Good and Bad vs LSU

[General20]

Wish I had more time to write/talk about SU. This game felt significant to me.

Good

Team D - When you have a 7'4 center you want to funnel the ball towards him, obviously the offense is not trying to get trapped under the armpit of a shot blocker, so you need to be organized to make it happen. SU hasn't been organized enough on D yet this season to make that happen much, but in this game they did it despite LSU's center being able to step out and hit jumpers.

Judah's D - Its not easy to overlook 33 points, but try. His D has been horrendous so far this year, in this game it was much much better. Obviously Judah has the athletic ability to be a great defender, Autrey's coaching is starting to pay off.

Brown's D - He looked noticeably more healthy in this one, got up a lot higher to challenge shots around the basket and grabbed a lot more rebounds. This is very welcome to see and I think there is still some improvement to come as he gets healthy. LSU's center is their leading scorerer and Brown/McLoud held him to 3 points.

Autrey's game coaching. In the NBA when one guy has a match up advantage they will feed that guy over and over non-stop all game long. For some reason that doesn't happen enough in the college game. Boeheim was never afraid to do it. He was the best and identifying favorable match ups and not letting his team forget to exploit them. Autrey did the same today. Mintz had a huge advantage and they ran tons of different plays for him. It always looked different, but they kept feeding him the ball in good places to exploit LSU.

Bell - The days of him being nothing but a shooter are over. He's quite a good defender now (looks so much better in man than in zone) blocks some shots as well as playing solid positional D. He still can't rebound, but he's trying to tip the ball to teammates, which might be the best we can get. Hard to argue against him being the teams second best player.

Bad

Starling played as bad a game as you will ever see an SU player have. Im not sure what the solution is here. He looks like a broken man.

Taylor's slow release. Taylor was a good 2-5 from 3 today, but didn't look very good from 2. This is not surprizing he had a 6'10 athletic guy guarding him for a lot of the game. Ideally he would have taken more 3's and stayed away from the paint, but his release is so slow he's easy to close out on, forcing him into shots he doesn't want. Taylor plays good defense, rebound really well, and can stretch the floor, he's valuable, but there are times we need Benny William's skill set.

Williams - Put himself behind the 8 ball with those suspensions. He isn't playing much and just looks off when he's in there. Was 1-4 in this game with 2 turnovers, which isn't good enough. Though in his defense most of his minutes came when the game got sloppy in garbage time. We need him. How he improves (or doesn't) will determine this teams ceiling. The 2 guard is going to be a problem for us. We need everything else to work out if we are going to become a good team.

LSU isn't very good, but they are a peer team who already has a win against an ACC opponent. They would have been favored against us on a neutral floor and we won by 23 even after taking our foot off the gas. Really great win for the team.

 

[rocklloyd]

Excellent take.

 

[Newhouser]

I think the rim protection at the start of the game was huge. 7'4 with some skill is a factor.

 

[realorange]

Taylor is frustrating in that he doesn't seem to want to try and shoot even where there is enough room. He will do a good job of moving the ball but defaults to that too much. Definitely a hard worker and doing a decent job of rebounding.

Benny just doesn't look like he's into the game much of the time. We'd all like to see him get more aggressive but maybe he doesn't have enough faith in himself at this point to try and take the ball to the basket. He starts to go sometimes but backs out quickly. He needs to move more without the ball and become more than a 3 pt. shooter.

 

[cliftonparksufan]

I think the meaningless game against Chaminade was important in that it allowed our guys to have fun and play loose while thoroughly dominating. Like in golf, it's important to see the ball go in the hole for confidence and have fun doing so.

And it carried over 5000 miles coming back to the Dome. In a game that could have and should have been a lot closer.

It will be interesting to see how an unranked Virginia team looks tonight after barely beating WVU and getting slaughtered by Wisconsin. This is not Tony Bennett's best team as of yet and one that hopefully we take advantage of if they try to double up on Judah and prevent him from driving to the hoop. This is where Bell and JT are important but also JJ and Copeland if the play off those guys. Playing Bennett is usually like a chess match, so it will be fun to see.

