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Baylor Thoughts

General20

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I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Its a busy day and I'm working with a hangover so I'm going to make this very quick . . .by my standards.

Baylor is the second team in a row who normally plays zone, but refused to play it against us. Cooney is terrifying opposing coaches right now and forcing them to change their gameplans. It used to be like that with Rautins. If you noticed, Baylor switched back to zone the minute Cooney went out for a breather, and switched back to man when he came back in the game.

Baylor does not play very good man defense at all, it says a lot that they are willing to abandon their zone just to keep Cooney from killing them. These are the kind of contributions Cooney is going to make throughout the year that wont make it onto any stat sheet. Coaches are going to change their gameplan to stop him, and it will benefit everybody else.

Here are some stats to keep in mind. Baylor shot 55% from the floor, 47% from three, and was +12 on the boards.

When was the last time anybody lost with numbers like that? When was the last time anybody shot 55% from the floor and 47% from three against Syracuse? I'd love to know the answers to these questions.

Maybe the craziest stat of all is that even with Baylor hitting everything, Syracuse was in control of the game the from start to finish. I'm not a big stats guy, but these stats tell us a few things. First, Syracuse is not even close to where they need to be defensively. Second, Syracuse is out of this world offensively.

Last game Ennis and Cooney decimated Cal, in this game they passed the torch to Fair and Grant. This team has a lot of answers. Grants first two shots were mid range jumpers that he buried. You just knew he was going to have a monster game after that. If you have to get up on him to stop the jump shot there is no way to stop him getting to the rim.

In my Cal thoughts I predicted that Baylor would hit a lot of shots against us, and that turned out to be true. There is no time to fix your defense when you are playing three games in three days. Work on the defense will start tomorrow, and I predict there will be signs of improvement against Indiana. If this team can figure it out defensively they are going to start blowing teams out . . . even good ones . . . and that is something we can all be thankful for.
 
Superb and succinct. Frankly when I saw the Baylor stats I was scratching my head wondering what exactly transpired. The Cooney observation is extremely insightful (and he still had a great all around game) .. great analysis!
 
I dont think I have seen a cuse game where they actually played as good defense as they did last night and a team shot so well still. About 10 pct of that shooting pct was difficult contested shots. It seems they made every one of those. Even jb credited the d in the interview and from an activity standpoint I agree. Just an outstanding performance shooting by baylor and yet cuse still was in control. The turnovers and 12 additional possessions we got were the key.
 
Great job. General! I wonder what the rebounding numbers were at H. It felt like we were in control with those. Mid 2H on Baylor started to destroy us on the offensive glass.
 
General, you are quickly becoming one of my favorite board contributors. Thanks for all these great recaps.
General's on fire.
spac8y.jpg
 
Add the 10 for 11 FT's. If we make, say, 6 of 11, it probably becomes a 1 possession game down the stretch, and that could have had enormous implications. Whoever is coaching the FT shooting (I suspect GMAC), they deserve a bonus. All the players have good form (even DC2 looks better at least), and look comfortable and confident from the line.

Nice that Fair got the MVP, but it could easily have been Ennis. Or Grant. Or even Cooney. If one of our centers could break out and at least show some consistency and be someone JB can truly trust on both ends of the floor, we will be a Final Four quality team.
 

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