Yet Puff has played well from the 4 spot, trying to think if Puff has played at the 2 for us, off top of my head do not recall much if any. Not that I disagree, not saying Puff can't play the 2 at times, Cam played at the 2 for his first years at Pitt with a bad hip. With so many teams going to a 4 out look, stretching with the 4 the size at the 4 spot has lessened. How many teams now feature a 6'9"250lb power forward that stretches the floor, even if they do how many have that size at the 4 2 deep? My point is very few teams can throw out guys at the 4 that make Puff under sized.
I think RJ, Love, Trimble eat up the vast majority of the guard minutes, Dunn will get a few game to game, at least enough to see if he has progressed enough that the drop off is not as bad as it was last season. If Dunn can not show up then Puff is in line for a few minutes at the 2 but there will not be many minutes there behind Love and Trimble.
On Washington, after the botched initial surgery, when he came back he has shared that he just didn't have the strength in that knee, didn't have the explosion he had and to compensate he began to step outside more. Per his latest doctor that did the last surgery, he is expected to fully recover and would not have been expected to fully recover from the initial surgery. I see it like a broken bone that was not reset properly after the break, will not mend properly so at times it has to be re-broken in order to reset it properly. That was what happened with the kid and thankfully it was not as dramatic as having to break a bone to re-set it. All of this to say, I have to go with the strong majority of young athletes that have knee surgery, the vast majority "fully" recover at least to a new physically sound normal. Much harder for older players to come back than a high school kid.
Washington is under constant watch by our medical staff, they know exactly (way more than me or any of us) how his progression is going. I suspect if his progression was not to plan we may have gotten some official notice by now of this being a red shirt season for Washington, at very least the rumors would be flying and I have not seen that. What we did in fact see was Hubert not exactly desperate for Nance or some other big guy and was comfortable going with who he had if Nance didn't turn out to be the fit he seems to have become with the current players. That is for me a strong indication that Washington is coming along well per the expected recovery extent as well as time frame. Out side of an announcement that the kid has fully recovered and is participating un-restricted in team work outs and 5 on 5 drills the no news for now for me has to be taken more as good news than bad. The medical expectation has always been that he is fully recovered by the start of practice and last I heard he was basically doing everything except contact, no 5 on 5 yet (that was over a month ago).
Now the rust, yes he will have rust, most of that will be getting back game legs conditioning but Puff had to get his game legs last season in season, they started off playing him limited minutes and gradually expanded them, I expect the same with Washington. This time of the year all players have some degree of rust, it has been several months since any of them have played in a game that means a lot in front of large crowds, the early practices and pre-season are for knocking the rust off. Granted the kid has more rust than RJ does so he will be metered in slower but freshmen usually are slower to come around until they can adjust to this level of play.
