Thoughts on last nights game. Overall a great win, I don’t care they were missing Pinson, he would have been a challenge but its still a great win anyway. We shot decent, started hot, went cold, finished with some crucial makes.
- 1st possession chandler pulls back when he could have accelerated and attacked the rim, we got a 3 so it was ok, but it gave them time to get their defense set and we really struggled for most of the possession, we are best when he is attacking but I understand wanting to get in the flow of things. We are best when he is attacking.
- 16:25 – Josiah hits on his first 3, everything looked good. He took more threes tonight from above the break than in the corner it seemed, which I really like he seems to shoot those with more confidence than the corner. He also gets off left and right from the corners more it seems.
- 16:07 – Will Wade propaganda presented by ESPN. No mention all night of one of the biggest cheating stories in the history of college sports.
- SV misses a wide open three. I wondered about our percentage on wide open threes. Jimmy Dykes went into it later and referenced Stats by Will. Looked it up after and Stats by Will has it that we are shooting 33% on open threes compared to 37.1% as the national average. That’s terrible. We should and have to be better going forward. Seems we are evening out some? Let’s see us do it a few more games in a row.
- 12:10 – A little thing that was very encouraging by KC. He had a quick decision to make closing out of Gaines, and he stuck to the scouting report by not closing out hard on the 3 as Gaines isn’t a big shooting threat – that’s good defensive maturity.
- Powell, Fulk, Mashak, KC and BHH lineup was in for a quick minute. I didn’t like it and Barnes didn’t either – quickly subbed Olivier for Fulk which was a little better.
- I really like Mashak, but I’m not sure what he gives us sometimes right now. Sometimes he definitely gives us good energy and instinctually creates some havock on D. He also drives hard on offense but sometimes he drives without a purpose, just hard. Really like him long term and as potential spark short term, but he needs to be in there with lineups that are full of other guys that are highly consistent and can help coach him on the floor. I’d be curious to see him and JJJ on the floor at the same time, usually he is JJJ-lite and I have offensive concern about those two but it still intrigues me. SV, KC, JJJ, Mashak and Olivier/Uros would be interesting.
- We struggled to get to the line in the first half and that was a lot of the reason they were still close even though we were shooting well.
- Finish to the half? Meh – BHH just being an athlete or it would have been a really bad finish. I feel like this is somewhere we struggle, but that may be just my perception, will watch it closer going forward.
- Their press gave us fits for a while, we weren’t getting into our offense until 18 or 17 second left on the shot clock and had a few turnovers.
- 14:25 – JJJ had a huge contested rebound in traffic. He is such a good rebounder.
- What kind of drugs did the inject into D. Days ankle?
- Uros offensive rebounding has been huge the last two games. Can he really keep doing this?
- My biggest thought and this spans more than just this game. SV, KC and ZZ, our three headed monster, is our biggest advantage in any game. I don’t think we saw it until five minutes left in the game tonight. We were up 6 at the time, and then ran away with the win. That is how you close a game and those guys are crucial for us to do it. They were also in the game for us to pull out the game against OM, then the next game in Baton Rouge, I don’t think we saw it at all. Tonight we didn’t see it until 5:00 left in the game (unless I missed something which is very possible). Seems Barnes didn’t like it against LSU’s length, but I just totally disagree with that, it needs to be a centerpiece, gives us a lot of dynamic ability and they are all good-great defenders even though they aren’t big. They can all handle pressure, drive, shoot and defend at a high level. Guard play wins tight games. We need all three of them. ZZ has hit a bit of a freshman wall offensively, his shot hasn’t been falling. He keeps shooting with confidence though and he hit a big one tonight because he is fearless even after a number of misses. And he impacts the game in so many other ways. When he figures out how to consistently finish in the paint (may not be this year) watch out!
- Our free throw shooting continues to be a concern. 10/18 tonight. It also affirms in a terrifying way our inability to hit open 3s. We must improve on both if we are going to make any noise in a tournament setting, even just marginally would make a huge difference.
