He should thrive spotting up and aggressively attacking closeouts off of Powell this season. His improvement from his freshman to sophomore season was impressive as he learned to play under control and slowly grew into his role as one of the best players on the team on both ends. TJ Bamba is the other backcourt starter and someone who is in for a big season. We know he can knock down shots off the catch and get some buckets against a tilted floor, but whether he can consistently create advantages is still a little up in the air. Powell has the passing chops to pull this off, but the question will be whether or not he can put enough pressure on the rim to be viable as an every-down back in the pick-and-roll. The system will have to be a bit more creative to make this work, but having a 6-foot-6 wing run the point is intriguing, to say the least. In the majority of lineup configurations, Powell will be playing the nominal point guard. Powell’s positionality will be interesting to monitor. Hopefully these players get healthy soon - please donate to Rice’s GoFundMe if you can - but until they are, we will operate under the assumption that they cannot factor into the rotation. Both Myles Rice and Dishon Jackson are expected to miss most, if not all, of the season: Rice to a cancer diagnosis, and Jackson to an unspecified condition.

Something that has, sadly, been forced to come into play here is injuries. There are some certainties with the rotation, but the majority of the rotation is up in the air, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. We have seen that Smith is willing to tinker with his rotations to maximize winning, and we might see that to the extreme this season until players prove themselves worthy of a high volume of minutes. This is not a team with a returning top 5 or an already set rotation, but it is a talented team. Of course, with this impressive depth of talent comes the issue of determining who will play and how they will be used. Wazzu now quietly has like 3 or 4 prospects worth monitoring for the 23 draft. Long guard who has playing making skill from his time at the 1, best suited to the 2/3. Kyle Smith finding all sorts of avenues to get talent into Pullman.

Double dribble final four