Is Hield the best young guard since Hollis Price?

Don't know why there's such vitriol towards Willie.

The guy played phenomenally as a frosh, played injured as a sophomore, and by all accounts was a whole hearted Sooner.


Let not the sins of TMG and Tiny (who also gets more hate than he's due) cloud your memory
 
Don't know why there's such vitriol towards Willie.

The guy played phenomenally as a frosh, played injured as a sophomore, and by all accounts was a whole hearted Sooner.


Let not the sins of TMG and Tiny (who also gets more hate than he's due) cloud your memory

this
 
Don't know why there's such vitriol towards Willie.

The guy played phenomenally as a frosh, played injured as a sophomore, and by all accounts was a whole hearted Sooner.


Let not the sins of TMG and Tiny (who also gets more hate than he's due) cloud your memory

While I would never put WW in the TMG/Tiny category, he was far from the perfect teammate. FAR from it.
 
While I would never put WW in the TMG/Tiny category, he was far from the perfect teammate. FAR from it.

I've heard similar sentiment directed at Bird, whether its accurate or not.

I choose to believe that exigent circumstances, rumour, a mix of fact, conjecture, and a dash of loaded misrepresentation can cause the casual message boarder to form misguided opinions about (let's face it) KIDS who are important in the eyes of many before they can grasp what it really means.



...this isn't an attempt to slight you, WT, but lets enjoy what former players gave rather than write them off... Even if mistakes were made
 
Don't know why there's such vitriol towards Willie.

The guy played phenomenally as a frosh, played injured as a sophomore, and by all accounts was a whole hearted Sooner.


Let not the sins of TMG and Tiny (who also gets more hate than he's due) cloud your memory

Agree. No love for the 2nd best player on a team that lost to UNC in the ncaa tournament. He was injured the following year. He made a bad choice to leave that hurt this team and himself but that is a choice that several college students make every year.

And I don't care what anyone says. If nobody sees WW in his 2nd year, there is not one person that would take Buddy Hield over Willie Warren as a freshman...NOT ONE! And anyone that says they would is full of it!
 
Because it needs to be brought back on topic, Buddy Hield is the shiznit
 
Agree. No love for the 2nd best player on a team that lost to UNC in the ncaa tournament. He was injured the following year. He made a bad choice to leave that hurt this team and himself but that is a choice that several college students make every year.

And I don't care what anyone says. If nobody sees WW in his 2nd year, there is not one person that would take Buddy Hield over Willie Warren as a freshman...NOT ONE! And anyone that says they would is full of it!

Oh contraire. I'll concede this. Willie Warren displayed individual skills as a freshman that Buddy has not yet exposed.

But, basketball is a team sport. Teams win or lose. Teams succeed or fail. Firstly, WW was for the most part a mirage. Blake made every one of the others look better than they were. Willie had a sore ankle his second year is just an excuse for his fans.

He was a lazy disruptive force as a soph. He wouldn't work to get open. He wouldn't hustle. He just wanted to stand around waiting for someone to throw him the ball. I blame Warren for mentoring Pledger into some those same bad habits. And I blame Capel for allowing it. It has taken Kruger a solid year to bust him out of those bad behaviors and turn him into a very productive member of a decent team.

If you want to pick the winner of a practice gym one on one match, mayby Warren is your guy. If you want to have a good basketball team, Heild is my guy every time.
 
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Oh contraire. I'll concede this. Willie Warren displayed individual skills as a freshman that Buddy has not yet exposed.

He was a lazy disruptive force as a soph. He wouldn't work to get open. He wouldn't hustle. He just wanted to stand around waiting for someone to throw him the ball. I blame Warren for mentoring Pledger into those same bad habits. And I blame Capel for allowing it.

If you want to pick the winner of a practice gym one on one match, mayby Warren is your guy. If you want to have a good basketball team, Heild is my guy every time.

And the HATE continues. Willie did a lot of good things. You must have never been an athlete with a bad wheel. WW is better than Heild, not saying Buddy cant make up ground, but taking heild over WW, Ill beat you 7 out of 10 everyday.
 
Willie Warren is the best freshman guard we've had since the 80s by far. Nobody else we've had as a freshman is in the same class overall. In fact Tim McCalister is the only freshman to have a better season than he had. He didn't really play all that bad as a soph except for the injuries and the fact that we were a volatile team. Nobody really played good that year. The hate on WW is mostly for his off the court antics.
 
No hate for WW but, ALL things considered, I would take Hield. I have a feeling the 2nd half of this season is going to be very special for him.
 
