Welcome Karim Coulibaly to SBU
- Thread starter Bill Russell
- Start date
Karim will quickly become a fan favorite. He plays with a high motor. Although not a leaper, he works hard on defense and will mix it up. He is a capable offensive threat. He was forced to play the 5 at PITT. He is more comfortable at the 4. He is unselfish and a solid passer. If he gets touches in the high post, defenders will have to respect his jumper. I hope that he gets some run with Shoon. Karim in the high post will open up the baseline for cutters and prevent defenders from doubling on Shoon. At 6-8 he brings new wrinkles into the offense. I can't wait to see how Schmidt utilizes and further develops Karim. This is a really good get for the Bonnies.
If anything he will give us some options if he plays the 4. You then can use either Adaway or Welch at the 3 and get a nice rotation with Holmes and Lofton too. He adds a lot for our depth and should get guys some breaks.
I kinda wonder if Karim might start some games over English.... He's a bigtime talent who was starting at a P5 school. I have a hard time seeing a scenario where he leaves that to be 6th or 7th man in the A10. Then again, the appeal of being on a team with a good chance of making the tournament vs one with a slim chance definitely helps.
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I was actually wondering the same about Brown appearing in the starting lineup if his scoring ability translates to the A10 level. Hopefully these questions alone are reflective of having a good problem on our hands. If nothing else, it sounds like we have brought in some guys that will compete for spots and keep our seniors sharp. I'm not sure you could say the same about the bench guys we had last November.
Without breaking it down player by player, I would agree, with one sidebar to add. I still wonder what impact Roberts might have had he stayed. For several reasons, his sample size with us is too small to even reasonably speculate beyond just wondering.
That said, Brown's 1st team All-American status and impressive offensive numbers in JUCO are enough to reasonably expect his impact to be, at a minimum, what we thought Roberts would have been had he stuck around.
We had an incredible run of health last year. We lost 1 combined game from our starters (Holmes started but didnt really play URI and Adaway didn't start but played most of Duq). We need the new guys to be able to cover some of the minutes we will inevitably lose to injury next year. Historically we have 2-3 starters miss 2-5 games due to a rolled ankle or a knee issue. Just a couple of years ago Chef started 11 games while Griffin was out. That same year Welch got to start out the gates because Stockard was out. We avoided that last year but I dont think we can count on it again.
Hopefully the new guys can challenge for starters minutes or at least a timeshare. I also hope that they get a true offseason this year and have time with the staff and new teammates to get to know the system and get comfortable playing together. It never felt like Roberts fit in particularly well and I wondered how much of that was due to how screwed up the offseason and start of last season were.
Hopefully the new guys can challenge for starters minutes or at least a timeshare. I also hope that they get a true offseason this year and have time with the staff and new teammates to get to know the system and get comfortable playing together. It never felt like Roberts fit in particularly well and I wondered how much of that was due to how screwed up the offseason and start of last season were.
My too early exprctation for Coulibaly is he will recieve major minutes(20+) and be the 1st player off the bench. He gives this team a size they were lacking at the 4 last season and I also expect him to slide over to the 5 to give Osun a rest or if hes in foul trouble. I think it will be intersting to see how Schmidt uses both Coulibaly and Adaway to dictate how opposing teams have to match up.
That is why I am happy with how the bench has improved since last year. We got very lucky health wise last year (of course in the LSU game Welch gets hurt and was not the same after). I think we made upgrades across the board and will not miss anybody who left. It sounds like they will get a true offseason program. Chuckie mentioned in his article that Brown will be on campus next month for summer session. I have to think the whole team will be around for part or all of the summer.