Younger Every Year

The Post-Standard has reported in the past few days that SU has verbal commitments from two players in the class of 2008 (a.k.a. the post-Josh Wright Era): Kris Joseph and James Southerland. OrangeFan (who has his finger firmly on the pulse of SU recruiting) has some prime info and links in his post about Joseph. Southerland’s announcement just came down the pike last night; I imagine that OrangeFan will have a boatload of more information shortly. In the meantime, the P-S story makes him sound like Preston Shumpert — a tall but slim wing player with a sweet shooting stroke. But this quote from his high school coach in that story simply baffles me:

“He’s got that one skill that you can’t teach. He can shoot.”

First of all, there are plenty of skills you can’t teach. Secondly, shooting isn’t one of them. Let’s review a bit. Here are some things you can teach:

• passing
• ballhandling
• moving without the ball
• setting screens
• shooting
  
• your children well
• a smothering 2-3 zone defense

Things you can’t teach:

• height
• athleticism
• heart/guts
• court vision
• clutchness (”Onions!”)
• basketball instincts
• Georgetown Hoyas

I’m sure there are others — what did I miss?