Geist made significant improvements as a shooter, much

Posted on: September 15, 2021 at 10:57:09 CT

more than I would have anticipated were possible for him. He certainly used that to mitigate or compensate for some of his other shortcomings. But in a lot of ways he was simply limited by things he couldn't control, like not being an SEC caliber athlete. He was always asked to play out of position at MU and was a subpar ball handler/creator as a shooting guard trying to play the point, and he was a poor defender because he didn't have the lateral quickness necessary.

To his credit, although he took a lot of desperation or poor shot attempts I think we have come to realize in retrospect that is often what this offense generates and you need a player like that to bail you out of bad possessions or shot clock running out.

The reason I use Giest as an example is specifically because he exists in that grey area for discussion. He improved to the point where he was able to play and be a difference maker in the SEC, despite some of his limitations. But also you can't be a good team with a guy of his caliber being one of your key players, which we weren't. So does that make him SEC caliber or not? Its an interesting debate. We actually saw the same thing with Jason Sutherland several decades ago. He played on good MU teams as a role player, and MU became a bad team when it relied heavily on a player of his caliber.

Edited by FIJItiger at 10:58:50 on 09/15/21