 

[General20]

Taylor is frustrating in that he doesn't seem to want to try and shoot even where there is enough room. He will do a good job of moving the ball but defaults to that too much. Definitely a hard worker and doing a decent job of rebounding.

Benny just doesn't look like he's into the game much of the time. We'd all like to see him get more aggressive but maybe he doesn't have enough faith in himself at this point to try and take the ball to the basket. He starts to go sometimes but backs out quickly. He needs to move more without the ball and become more than a 3 pt. shooter.

I'm in the opposite camp with Benny.

I watched him a lot in high school and he couldn't take anyone off the dribble even then. I don't think Benny needs to be trying to expand his game. We have plenty of guys who can score off the bounce.

I want Benny to hit jumpers when he's open (not shoot until he's open), rebound, and back shots.

He did have 2 blocks and 4 rebounds in only 14 minutes last night, so that part was good. He's just missing shots and he doesn't look like he knows what his role is with the team yet (which makes sense seeing as he hasn't been playing).

I'm hoping he moves from the bench into the starting position over the next month, but today wasn't a promising start.

 

[Funk Doc]

Very pleased with the turn around the second half. Still can't rebound at all!! The shooting is going to be inconsistent all year. When they're shooting well, they're athletic enough to hang with good teams. If not, things are going to get ugly.

Judah was really impressive...but one thing that still gets me with him, is just his overall decision making. I get that he was feeling it, and knew he could get by his defender easily and get to the rim, but with 12 minutes left in the game(yes we were starting to separate then), but Bell had just hit back to back threes. Judah went to the basket, LSU collapsed and he took a very contested layup, and missed badly. Bell was standing unguarded and more wide open than he'd been all night. The smart play is to feed the hot shooter when he's wide open!

 

[supp]

Wish I had more time to write/talk about SU. This game felt significant to me.

Good

Team D - When you have a 7'4 center you want to funnel the ball towards him, obviously the offense is not trying to get trapped under the armpit of a shot blocker, so you need to be organized to make it happen. SU hasn't been organized enough on D yet this season to make that happen much, but in this game they did it despite LSU's center being able to step out and hit jumpers.

Judah's D - Its not easy to overlook 33 points, but try. His D has been horrendous so far this year, in this game it was much much better. Obviously Judah has the athletic ability to be a great defender, Autrey's coaching is starting to pay off.

Brown's D - He looked noticeably more healthy in this one, got up a lot higher to challenge shots around the basket and grabbed a lot more rebounds. This is very welcome to see and I think there is still some improvement to come as he gets healthy. LSU's center is their leading scorerer and Brown/McLoud held him to 3 points.

Autrey's game coaching. In the NBA when one guy has a match up advantage they will feed that guy over and over non-stop all game long. For some reason that doesn't happen enough in the college game. Boeheim was never afraid to do it. He was the best and identifying favorable match ups and not letting his team forget to exploit them. Autrey did the same today. Mintz had a huge advantage and they ran tons of different plays for him. It always looked different, but they kept feeding him the ball in good places to exploit LSU.

Bell - The days of him being nothing but a shooter are over. He's quite a good defender now (looks so much better in man than in zone) blocks some shots as well as playing solid positional D. He still can't rebound, but he's trying to tip the ball to teammates, which might be the best we can get. Hard to argue against him being the teams second best player.

Bad

Starling played as bad a game as you will ever see an SU player have. Im not sure what the solution is here. He looks like a broken man.

Taylor's slow release. Taylor was a good 2-5 from 3 today, but didn't look very good from 2. This is not surprizing he had a 6'10 athletic guy guarding him for a lot of the game. Ideally he would have taken more 3's and stayed away from the paint, but his release is so slow he's easy to close out on, forcing him into shots he doesn't want. Taylor plays good defense, rebound really well, and can stretch the floor, he's valuable, but there are times we need Benny William's skill set.

