Free Keanu

[Yergensen]

7.8 ppg
5.3 rpg
67% fg%
220 minutes played
560 total game minutes
39% playing time or 16 mpg
0.6 points per minute

There is only one way to stop Keanu Dawes from scoring and rebounding, sit him on a chair. He’s playing 16 mpg, he should be playing 36 mpg.

Pettiness over performance.

[Kellso]

Coaches are working with him for as many as four hours a day. We see him for one hour twice a week. I get it, his results in a game are very good, but we don’t know the details. Let the coaches coach. They might make him an even better player.

[Utefanbybirthandchoice]

Pettiness? Do you see the irony in your post.

[MG_Ute]

Love it. Great stats. Thank you. He’s only a sophomore by the way. Let’s hope he not only continues to progress but stays with the program. If he’s really this good and doesn’t get the minutes or money he wants he’ll be gone. Such is the new landscape of college basketball. So yeah, given there are no guarantees, we need to utilize him as much as we can while we have him!

And it would sure be nice to get a win on Saturday versus the TDS.

[Ute Dub]

I love him in the 6th man role. Come off the bench and take as many shots as he wants against the oppositions second stringers. Not a bad gig.

[Hahnenwk]

Dawes has not been a sixth man more like a tenth man. in a couple of early games and the last two he got some time.

[Minnesota Ute]

Interestingly my impression of him is that he has a lot of turnovers, but the stats disagree. Stats say he is averaging 1 per game give or take. I wonder if that’s because they don’t consider it a turnover if you lose the ball going to the hole. It seems like at least 2 to 3 times per game, he goes hard to the basket and just loses the handle. Regardless, the stats look quite good other than his 3pt percentage, so hard to argue he shouldn’t be playing. His BPM is an eye popping 8.0, which is 0.2 off the highest which is Lawson.

In that same vein, Jake (50% from floor, 40% from 3, 5.8 BPM) seems to be emerging as one of the better complete players on our team. And Mongo Mike also is playing really well. So questions need to be asked, if these guys are now emerging, why were they not playing a lot more early in the year so they could develop. There are others (including Miro and Lohner) that have consumed a lot of PT and frankly don’t seem to be improving and making a difference.

By the numbers, 4 of our starting 5 should be Mongo, Lawson, Keanue, and Jake. The last spot is a toss up, but by the numbers you could make an argument for Mason over Gabe. But it’s def not Hunter or Miro. Side note, and very interesting that Ezra’s BPM is -0.2.

[Jim Vanderhoof]

Your most athletic players give you the best chance to win. Play them and let them develop. If they make mistakes sit for a few minutes then put them back in.

[BleedsRedUte]

I think the reason Dawes was not playing as much was mainly his defense. He was a little slow afoot in sliding left or right to stay in front of an opponent. I think coach Smith’s emphasis has been on who plays hard and with some skill on defense. Lohner and Keller have seen playing time because of their defense, as well as rebounding. They are not a great threat on offense.

Dawes can certainly improve his defense with practice and maturity of his tall body.

[Minnesota Ute]

Part of me feels like I should be making the argument that Ezra shouldn’t be playing at all. A BPM of -0.2 is pretty bad, and he turns the ball over very regularly. He has 22 turnovers which is 3rd highest on the team behind Miro(29) and Gabe(26), so that’s a lot for a non-guard. He drives me crazy when he just puts his head down and drives into traffic. But somehow he seems to get the foul, and ultimately gets the other team in foul trouble which has some intrinsic value. It could translate into points if he could get his FT figured out. I love his energy and obviously he is a pretty good rebounder. But objectively, Keanu beats him in almost every statistical category. The interesting thing is that Ezra figured more prominently in the games against better competition, so there may be a selection bias. Regardless, a True Shooting percent for Dawes of 71.7% is the highest on the team while Ezra’s is 54.4% which is near the bottom, so at a minimum I think it’s clear Dawes should be on the floor much more than he is.

[Utopia]

Apparently Ausar only started playing basketball in high school, which explains a lot. He clearly has rudimentary mechanics, skillset and feel for the game, which are somewhat compensated by his exceptional athleticism. He only has two offensive moves, both of which often end up in a turnover, missed layup or getting blocked. It’s painful watching this play out repeatedly; it’s like watching a car crash happen in slow motion. He does draw some fouls, but then he can’t make FTs. Bottom line is he’s undersized and underskilled for P4, but his athleticism is good enough to make him effective at a lower level.

