- Didn't get a chance to actually see the game until last night. Figured I'd put a few thoughts together as we head into Houston.
Things I didn't like
- Rebounding is not awesome and FT shooting is atrocious. I won't say much about either as they've been covered here, but I will say playing a pressure defense is great but draws bigs out of rebounding position frequently, so that's a part of it.
- Red's end-of-half, end-of-game coaching. It's an issue. His taking a tech when we're on a 9-0 run was not ideal either, though I understand his frustration.
- Donnie's offensive game (in general) is weird to me and his defensive game against Monmouth was brutal. Their big dude was eating him alive down low and he had 4 or 5 slow rotations on the perimeter. Not sure if he's hurt, but it was a poor defensive display. Offensively, I don't know what his go-to is. He struggles putting the ball on the floor, but when he's successful I feel like he's often just looking to draw contact vs. finish the play strong. He has some nice moves -- a little lefty floater on one and another baby hook shot on another, but he got blocked from behind on a jumper and i thought got bailed out on a few foul calls to score from the line. Kid always seems to get his numbers and if his shot starts falling, that would be huge, but his game isn't as far along offensively as I hoped it would be.
- Want to give some credit to Monmouth here. I think we shot ourselves in the foot a few times when we had a chance to kind of put that game out of reach. Don't think it was going to be a 30-point win, but could have been a more comfortable 10-12-point win if we took care of business. But Monmouth did a nice job of moving the ball and moving without the ball to limit our effectiveness with the pressure man we like to play. They only got caught over-dribbling on a few possessions when we made a bit of a run midway through the second half, but otherwise stuck to their offense and took care of the ball. 12 turnovers, but just four live ball turnovers and, while we got out in transition on some blocks and rebounds off bad shots, they really limited that too. They also stuck with what worked -- kept riding their big guy down low and kept the ball in Ray's hands a lot. They played a really good game, which I mention because I didn't finish watching it and think it was a lackluster effort on our part.
- JJ had a good game on both ends. The FTs are a disaster and really something watch in terms of how that plays out, but I thought it was about the best game I've seen him play defensively -- good on-ball, and very aware of help and recovery. Didn't force things offensively. Hit a huge three for us.
- The Nates/Naits were excellent. George's ability to attack the defense when they blitz the high ball-screen by retreating and then getting by one of the defenders is huge. Looked really good doing that. Shot pretty well also. Kingz was really active on both ends. Nice to see him knock down a couple shots, but thought he really was our best two-way player in a lot of ways.
- Kiyan struggled, for sure, but I thought his only real force was the drive pretty late in the game where he got swallowed up from behind. It's fine for a freshman to have some struggles so hopefully he learns from it. But really, I thought he was making decent decisions and I'm impressed with how he's worked defensively. Didn't think that would be the case after the scrimmages.
- We still only ran a few set plays in the half-court but I thought our offense there was solid. We moved the ball well and looked much more in-sync than earlier in the season. Wasn't the best we've played but I like that it's not just a ton of one-on-one for this group thus far. We'll see if we can continue that against Houston.
that's pretty much it. interesting game -- don't think anyone needs to find a bridge to jump off after that and my hope is that it was an eye-opener that will get this team to understand it has to play the full 40 mins and constantly take care of the little things. But the energy and unselfishness as well as the overall talent still looks light years better to me than the past several seasons.
