saw is wrong or that his predictions are off track. Instead I’m critical of him giving final grades as if he paid close attention to the product all summer long. Why is this so had to understand? This is like a critic grading a play despite only having seen one of its three acts. “Well, you see I’ve never been all that impressed with the playwright’s work before so I don’t need to catch the last two thirds of the play to give my verdict.” That’s pretty much how this grading comes across. And this explains, in my opinion, why Curran raves about Alexander’s ball-handling but doesn’t touch upon Garner’s even though most people were of the opinion that Garner was superior on that front. Gardner apparently showed off that skill increasingly after the first weekend but if one doesn’t catch those games how would one know? By the way Curran’s views aren’t being served up on some rinky-dink message board. He is now one of the people in control of the few Hoya basketball devoted websites (Hoyas 247) for large public consumption. When he puts up grades he is bound to draw attention from more casual fans or curious types who don’t keep up with all the details like we do. His report may be the lone source people gain info on KL performances that then becomes the basis from which they try to make informed opinions of their own. And, yeah, based on Curran’s writeup I couldn’t blame such people from coming to a conclusion that Pickett did next to nothing and showed no growth whatsoever. If Curran had come to such a tough opinion after observing Pickett for most of the summer then so be it. Nothing wrong with an honest judgment. But doing so despite having been absent, based on his tweeting, during Pickett’s better games? Well, that’s doing him a little dirty as far as I’m concerned. And I would think that even if one is not convinced of Pickett as a player whatsoever, one would agree that that’s an unfair way to evaluate his summer showing. In fact its unfair to all the guys, even the ones Curran praises. It would be preferable to give a disclaimer at the beginning, get rid of the overall takeaway of the players’ summer accomplishment and toss out the grades altogether since he is working with incomplete scores. Just my two cents. But maybe some of you feel different. Apparently some of you do. My apologies. After today I won’t be defending Aidan Curran any more. I used to appreciate pretty much anyone that produced Hoya related content, but his hot takes have finally worn thin on me.
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DanMcQ
Moderator
Posts: 30,539
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Post by DanMcQ on Feb 13, 2020 16:03:08 GMT -5
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