His high school tape? How he played when he was in there?

Doesn't mean he's not any good, just wouldn't peg him as high likelihood of dawg.

halfastros81 said:

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Anyone think McDermott could be a dawg?

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Maybe like a Tavario Miller type, but a pseudo dawg.

Right now, at his best, I'd see him as like a Savion Flagg type player which is more crafty than Dawg-y yes?

Not saying he will end up the same, but I see the discounting of McDermott here as eerily similar to how that Dominican transfer kid from Mississippi State with unimpressive stats a few years back was sort of overlooked by many.... untill he eventually gained legendary "Perro" status.

I think McDermott will be one of our best rebounders this year.

BTHO off-season!

Is Bucky himself eligible to be a Dawg?

Now this is a good question. Coaches can definitely be dawgs, but I think the jury is definitely out on Bucky.

When I think of what makes a dawg coach, I'm thinking of coaches that get buy-in, their teams play hard, they tend to be better than the sum of their individual parts, etc.

Like Pearl and Sampson are definitely dawg coaches. I'd argue Buzz is definitely a dawg coach. Probably too much of a dawg coach to be honest.

Like with players, it's important to remember that "dawg" does not necessarily mean "good." It's a little hard to be a dawg if you aren't at least some level of good, but the reverse is not true, you can be very good with minimal levels of dawg-ness.

I continue to struggle with defining a "dawg".

I thought it was effectively being a pain in the opposing team's butt because of persistence and tenacity in a way that leads to significantly improving your team's chance to win. Is that it or is it something else?

This actually gave me an idea, we need Method to complete a Dawg/Good player matrix of our well known recent-ish players before the season starts to help people understand.

I'm more of an idea guy. Not a numbers guy.

But I'll do it

That description helps.

Understood .

Quote:

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DAWG = Disciplined Athlete With Grit

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Quote:

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a player who combines focus and discipline with toughness and determination--someone who can make challenging plays look effortless while remaining composed and in control.

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I agree with the first one, not sure about the 2nd definition.

The term originated with Coach Jim Harbaugh.

You can't define a real dawg. There's definitely an element of "know it when you see it" to the whole thing.

There's also "dawg mentality" and physically being a dawg. Elite dawgs have both.

Good example here is Acie. Elite dawg mentality, but not physically a dawg, so overall dawgness is docked a bit.

Most of the dawgs we are talking about aren't necessarily disciplined. That was an obvious attempt to make an acronym work.

Definitely.

Fellas fellas, there ain't no definition for a dawg… a dawg is a dawg is a dawg! If you gotta think about it, he ain't a dawg. You know when a dawg steps on the court.

MarcAg said:

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We favor big guys on this board for dawg of the game, but I think Marcus Hill might make us change that.

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I hope so. Our dawg guards have been pretty few and far between.

Y'all sleeping on the Puerto Rican dawg, Dominguez. 23 and a sniper? DAWG

El Perro

El Mero Mero 14 said:

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Y'all sleeping on the Puerto Rican dawg, Dominguez. 23 and a sniper? DAWG

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He's 22, he's Spanish, and I'll be absolutely stunned if he's any kind of DAWG.

I imagine he's going to be HIGHLY skilled, but low dawg.

I'm pretty sure the dog quotient is gonna drop significantly with this roster from the last few years. Solo and Andy were the definition of dawgs to me. Rebound like a mother, block a few shots, dive on the floor, stay in front of the ball even when guarding smaller guys, win 90% of 50/50 balls...these guys were scrappy as hell.

They were very enjoyable to watch play, and that's a credit to them and Buzz. You gotta know what you're doing to motivate guys to play that hard.

I don't see those kinda guys with this roster.

My hope is this team's ability to actually make a wide open jump shot occasionally will more than make up for it.

If I had to pick someone, it would prolly be Federiko. He appears to have the best rebounding and shot blocking skills. The fact that he might not be able to make a free throw enhances his perro power.

This topic brings up another question.
How the hell, with the kind of scrappy, defensive minded players we had last year, fold so badly defensively late in the year?

We gave up the following points in the last couple of weeks of the season:
Vandy 86
Florida 89
Texas 94
Michigan 91.

That is way too many points for what I thought was an very good defensive team for the first 80% of the year.
I just thought we had a real chance to make a serious run with our defense, an all-time Aggie guard, a big guy who could score with his back to the basket.

And the defense melted. What happened?

We just fouled too much.

Buzz's entire defensively philosophy relies on the idea that you do not foul a lot. Against Michigan and Texas we did okay against them from the field. We held Michigan to 27% from 3 and an eFG% of 43.1%, which is fine except we sent them to the line 36 times where they shot 81%. Texas was very similar numbers, 43% eFG%, they shot 40% from three but also shot just 44% from 2. But 23/31 FTs.

Free throws also stop the clock so when you foul a bunch the games tend to be higher scoring, especially when both teams are fouling a bunch (as was the case in the Vandy game)

Against Florida I thought out defense was actually okay for a while considering how good offensively Florida is, but we were just terrible on offense. And Vandy was a full on implosion, that was probably our worst game of the season (maybe second after Mississippi State.)

But you can't just isolate defense in basketball, it's hard to blame our defense for anything last year when our offense was so terrible most of the time. When you can't put the ball in the basket for stretches it's going to hurt you defensively too no matter how much you try and get your players to not let one affect the other.

Method Man said:

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I'm more of an idea guy. Not a numbers guy.

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I think what this calls for, in the modern content creation parlance, is not numbers, but a tier list.

You just need to place a list of recent Aggie players as S-tier through A, B, C, D, and F-tier levels of dawg-ness

bobinator said:

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El Mero Mero 14 said:

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Y'all sleeping on the Puerto Rican dawg, Dominguez. 23 and a sniper? DAWG

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He's 22, he's Spanish, and I'll be absolutely stunned if he's any kind of DAWG.

I imagine he's going to be HIGHLY skilled, but low dawg.

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He's going to be our biggest dawg, trust the process

I'm thinking we need a new phrase for "dawg mentality" which could then set up the simplest way to show this, a three way venn diagram. ChatGPT suggested "Alpha mindset" which I don't love but whatever, it's fine for now.

I don't want to taint Method's findings but I figured I'd put one player in each category to help get you started.

I will say Method and I ran into a problem of how to categorize what you might call "defensive Dawgs"

Being passive and/or pass-first on the offensive end isn't exactly a dawg trait, but wanting to lock down the opponents best player and/or just generally causing havoc on defense definitely is.

This makes classifying players like Dominique Kirk, Derrick Roland, and Alex Caruso somewhat difficult.