Long night, at work, struggling so this is going to be short.
The crowd was pretty small but surprisingly loud. The student section actually showed up and made some noise. It could have gotten very loud if there was more to cheer about.
Someone sang a great NA and got one of the best ovations after I have ever seen. Nice.
A couple of people in my section fell asleep during the game. Literally. If it was ever going to happen, it was going to be last night. Ugly confluence of events.
Some character dressed in a giant orange wig, orange shirt and orange pants got the chance to try and make a shot from the Dunk & Bright bed. When he was asked who he was, he said 'Dome Dude' and took the opportunity to tell Melo his wife loved him. When he made the shot, he walked over to Melo and got a high five.
Melo and Bing both attended the game and were introduced to the crowd during one of the timeouts. Simultaneously using a split screen. I don't know who replaced Brett doing the game production but well done.
This looks to me like an historically bad rebounding team. No one is interested in getting offensive rebounds, we have no good shot blocker and it appears we will be without a real PG this season as well. So there are some problems to overcome.
That said, this should be one of the best outside shooting teams we have had. I think we have a lot of unselfish players who can pass it and there is real hope that the offense is going to be improved. We have the athletes and length to be a good defensive team as well. I am here to say there is hope.
I think there are going to be games when we shoot well and beat really good teams. And games where we shoot poorly and lose to not so good teams. We have a gaggle of athletic bigs. Can a couple of them develop into servicable rebounders? Sidibe and Guerrier are probably our best hopes and they were both disasters last night.
Girard might be the most popular player on the team right now. Already. Big ovation when he came into the game and whenever he did something right. His progress as a college player is going to be fascinating to watch. Few freshman start as fearless as he appears to be.
On the positive side, Edwards looked really promising late. I wonder why we didn't put Carey in when we were pressing? He seems like our fastest guy and most likely player to get steals in the open court.