My impressions of Cougarboard now
 

compared to how it used to be back in the old days.

It is larger.

The site is more functional now and has some better technical things. Jefe is tried to make it less ephemeral (the nature of a board that is chronological and doesn't allow topics to be bumped up). But it's still basically a running stream of consciousness.

It is possibly dumber than it was. The posters, that is. But to be fair, it was fairly dumb before.

Most of the old crowd is gone. It's a room full of strangers.

of course it should come as no surprise that I recently received a lengthy suspension. :)

I think your impressions are correct. It's gotten dumber. I like the BYU basketball category the best, but it's better during the off-season when only the more passionate (and knowledgeable) basketball fans are paying attention to it. Unfortunately a lot of the good ones have been posting much less this season and it's also becoming overrun by the idiot factor like in football and in some of the other categories. I don't post there anymore but I still visit hoping to find something of value, which seems to happen less often than it used to.

an example of dumb basketball mind.

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/mes...ml?id=13440281

Yup. And there are several more over there who are even worse. Most of Cougarboard just doesn't "get" basketball very well. It's very football-centric and that's fine, I guess. Not everyone likes or appreciates the sport like I do. I get that. The problem is that the site gets easily overrun by junk posts and you often end up spending a lot of time wading through the junk to get to the good stuff. And also like I said, many of the more knowledgeable basketball posters seem to be taking a leave of absence lately.

Nixon seems to have decent IQ, good touch, some good instincts on offense. Nothing spectacular. I mean, for the most part, he hangs out on the 3 point line and does nothing.

But on defense he is just horrific. Because there is no position he can guard at this level. His foot speed is atrocious, even at the 4. Not to mention lack of strength and explosion.

BYU is not going anywhere with players like Nixon, who don't have the tools to be a good defender.

At this point I don't think Nixon is really being counted on to fit into the long term plans very much. Like you said, he seems to have some good instincts on offense and he's supposed to have a pretty good shot, but without being useful on defense, I don't see him contributing much this year.