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Castro discusses one overlooked aspect of a freshman-laden roster: the lack of experienced upperclass competition in practice to make the young players develop faster.

Enjoy!

Welcome back, Eric. Found your columns very educational last year, and look forward to many more this year. Great start — I struggled with Coach D's "we are young" explanation after the early losses. We all see guys like OJ Mayo and Derrick Rose on TV, but the quality of opposition they face in practice every day never occurred to me. Good to know...

MustangFan wrote:Welcome back, Eric. Found your columns very educational last year, and look forward to many more this year. Great start — I struggled with Coach D's "we are young" explanation after the early losses. We all see guys like OJ Mayo and Derrick Rose on TV, but the quality of opposition they face in practice every day never occurred to me. Good to know...

And the upper class leadership -- or lack thereof -- is a good point he made. If you look at guys like Mayo and Rose, they came into programs where they could be studs but were already playing with established stud college players. For Rose, he's working with Chris Douglas-Roberts.

THE DICTATOR!

Excellent article. Provides some great analysis to calm the critics.

mustangxc wrote:Excellent article. Provides some great analysis to calm the critics.

From a man who obviously knows what the hell he's talking about, too - far more than anyone else on this board (no offense, PonyPride ). Thanks for doing these, Eric.

Great analysis. But doubt that it will quiet some of the critics. They have agendas.

Thanks, Eric

Reminds me of Doc Hayes. It was so interesting to see his young players develop over their three years into championship players.