FanPost

On the Issue of Terone Johnson

I'm seeing a lot of unbridled criticism and support for the brothers Johnson in the comments, and I thought I'd weigh in with some perspective. For the record I don't think Ronnie needs defending; he's a young point guard who makes some bad decisions but shows confidence and a vastly improved skillset compared to last year (the ability to go right at times for one) so I'm going to focus on Terone.

For the bad, or at least not so good: Terone is not nearly the player that any of the former Baby Boilers were, nor is he as good as LewJack or Kramer. He doesn't have one thing he does that marks him as essential in the way that Kendall or A.J. do, he gets caught playing hero ball and his FT shooting is, quite frankly, abyssmal.

One the positive side he is one of the few players on this team who has the will to at least attempt to be "the man" late in games (with RJ, perhaps Peck and/or Kendall). This is crucial because we've got too many guys who seem to get uptight late, just looking around for someone else to shoot.

Also, who are some other recent scholarship seniors? D.J. Byrd was a major disappointment, especially last year. Ryne Smith could hit some 3s but was streaky and couldn't do much else. Both of these guys spent more time being a liability (especially DJ) than TJ could ever dream of. Tacos, for all the love he gets, has laregly been a failure as a scholarship player: a 3rd string senior who wouldn't even be that if it wasn't for another player at his position transferring. People just sort of accept this, whether because he has that whole "tall, unathletic white guy" feel or because he plays hard, etc. but the fact remains that a team full of Tacos-level players would get killed by a team Terone-level guys. The fact is that TJ has been the best player on a not particularly spectacular team for 1+ seasons now.

That's what much of this TJ hate is, by the way. People are unhappy with this team basically since the VCU loss 3 seasons ago, and they blame the team's best player and clear leader. But Terone is not an all time great and so people blame him. You want to be unhappy with the state of things? Fine. You want to point out how this team has too much talent to struggle like they do? Okay. I'm as frustrated as anyone that the team as a whole doesn't seem to learn, but that's a whole team issue, not just one guy.

He's the best we've got, he tries to carry this team when too many others are passive, and he deserves better than all of the people blaming his imperfections while giving so many others a pass.

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