[Utes 69]

fire Smith for keeping him on the bench,

[Utefanbybirthandchoice]

Wow what an insightful post. Could be that Smith had him on the bench until he upped his defensive effort. Many on here crapped on Whalin early on. They thought he did not have the skills to play in the big bad big 12. I saw him as more of an Alex Jensen with more athleticism. His defensive effort has been phenomenal, not that his conditioning is catching up post mission, we are starting to see he is a pretty talented player that can shoot from anywhere on the court. You will see Smith rewards defensive effort, that is why Hunter Erickson gets minutes. Some of you want Smith to fail just so you can be right, but if you are paying attention you will see he experimented with various line ups in the early part of the season. Many forget Dawes got big minutes early and his D was sorely lacking. This team wins on the road where no one else has, and you are calling for his head? You would fit in well on Cougar Board.

[Utefanbybirthandchoice]

Wow what an insightful post. Could be that Smith had him on the bench until he upped his defensive effort. Many on here crapped on Whalin early on. They thought he did not have the skills to play in the big bad big 12. I saw him as more of an Alex Jensen with more athleticism. His defensive effort has been phenomenal, not that his conditioning is catching up post mission, we are starting to see he is a pretty talented player that can shoot from anywhere on the court. You will see Smith rewards defensive effort, that is why Hunter Erickson gets minutes. Some of you want Smith to fail just so you can be right, but if you are paying attention you will see he experimented with various line ups in the early part of the season. Many forget Dawes got big minutes early and his D was sorely lacking. This team wins on the road where no one else has, and you are calling for his head? You would fit in well on Cougar Board.

[Yergensen]

Majerus didn’t keep his best scorer (Van Horn) off the court because he didn’t play defense.

Majerus stressed defense, yet he saw the net gain with Van Horn on the court.

This team is ranked 132nd in scoring defense, so how well does anyone on this team play defense?

As was posted earlier, Dawes plus/minus is second best on the team.

Despite all of this Smith thinks he has to limit Dawes playing time because he is a defensive liability.

[Rick]

Majerus also had 2-3 NBA caliber players besides Van Horne who he could rely on. Smith doesn’t that the luxury. Also, using Majerus and Smith in the same post seems almost sacrilegious and wrong!

[Minnesota Ute]

Just to set the record straight, here are the numbers:
He averaged 21min in the first 6 games where he was 64% from the floor, averaged 10pts, 8.3 Reb, 1.5 Asst, .8 steals, 1 block, and 1.3 turnovers with an average Game Score (adv stat) of 10.8 (which is pretty dang good). Granted there were some bad teams in there, but he had a very good game against MissSt with 13 pts and 12 reb, long with 1 steal 1 block and 2 turnovers while fouling out. So I don’t buy the ‘effort’ excuse.

After that, the next two games, he got 7 minutes total. Then the next stretch of 3 games he saw much more limited play, with only 11 min against FL A&M & Baylor 20 min against TT; and with the benching then limited minutes, his production dropped off. (Go figure) So then he logs essentially a DNP (2 min) against Iowa St.

Now inexplicably, he is back in the lineup playing 21 and 23 min in our last two wins where he averaged 16 pts, 7.5 reb, 2 Ast, .5 stl, 1 blk and a Game Score of 15.95. Look familiar… I’m sorry, but there is no legitimate excuse in the numbers for Keanu not being on the floor 20 to 25 min a game minimum. Now maybe there is off the court issues, grades or shenanigans, who knows. But I don’t buy this defensive effort garbage.

edit: In fact, when I look at this, this looks entirely like the kind of bulls**t my kid’s HS coach put him through. And knowing how it affected him, I worry that Keanu won’t be here after this season. There are only so many games in a season, and when you ride the pine for half the games in the season despite being very productive whenever you do play, it can be extremely frustrating. At this point, out of 560 min available, he has played 219. Which means that he has spent 341 min watching. That takes a toll on a kid that is used to being on the court.

edit edit: He averaged 23.6 min/game as a freshman at Rice in the ACC last year and 15.6 so far this year.

[Utopia]

I have learned to take Utefanbybirthandchoice with a grain of salt. He is an unwaivering Smith apologist bordering on delusional. He makes up claims and narratives without ever providing any substantiating evidence/specifics; it’s all just surface-level vibes and generalities. “Wahlin’s conditioning is finally catching up post mission.” Lol, it’s taken 1.5 yrs to get his conditioning? What is this claim based on? Just completely made up nonsense to fit what he wants to believe. By the way, check Wahlin’s stats vs Quad-1 teams — they’re all bad except for respectable numbers vs Texas Tech. For the most part Wahlin isn’t competitive against Quad-1 talent, which is the level we want to be competing at.

Funny how Utefanbybirthandchoice had nothing to say on here when Utah got annhilated three games in a row and conceded 88 pts/gm in four games. Now he is back with confident hype after wins against two teams that are KenPom sub-80 and will finish in the bottom third of the conference. By the way, Dawes only played significant minutes in one of those four losses, so how/why can he be singled out for poor defense?