Williams - Put himself behind the 8 ball with those suspensions. He isn't playing much and just looks off when he's in there. Was 1-4 in this game with 2 turnovers, which isn't good enough. Though in his defense most of his minutes came when the game got sloppy in garbage time. We need him. How he improves (or doesn't) will determine this teams ceiling. The 2 guard is going to be a problem for us. We need everything else to work out if we are going to become a good team.

LSU isn't very good, but they are a peer team who already has a win against an ACC opponent. They would have been favored against us on a neutral floor and we won by 23 even after taking our foot off the gas. Really great win for the team.

Starling looks to me to be struggling with a shoulder injury. You can see it in the hitch in his shot.

 

[swish7]

Good takes.
This was a significant win, especially coming off the woodshed beating we endured in Maui.
We finally found our rainbow.

Naheems presence changed what LSU wanted to do. Need to push him to play this way consistently. His transition dunk was really sweet.

We desperately need 3rd & 4th scorers. Judah won't always be so effective.

Nice game from Bell.
Some flashes from Brown.

I maintain that Benny should work from the inside out, from the gritty play to the elegant play. The rebound put back, then to the 15' off the dribble jumper.

I want Cuffe to emerge.

Copelands completely unforced TOs offset & undermine the positives. He needs to tighten things up.

If Judah doesn't shoot so well from the FT early, it'd been a closer game.

However, LSU shot so poorly we just pulled away.

 

[Newhouser]

Very pleased with the turn around the second half. Still can't rebound at all!! The shooting is going to be inconsistent all year. When they're shooting well, they're athletic enough to hang with good teams. If not, things are going to get ugly.

Judah was really impressive...but one thing that still gets me with him, is just his overall decision making. I get that he was feeling it, and knew he could get by his defender easily and get to the rim, but with 12 minutes left in the game(yes we were starting to separate then), but Bell had just hit back to back threes. Judah went to the basket, LSU collapsed and he took a very contested layup, and missed badly. Bell was standing unguarded and more wide open than he'd been all night. The smart play is to feed the hot shooter when he's wide open!

I was sitting close to that and Judah apologized. My favorite Judah play was near end when a shot was missed and Maliq tapped it free right to Judah who could have shot (,he was over thirty at the time). Instead he quickly fed Maliq rewarding the effort. He shoots too much but last night was perfect Judah for me.

 

[General20]

Starling looks to me to be struggling with a shoulder injury. You can see it in the hitch in his shot.

I totally agree, and I mentioned somewhere else that Red must belive in him because he played him 31 minutes even though he was a huge liability. That gives me more hope than anything else.

There has been a lot of talk here about how much worse Starling looks than in high school, but he even looks a lot worse than last year, which I find worrying. He made 30% of his 3s last year. I'd kill for that right now.

 

[Cusefan0307]

JJ is by far biggest issue we have right now. He was suppose to be a lead guy for us. These other guys were expected to be role players.

 

[Funk Doc]

I was sitting close to that and Judah apologized. My favorite Judah play was near end when a was missed and Maliq tapped it free right to Judah who could have shot (,he was over thirty at the time. Instead he quickly fed Maliq rewarding the effort. He shoots too much but last night was perfect Judah for me.

I'm completely nit picking, as he was really good last night. When he doesn't think he needs to do everything himself, he is an even better player. He's started to move the ball more and more as the season goes on. I've liked the improvement!

 

[Fly Rodder]

Well, the early stats so far agree with what our lying eyes are telling us. They play fast. They really suck at defensive rebounding and give up lots of second (and third!) chance points. They are excellent at steals and blocks, do pretty well limiting their own TOs (which can also be attributed to them not passing much[Asst Pct]). They can't shoot a lick, but they can shoot FTs a bit better than average. Lots of fast break points (off steals and blocks). Judah gets to the line, but no one else does.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

Very pleased with the turn around the second half. Still can't rebound at all!! The shooting is going to be inconsistent all year. When they're shooting well, they're athletic enough to hang with good teams. If not, things are going to get ugly.