No hate for WW but, ALL things considered, I would take Hield. I have a feeling the 2nd half of this season is going to be very special for him.

I have the same inkling. He's special.

Buddy 'the shiznit' Hield.


TS for short.
 
That's ridiculous. Grow up.

Or stop being old and unreasonable.



I can't tell which side of the spectrum this comes from


Show me a coach that will put up with a talent that won't work hard. And I'll show you a coach that will spend his entire career at press conferences trying to explain why he couldn't win with all those 5 stars.
 
Willie Warren is the best freshman guard we've had since the 80s by far.

It's really hard to make statements like that, b/c the freshmen were all asked to do different things, play in different systems, and other than WW, none had Blake Griffin as a teammate.

Put Hollis on that team instead of WW.....could he have duplicated WW's stats? I think that is entirely possible.
 
Show me a coach that will put up with a talent that won't work hard. And I'll show you a coach that will spend his entire career at press conferences trying to explain why he couldn't win with all those 5 stars.


I know what you're trying to veil.

But hyperbole is no one's friend.
 
Oh contraire. I'll concede this. Willie Warren displayed individual skills as a freshman that Buddy has not yet exposed.

But, basketball is a team sport. Teams win or lose. Teams succeed or fail. Firstly, WW was for the most part a mirage. Blake made every one of the others look better than they were. Willie had a sore ankle his second year is just an excuse for his fans.

He was a lazy disruptive force as a soph. He wouldn't work to get open. He wouldn't hustle. He just wanted to stand around waiting for someone to throw him the ball. I blame Warren for mentoring Pledger into some those same bad habits. And I blame Capel for allowing it. It has taken Kruger a solid year to bust him out of those bad behaviors and turn him into a very productive member of a decent team.

If you want to pick the winner of a practice gym one on one match, mayby Warren is your guy. If you want to have a good basketball team, Heild is my guy every time.

Lol at his ankle being just an excuse. Ww was explosive as a freshman. I remember at the end of his sophomore year thinking that he didn't dunk all season
 
Put Hollis on that team instead of WW.....could he have duplicated WW's stats? I think that is entirely possible.

Anything is possible, but this is highly unlikely. Hollis joined the team that had lost 4 starters from the previous year, so there were plenty of opportunities for him to put up Willie Warren-type numbers as a freshman. Hollis was a good/solid player his first two years in the program. Willie was an "impact" player right out of the gate. When Blake went couldn't go in the Kansas game, it was Warren who kept it close with a barrage of 3-point shots, etc. It was the kind of game you just don't see from many freshmen at any school.

I've been following OU basketball for more than 35 years now. The only OU freshman guard who I would rate above him was Tim McCallister. I agree with those who are saying Warren's sophomore year is causing many to have a revisionist history mentality with Warren as a freshman. He did show those selfish tendencies at times as a sophomore, no doubt. His problems were definitely more than just injury-related. If they weren't, he'd be on an NBA roster right about now...but I will never minimize his accomplishments as a freshman.
 
Show me a coach that will put up with a talent that won't work hard. And I'll show you a coach that will spend his entire career at press conferences trying to explain why he couldn't win with all those 5 stars.

I agree 100%. Knight, Coach K, Self, Izzo, Sampson, etc. etc. will not put up with guys that won't work hard. You do it their way or you don't play. That is the one thing all great coaches have in common and I will virtually guaranty that Calipari is the same way.

When I was student I met Dion Barnes a few times and I remember a kid telilng him he should tell Coach Tubbs something. Barnes looked at the kid like he was speaking a foreign language and then said I don't think you understand I don't tell Coach Tubbs anything, he tells me what to do. This is a guy talking about a player's coach.
 
Anything is possible, but this is highly unlikely. Hollis joined the team that had lost 4 starters from the previous year, so there were plenty of opportunities for him to put up Willie Warren-type numbers as a freshman. Hollis was a good/solid player his first two years in the program.

Kelvin had the luxury of bringing Price along slowly, b/c Price's freshmen year, he started along side a stud senior in Najera, a pretty good player in junior Nolan Johnson, and really good sophomore scorer in J.R. Raymond. They also had junior Tim Heskett off the bench, and ran Kelvin's defense-first, slow paced offense schemes.

Gotta think both Raymond and Johnson likely would have started over AJ and Crocker. Price shot, percentage-wise, about the same as WW did as a freshman. Only difference was that WW averaged twice the shots that Hollis did (and ironically, twice the ppg), due in part to teammates and pace.

I guess one could argue that had Hollis increased his shots, he wouldn't have been as efficient. I don't think that is likely, but nobody really knows.
 
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