Austin Kuemper News

[woundedknees]

Growing up. I was a foot shorter than my oldest brother, who played his college ball at 6'9. He would let me take any shot I wanted, all day... As long as I was at least 15 feet from the basket.

Any closer, and I developed this pebbly skin rash on my face.

When we all played rat ball, he never tried to use his height to any significant advantage.

The dude never stuffed the ball, except when he was leading his Australian semi-pro team (Player/Coach) onto the floor for pre-game warm-ups. At that time he would come in dribbling 2 balls, and stuff both of them.

The rest of the time, he used a nice baby hook, or a soft, glass kissing jumper from 8-15 feet out.

My next oldest brother (6'6/250) couldn't consistently hit a decent lay-up... He was too busy try to muscle his way around to try anything like finesse.

Russ Francis, Oregon's former gift to the NFL as a TE, was 6'6/240-ish in his only season of HS basketball... Something like an 18ppg average, but if he shot better than 25-30%, it would be a shock to me. Again, all muscle, and little to no finesse.

He did get to where he boxed out pretty well, and used that size to advantage on the defensive end of the floor.

I guess the point is, Kuemper may show Altman that he is coach-able, and willing to do the work necessary to improve those areas of his game that are currently lacking, much like Francis' defense.

[oregontrack]

Well Maarty Leunen wasn't much of a banger, but due to his ability to get good positioning on the boards, and hit the outside shot the team made it deep in the tourney. Yes, Brooks obviously had a big impact on that team, but you can have success as a team in college without having a big bruising center. That Oregon team could have beaten anybody except Florida that year in my opinion.

Thornton almost single handily fouled out our entire front line and we still would have won if TP hadn't blown his wad against UNLV. What'd he start, 0/11 from deep? Blah.

[oregontrack]

Not living in Portland I was obviously unable to attend every Westview game last year (nor would I want to), but those games I did see I noticed Westview's coach made a habit of drawing Kuemper away from the basket and taking the opponent's tallest player with him, which opened up the paint for USC recruit Garrett Jackson to score inside against a much smaller defender. From what I've seen of Westview this year, with Jackson gone, Kuemper is playing more inside. Neither Wiltjer nor Kuemper could defend the other inside the paint in last year's 6A title game; Kuemper took it right at Wiltjer on more than once occasion.

With Jacob and Nared both coming back next season, Kuemper has a quite a bit of time ahead of him to strengeth his inside game before he'll be asked to be a major contributor. I think he definitely has the potential to be a good one for us.

[droop10]

Well Maarty Leunen wasn't much of a banger, but due to his ability to get good positioning on the boards, and hit the outside shot the team made it deep in the tourney. Yes, Brooks obviously had a big impact on that team, but you can have success as a team in college without having a big bruising center. That Oregon team could have beaten anybody except Florida that year in my opinion.

Thornton almost single handily fouled out our entire front line and we still would have won if TP hadn't blown his wad against UNLV. What'd he start, 0/11 from deep? Blah.

Oh yea, I think Oregon could have won that game, because they were being called for fouls whenever they came within 5 feet of Noah or Horford. It was absurd. I should rephrase...I think they could have beaten anyone that year, but I think Florida was the superior team that year. It was just a complete mismatch with their 2 7 footers against Oregon where the tallest starter was 6'9.