Judah was really impressive...but one thing that still gets me with him, is just his overall decision making. I get that he was feeling it, and knew he could get by his defender easily and get to the rim, but with 12 minutes left in the game(yes we were starting to separate then), but Bell had just hit back to back threes. Judah went to the basket, LSU collapsed and he took a very contested layup, and missed badly. Bell was standing unguarded and more wide open than he'd been all night. The smart play is to feed the hot shooter when he's wide open!

Did the same thing later in the second half going against 3 and Taylor was wide open at the top of the key.

 

[Cusefan0307]

Well, the early stats so far agree with what our lying eyes are telling us. They play fast. They really suck at defensive rebounding and give up lots of second (and third!) chance points. They are excellent at steals and blocks, do pretty well limiting their own TOs (which can also be attributed to them not passing much[Asst Pct]). They can't shoot a lick, but they can shoot FTs a bit better than average. Lots of fast break points (off steals and blocks). Judah gets to the line, but no one else does.

View attachment 234082

Where did you get this? What is Hakeem percentage?

 

[CuseFaninVT]

I was sitting close to that and Judah apologized. My favorite Judah play was near end when a was missed and Maliq tapped it free right to Judah who could have shot (,he was over thirty at the time. Instead he quickly fed Maliq rewarding the effort. He shoots too much but last night was perfect Judah for me.

Good to hear that.

 

[grepal]

Wish I had more time to write/talk about SU. This game felt significant to me.

Good

Team D - When you have a 7'4 center you want to funnel the ball towards him, obviously the offense is not trying to get trapped under the armpit of a shot blocker, so you need to be organized to make it happen. SU hasn't been organized enough on D yet this season to make that happen much, but in this game they did it despite LSU's center being able to step out and hit jumpers.

Judah's D - Its not easy to overlook 33 points, but try. His D has been horrendous so far this year, in this game it was much much better. Obviously Judah has the athletic ability to be a great defender, Autrey's coaching is starting to pay off.

Brown's D - He looked noticeably more healthy in this one, got up a lot higher to challenge shots around the basket and grabbed a lot more rebounds. This is very welcome to see and I think there is still some improvement to come as he gets healthy. LSU's center is their leading scorerer and Brown/McLoud held him to 3 points.

Autrey's game coaching. In the NBA when one guy has a match up advantage they will feed that guy over and over non-stop all game long. For some reason that doesn't happen enough in the college game. Boeheim was never afraid to do it. He was the best and identifying favorable match ups and not letting his team forget to exploit them. Autrey did the same today. Mintz had a huge advantage and they ran tons of different plays for him. It always looked different, but they kept feeding him the ball in good places to exploit LSU.

Bell - The days of him being nothing but a shooter are over. He's quite a good defender now (looks so much better in man than in zone) blocks some shots as well as playing solid positional D. He still can't rebound, but he's trying to tip the ball to teammates, which might be the best we can get. Hard to argue against him being the teams second best player.

Bad

Starling played as bad a game as you will ever see an SU player have. Im not sure what the solution is here. He looks like a broken man.

Taylor's slow release. Taylor was a good 2-5 from 3 today, but didn't look very good from 2. This is not surprizing he had a 6'10 athletic guy guarding him for a lot of the game. Ideally he would have taken more 3's and stayed away from the paint, but his release is so slow he's easy to close out on, forcing him into shots he doesn't want. Taylor plays good defense, rebound really well, and can stretch the floor, he's valuable, but there are times we need Benny William's skill set.

Williams - Put himself behind the 8 ball with those suspensions. He isn't playing much and just looks off when he's in there. Was 1-4 in this game with 2 turnovers, which isn't good enough. Though in his defense most of his minutes came when the game got sloppy in garbage time. We need him. How he improves (or doesn't) will determine this teams ceiling. The 2 guard is going to be a problem for us. We need everything else to work out if we are going to become a good team.

