Here is the problem, Anya spent the entire summer/fall losing weight instead of working on his actual basketball skills. That's Gott's biggest issue with Anya was that every summer when he should have been honing his game and getting better, he was having to re-lose weight he shouldn't have put on.

Anya will progress during the season, but he's still learning to play at his new weight and trying to find some type of offense. Just have to hope he's improved a bit before ACC play starts instead of just being a 6th man block-specialist.

11/20/2015 7:19:10 AM

I've given up on Anya ever being anything more than average on offense. Put back jams, tip-in shots, and the occasional game-winning hook is probably all we'll ever get from him -- and that's ok with me.

As long as he can play hard the whole time he's in there -- blocking shots, boxing out, setting screens, etc -- he can still be a force.

We've got good enough offensive options elsewhere with Cat, Abu, Mav, and Caleb Martin.

One thing I hate, though, is giving Anya the ball in the high-post. Just a turnover waiting to happen.

11/20/2015 12:07:33 PM

the problem is that he has not really rebounded the ball well either. I am fine with him not scoring if he is gonna pull down 10 or so boards per night.

[Edited on November 20, 2015 at 1:25 PM. Reason : h]

11/20/2015 1:18:19 PM

anya just isn't that good at basketball. he can block shots and dunk and that's kinda it.

11/20/2015 3:02:50 PM

^sad, but I think that sums it up nicely.

11/20/2015 3:09:11 PM

at some point it stops being "he has potential" and becomes "he's never gonna be an all around good basketball player". he can still be an impactful player. but he's just not that good and probably never will be.

he doesn't really rebound that well. and aside from blocking shots, he isn't really a great defender. he can dunk on offense and nothing else, really. except that game winner vs LSU which was

[Edited on November 20, 2015 at 3:16 PM. Reason : f]

11/20/2015 3:15:23 PM

can we go ahead and get the Arizona State thread up and going?

I am looking forward to seeing Bobby Hurley's bitch ass get trounced

11/20/2015 4:52:04 PM

^

11/20/2015 5:29:13 PM

With Anya, I think about him and Meeks both coming out of HS. We were all like "Meeks sucks, Anya is way better, Meeks is fat, BJ was just hurt in HS so he got fat too, etc". 3 years later Meeks looks pretty damn solid and Anya is a fucking role player.

Meeks game has clearly improved and he has transformed his body. Anya's body has transformed too, but his game is basically the same. Blame Gott, blame Anya, credit Roy or Meeks? Just imagine how much better our team would be if we had Meeks pairing up with Abu for 35 min a night instead of Anya?

11/21/2015 4:33:19 AM

Not to say that the expectations for Anya weren't really high, but Meeks was always the better recruit in terms of offensive capabilities. Everybody knew that he just needed to trim up and didn't need to spend time looking to develop his offensive game, unlike Anya.

11/21/2015 7:33:25 AM

The only thing it seemed like people cared about with Anya coming out of HS was his wingspan anyway. Not his great basketball talent

11/21/2015 9:01:44 AM

Also, one thing that we are skipping over here is that Abu has showed some fairly promising development that we were all hoping for. This takes the pressure off Anya a bit from being the ultimate bad ass to a regular bad ass.

[Edited on November 21, 2015 at 9:05 AM. Reason : a]

11/21/2015 9:04:53 AM