EagleNYC {l Wrote}:twballgame9 {l Wrote}:EagleNYC {l Wrote}:twballgame9 {l Wrote}:Rice fucking sucked. There, I said it.
This premise deserves it's own thread. If you mean he sucked as a teammate (on the court), I disagree. If you mean his skill set and propensities limited the growth/ceiling for the team, I agree in part.
This is a fair question. I say he sucked because he was playing PG and didn't make his team better. He had talent, and if he weren't a midget, he might have been a great SG. But he played no defense, hogged the ball, stagnated the offense, and took bad shots. They will be better without him.
To split a hair, I'll say that while he certainly made the team better his junior year (there were no other scoring options and he did have games where he passed the ball around quite a bit), he didn't make his teammates better. There was a lot of standing around and watching, and his dribbling exhibitions were largely to blame.
His senior year was far more frustrating, because he had three sophs coming into their own but didn't facilitate their growth.
Now to be a pain in the ass- given Rice's positives (scoring, three point shooting, FT shooting), was he mis-used a la Haden by Spaz/Tranq? I'll answer the question in the negative, but mostly because Rice needed another scoring ballhandler (such as Dudley) to keep him honest.
I don't think he was misused. He's too small to get too much run at the 2 in the ACC, and we didn't have a lot of PG depth. Al gets a pass on the "misuse" thing when the guy doesn't really fit a role in the first place (which is precisely why he is able to get him).