LSU isn't very good, but they are a peer team who already has a win against an ACC opponent. They would have been favored against us on a neutral floor and we won by 23 even after taking our foot off the gas. Really great win for the team.

If JJ continues to play poorly, and I am not convinced that will be the case, we have Cuffe and Cope. Also, does anyone know when Chance will be able to play?

 

[Dmcnabbrules]

I first saw JJ play in 7th or 8th grade. His mom works at my sons district and they talk all the time. Our family is really cheering for him. I am shocked at how much he is struggling. Go back and look at his shot at LaLumiere, totally different. He is also really struggling to play along with Judah. No inside info just watch the game. The good thing is the two of them were communicating well last night. I really hope JJ gets it going.
Quadir Copland has an opportunity to get more minutes right now. He needs to cut the mental mistakes on both sides. JJ is struggling, Chance is hurt, Cuff has been out for two years, this might be the best opportunity for Quadir to earn a solid spot. For every great play he makes a dumb one in turn. He is very exciting and might be the most aggressive rebounder. Please Q try some yoga or sport therapy, the man just needs to calm his brain. His potential is through the roof with better decision making and a reliable 15 foot jumper.

 

[Fly Rodder]

Where did you get this? What is Hakeem percentage?

Hakeem percentage is blocks+steals.

CBB Analytics - College Basketball Stats and Analytics Platform, Scouting & Research

cbbanalytics.com

You need to sign up, but you get access to one teams' basic stats (SU natch). The full site is really powerful and there are a ton of things you can customize for $40/month. I played with it a bit last year on the free trial and you can get deep into individual players (shot heat maps, percentage rankings, etc.). I only have the basic free account, but I'm debating the paid user account which gives the individual stats, advanced tools, and DII stats as well. Then there is the third option which is for teams and advance scouts (and I'm sure that is $$$$).

 

[Fly Rodder]

There are some graphs you can get with the free version too:

Average or so a defending the three and not very good at making them relative to the ACC.

 

[atlanticuse]

When I saw this - live and on replay - I could only think of Benny.

 

[OrangeFoo]

LSU was horrific shooting threes and more generally on offense. If they shoot an average percentage from three this is a very different game.

The good things I saw:
- help D was somewhat improved
- initial D was still pretty good
- there was more of an attempt to structure the offense to get easy shots
- Judah seems to have next leveled his game
- Bell is improving his all around game
- Naheem!

The not so good things:
- Starling... enough said
- Rebounding is terrible... we just got lucky that LSU couldn't shoot
- I'm not convinced Taylor can get his shot off against ACC caliber athletes

Red really needs to figure out where the offense outside of Judah is going to come from and these guys need to figure out the rebounding otherwise there will be some ugly ugly games. I would consider moving Copeland to the starting lineup over JJ and letting him play lead guard and let Judah stay off the ball.

 

[Dmcnabbrules]

Will Wade hasn’t coached a game yet at McNeese State but they are 6-2. They have more talent than LSU. LSU was about as poorly a coached team as I have ever seen at that level. That was like Kevin Stallings at Pitt bad.

 

[General20]

LSU was horrific shooting threes and more generally on offense. If they shoot an average percentage from three this is a very different game.

The good things I saw:
- help D was somewhat improved
- initial D was still pretty good
- there was more of an attempt to structure the offense to get easy shots
- Judah seems to have next leveled his game
- Bell is improving his all around game
- Naheem!

The not so good things:
- Starling... enough said
- Rebounding is terrible... we just got lucky that LSU couldn't shoot
- I'm not convinced Taylor can get his shot off against ACC caliber athletes

Red really needs to figure out where the offense outside of Judah is going to come from and these guys need to figure out the rebounding otherwise there will be some ugly ugly games. I would consider moving Copeland to the starting lineup over JJ and letting him play lead guard and let Judah stay off the ball.

Syracuse beat LSU on the boards 43 to 36 and also beat them on offensive boards 17 to 13 so it wasn't just about LSU missing more shots. Brown being able to jump helps a lot.