Don’t expect Utefanbybirthandchoice to have any response to comments like yours that are substantiated with actual evidence and logic nor will such evidence affect his perspective. “Some of you want Smith to fail just so you can be right.” This is the sort of lazy cop-out argument that is made by people who have no substantive retort to evidence that disproves their beliefs.

[Utefanbybirthandchoice]

I did not comment during the losing streak because I was in Caribbean, priorities you know. I’m not a Smith apologist, he would not have been my first choice. However he is there now, he has improved year over year, and he knows more about basketball than I ever will. Therefore, he has my support until the improvement stops. As for Whalin, not sure where you get a year and 1.2 from. Last year he was coming off the mission, this year with a full year of conditioning he is starting to show his offensive side to compliment his defensive effort that has been their since day one. Some of you have been crapping on Smith and his players from the start, I would rather support and look for the positives, then evaluate at the end of the season.

[Utopia]

Three weeks in the Caribbean? Good for you.

Someone who always manufactures excuses and distorts reality to deflect evidence-backed criticisms of a person’s actions is the definition of an apologist. That’s exactly what your comments have been whether or not you recognize it.

Wahlin returned from his mission in May 2023 – over 1.5 yrs ago. He would’ve started getting into shape that summer. Maybe you don’t remember what it’s like for guys in their teens-early 20’s or maybe you didn’t play cardio-intensive sports at a competitive level, but metabolism is crazy high at that age and the way they practice and work out at this level of competitive sports, he would’ve been in good playing shape in a few months and in full competitive shape by six months. I say this as someone who played the sport for 25 years and has the same body type as Wahlin (ectomorph). To claim his conditioning is only now catching up is ludicrous. You are once again just making up a convenient narrative after he had two good games against bad/mediocre teams (which were preceded by several non-factor performances against good teams). For the record, I don’t think Wahlin is terrible; I just don’t think he is a starter-level player for a top-40 team, which is what I aspire this program to be. He has shown he can be decently competitive against lower level competition.

You can choose to look for the positives, but that just sounds like you’re admitting to an intentionally biased perspective. It doesn’t mean that the Smith critics are wrong about their opinions, especially when they substantiate their opinions with actual evidence and you do not.

[Utefanbybirthandchoice]

Reading comprehension is not your strong suit. I did not say I was in the Caribbean for 3 weeks, I was on a cruise ship during those 3 games. Mission legs are real, yes he came back in Spring 2023, and played catch up all of last year. But you have the same body type but what do I know. I played water polo at the D-1 level, absolutely no cardio there.

[Utopia]

I did not comment during the losing streak because I was in Caribbean

Losing streak period was 12/21 – 1/10 (the day before the OKST win) = 21 days = exactly 3 weeks. So yeah, I actually applied logic and math (clearly not your strong suit) and arrived at a conclusion that is consistent with the semantics of your comment.

[Charlie]

Player health and availability is not always binary, ready to go or not ready. Could he have a health issue that reduces availability without becoming unavailable? Then again, development is a thing and one of the development tools is playing time to get to a desired end. Or very likely off court issues like mentioned. This may be analysis without all the info or missing the info item. Progress could have been faster but it is nice to get to a point of progress.

[Minnesota Ute]

Yeah, as someone who has been a manager for 30 years now, I always consider that there is information that goes into decisions that aren’t evident to those on the outside looking in. So my biggest hope is that it all makes sense to Keanu and he is good with how the season has progressed.

I just know how hard it was for my son. I’ve probably written on this before, but the long story short for him was a consistent total stat line on both ends of the floor that was in the top 3 on the team every time he played significant minutes. He was great friends with everyone on the team, and had been playing ball with them since they were in 3rd grade. But for some reason, known only to the coach, and that we never did figured out, he would keep getting benched without warning or explanation for indefinite periods.

It all started when he was a sophomore, he barely played all season despite a natural hole in the lineup that fit him perfectly. He played in 5 games and put up very good numbers in each one of those games. But then the next game, nothing. He finally won the spot as a starter going into the playoffs ironically only because another player missed practice. That team was 0.500 going into the post season, the team went on to beat the #2 ranked team in the state and go on a run that ended at the state tournament. He started through the whole playoffs, played big minutes and had great numbers. It was magical, and after that, you would think he earned his stripes. But nope… he spent the next two years in limbo never knowing if or when he would play. I still get mad when I think about it.

Just because it looks like that, doesn’t mean that it is that, but it looks eerily familiar.

[Hahnenwk]

This probably should be a separate thread but what happened to Mason Madsen. O minutes? Didn’t look injured.

[Minnesota Ute]

Maybe he took Keanu’s spot in the penalty box… 🙂

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