CW will probably do something like this, but here are my ten takeaways from this display:
1.) Viterbo looked like a glorified high school team--the Palo/McD/Barnes era AHS teams could have probably beaten them handily, so we will have to see somebody with a backbone to really make some judgements. That Georgia State going is going to tell us a lot.
2.) That starting five--Man Man, BDJ, 3sus, Georges, and Hogue--looked like the 1995 All-Madden team. They do whatever they want with the ball. Again, remember the level of competition, but they looked like they could have scored 150 if they stayed in and played hard.
3.) I can only imagine Naz shifts back into his Sixth Man/bench scorer role once maybe Darth Nader is eligible and, certainly, once McKay is part of the rotation. But he looks like he is picking up right where he left off in nailing the deep ball and keeping the hustle up.
4.) BDJ looks legitimate. The side story about BDJ's level of play at ISU versus what's-his-face at UNLV is going to be interesting, but I cannot think we would want to trade him for much of anybody at this point. If he lives up to his talent and experience, he might be the much better one-year rental this season. Less "power" than Kane (who played basketball like a charging bull into the lane, and took a beating like a tank while doing it... so many times he hit the floor hard), but more fluid and even quicker, and he might even be better than Niang just because he is so quick and long he is going to be more of a plus defender than I thought he would be.
5.) Edozie is a valuable big body and five fouls on the bench, but, unfortunately, his clumsiness on offense is going to hold down his potential for playing time. I'm sure we might see him as a stopper, occasionally, but he looks to be about where he was last time.
6.) The Greek looked the better "fourth" post (after Niang, Hogue, and McKay), to me, at least. His height was disruptive, but not sure he quite knows how to use it yet, and he's some flexibility in moving the ball, distributing, shooting well, and has a post move or two.
7.) I heard Custer wasn't quite the shooter as the other guards, and hearing he was behind everybody else because of the mono wasn't good to hear--we have multiple options at 2-5 easily enough, but we really only have two point guards on the team. I am sure he is going to see minutes (though maybe limited ones behind Morris), but having him is going to be really nice ere we shift a scoring guard (Naz, BDJ) into handling the ball or use Niang as a point forward. That is a nice shade in small doses, but having a second point guard who seems he might be in the same class as a shooter as the other ones will be a huge help.
8.) Hogue had trouble making the ball go through the hoop, but we all know what he is capable of. He had seven boards in 21 minutes, which, hey, ain't bad. He's going to be more of himself and more of Ejim this year--little bit of everything on the stat line, crashes boards like crazy, manages to rebound over guys bigger than him, "broken play" specialist with put-backs and rebounds.
9.) Defense has always been a weakness of Fred's teams. It's then NBA game, or, at least, one style of the NBA game--go fast, outscore your open first, try to push the pace and the spacing to keep opponents from settling-in on defense. However, there seems more general "potential" for defense on this team than some of the past ones. For instance, the team of Lucious/Babb/Clyburn/Ejim/Niang had its troubles stopping people (outside Babb), but we might have a starting lineup of at least three plus defenders (Morris, Hogue, McKay), one with a lot of potential who seems to be a ball hawk (BDJ), and an improved Niang (who looks to improve there).
10.) SDW shot it well, which was nice, but not sure I saw anything out of the line change that would pop out at me. Assuming Nader is really the "best scorer" Fred has ever had and that those reports of Thomas taking over in practice on offense are true, we probably still have eight guys with 25+ minutes per game (MM, NL, MT, AN, GN, BDJ, JM, and DH) with only spot minutes for the remainder. The Greek looked the best out of them, to me, and even if SDW played better than Custer, the latter's position as a true point guard fits better on the roster. Really huge logjam at the scoring guard/wing position with BDJ, Thomas, Long, and Nader around.
