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Monroe vs. Blair

by Tommy Dee on January 3rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm

Kudos to SNY-TV’s Ted Berg who scouted the Pitt/Georgetown game and here are his thoughts on Greg Monroe and DeJuan Blair.

“…Greg Monroe apparently does not match up as well with DeJuan Blair as he does with Hasheem Thabeet.

Monday against UConn, Monroe used his dribble and outside shot to draw the 7-foot-3 Thabeet away from the paint, then found his teammates on backdoor cuts or penetrated to the basket. On Saturday, Blair, 6-foot-7 but thick, stayed true in the low post and cut off passing lanes when Monroe got the ball at the top of the key, and Monroe suddenly did not look like the sure-fire, right-away NBA star he appeared to be earlier in the week.

Mostly, Blair was just way, way stronger than Monroe inside. Pitt outrebounded Georgetown 48-23, with Blair outrebounding Monroe 17-8. And of Monroe’s eight boards, it seemed like several came when Blair was on the bench or not in the area.

Monroe’s final line wasn’t terrible — 15 points on 6-of-13 shooting with eight rebounds, two blocks and a steal, but he turned the ball over four times against only two assists. He had a couple of nice passes dropped by his teammates and seemed to improve his rebounding across the course of the game, but the physical mismatch was impossible to ignore.

Monroe repeatedly pointed to Blair’s strength in the postgame press conference. According to the rosters, Monroe has four inches on Blair but gives up 15 pounds, all of which he could have used. Blair owned him on the glass and inside, at both ends of the court.

For the first time I’ve seen all year, Monroe looked inexperienced early on, and was basically a non-factor while the Hoyas balanced clumsily on DaJuan Summers’ back for most of the first half. He did seem to be positioning himself better underneath the basket in the second half, and he used quick hands to knock the ball away from Pitt players a few times, but he was never able to get inside or over Blair.

Considering the reports from Monday that “30 NBA scouts fell in love with Monroe”, I wonder how many of those scouts have broken hearts today. He still looks like a great player, but without a little more muscle and a little more experience, he’ll get owned by NBA beef like Ben Wallace.

He’d be a nice plus for an NBA team looking for an offensive spark with a good inside shot and great court vision, but right now, it’d be asking too much to expect him to rebound much at all. He’s improved over the course of his first dozen games — though Saturday may have been something of a setback — so it’s not unreasonable to hope that he will someday fare better on the glass, but I can’t see him matching up well against NBA big men while he’s so young…”

You can read more from Ted on metsblog.com, real heady stuff.