By Patrick Hayes

Western Michigan coach Steve Hawkins recently talked to David Drew of the Kalamazoo Gazette about the upcoming season. I found this bit interesting:

WMU’s coach said the incoming forwards bring some added elements the Broncos have not seen out of their post players in a few years.

“The big guys now are more skilled,” Hawkins said. “They can play facing the basket and they all can hit jump shots. Some of them, Darius (Paul), Kellen (McCormick) and Connar (Tava), can shoot it all the way out to the 3-point line, so we’re changing the offense up so we can spread it out a little more and we won’t be, at least at the beginning, throwing the ball inside as much. We still will some, but not as much as the last two years, simply because we have to come up with things for this set of big guys to be successful.”

Big men still need to be able to rebound, play physically inside and do all of the traditional things big men have always been known to do, but as we’ve seen quite often in college and the NBA in recent years, having bigs who can shoot the three and pull their defender out of the lane is a huge advantage for a team’s guards. Western’s top experienced returning players – Tim Brennan, Austin Richie, Hayden Hoerdemann, David Brown and Brandon Pokely — all happen to be guards, so if the young big men can at the very least contribute perimeter shooting early in their careers, that should create a lot of opportunities for the guards to get in the lane more.