Yeah.. in the 2nd half when Buffalo was making their run they ran a pick and roll with George and Freeman and he got a nice bucket on a dive to the hoop after he set a pick. It was actually a pretty impressive move that show cased his easy athleticism. That hoop kick started his impressive end of game.
Better, but will it be good enough?
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Orangezoo
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Donnie was shaking the rust off. That stretch where the game got serious - he stepped up and they executed and almost was if he needed that to get him going finally.
DomeHolmes
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I hope you’re right about Buffalo. Buffalo is picked 11th in the MAC. Ken Pom has them at #329! I don’t think they are good. We need to beat 8 or 9 bad teams by 20+ points with the dopey net rankings. Every bad team we will play is ranked ahead of Buffalo except for two. Several of them are 100 points ahead of Buffalo.
Just winning is no longer good enough.
Yesterdays team has me doubting the focus on offense and ability on defense to do that consistently.
I was hoping to see a completely dialed in team with a killer instinct, taking advantage of their athleticism. A team that knows 20 point wins is a necessity. Hopefully we see that team Wednesday.
Not sure why we are getting folks saying this isn’t a bad Buffalo team.Maybe the experts are wrong, but nobody I have seen is predicting anything good from this team.
Yeah, I mean maybe they are a little better than what was predicted of them. I would only be a little concerned if our substitution patterns yesterday are how it's going to be and wasn't experimentation. We need to beat teams like Buffalo 20+ when it starts to count.
bnoro
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His shot was much improved? He still shot 30/20/50 splits... 10 shots to get 8 points.
SarasotaPaul
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All new moving parts. First exhibition. We should have enough for a useful idea a few games into the season. Better players is a good thing at this juncture.
Orangezoo
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Zephyr played in this game. Hes clearly a practice body at best. When the game was at 45-27 Red subbed in another new lineup. At that point in a game that counts you run them out of the gym. This was an exhibition so that wasn’t the plan here.
Buffalo looks better than last year if you go and watch a bit of their highlights as they spent to go get Freitag and some of the top D2 prospects in the portal. Does that mean they are good? Probably not.
Anyways this was easily a game Red could have just aimed to win by 35. That would have made some people clamoring in this thread get the warm fuzzies. It also wouldn’t have accomplished anything more than what was done with a 10 pt win.
Also if you are expecting a team totally in lockstep and dominant on October 25… that’s kind of nuts. I mean one of our best players hasn’t played a game in almost a year. With that said if this game required a 35 point win, I suspect Sadiq could have suited up and Red puts the heat on to stretch the lead in the first half and beginning of the second. There wasn’t any sign that we couldn’t accomplish that goal, if that was indeed the goal ( it wasn’t)
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Zelda Zonk
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I do think JJ tried to play defense. He was even picking up at 2/3-court. Did some nice things, but he’s just not skilled in the nuances and technical aspects and he’s apparently (still) not getting the coaching to make a difference.
Whether Buffalo is a real conference 11th or National #329 or whatever—I would wager their coach with our roster would be better than our roster with Red. And that’s sad. One exhibition or not—doesn’t matter what it was called. It was a game.
The only excuse for the closeness was the treatment/distribution of minutes—playing everyone to suss out what we have and to give players an opportunity to show what they might be able to contribute. If we had run a conference schedule-style of substitutions, I’m pretty sure the game would have been more comfortable, but we still should have seen domination, and we just didn’t. Back in olden times, we destroy a team like this, even with a far less-balanced/less-deep roster.
Yeah, not much effective penetration. JJ is the only Quicks Guy? I was most surprised and disappointed not to have seen more playmaking and generalship from George. But, he did it in the ACC last year, so unless Red and the staff really do ruin players, I expect him to be pretty good going forward.
Nice to see Kiyan effective in his earliest minutes. No jitters. Still work to do, but he can contribute.
Sad, that the words ‘we needed White to bring the toughness’ were written so often. If we are relying on a freshman/reserve for that… I dunno. I really hope he is going to be okay and playable soon, and more importantly that it’s not going to be a lingering, compromising injury. I still think it’s dumb that we can’t get a more specific injury report than “upper body.” Fine to protect privacy when they were “student athletes.” Now, they’re professional athletes.
Donnie has to be a forward, not a 2G. On offense. I liked his rebounding on D.
Betsey—whoa. My biggest surprise, not that he played that way, but that he looked so confident and was so effective so soon, offensively. D is another matter, and again, we don’t have a staff that instills confidence that we can get markedly better results. I wonder what his defense was like last year? I’m going to go out on a limb and project that he will figure it out and be better. He has a chance to be really important.
I barely noticed Kingz.
Luke battled. Did some nice things. I have a feeling he will be like he was in international competition this summer. He didn’t impress in that first game I saw, and then he improved over the course of that short tournament.
The best thing about this game is that there was a game. The worst thing is that, again, I have an anhedonic experience with SU basketball. No joy, half-attention, no panic, and no relief. I was geared up to watch it, and then… flat. If we had lost, I just would have laughed. I really want to get back to where it means more.
Whether Buffalo is a real conference 11th or National #329 or whatever—I would wager their coach with our roster would be better than our roster with Red. And that’s sad. One exhibition or not—doesn’t matter what it was called. It was a game.
The only excuse for the closeness was the treatment/distribution of minutes—playing everyone to suss out what we have and to give players an opportunity to show what they might be able to contribute. If we had run a conference schedule-style of substitutions, I’m pretty sure the game would have been more comfortable, but we still should have seen domination, and we just didn’t. Back in olden times, we destroy a team like this, even with a far less-balanced/less-deep roster.
Yeah, not much effective penetration. JJ is the only Quicks Guy? I was most surprised and disappointed not to have seen more playmaking and generalship from George. But, he did it in the ACC last year, so unless Red and the staff really do ruin players, I expect him to be pretty good going forward.
Nice to see Kiyan effective in his earliest minutes. No jitters. Still work to do, but he can contribute.
Sad, that the words ‘we needed White to bring the toughness’ were written so often. If we are relying on a freshman/reserve for that… I dunno. I really hope he is going to be okay and playable soon, and more importantly that it’s not going to be a lingering, compromising injury. I still think it’s dumb that we can’t get a more specific injury report than “upper body.” Fine to protect privacy when they were “student athletes.” Now, they’re professional athletes.
Donnie has to be a forward, not a 2G. On offense. I liked his rebounding on D.
Betsey—whoa. My biggest surprise, not that he played that way, but that he looked so confident and was so effective so soon, offensively. D is another matter, and again, we don’t have a staff that instills confidence that we can get markedly better results. I wonder what his defense was like last year? I’m going to go out on a limb and project that he will figure it out and be better. He has a chance to be really important.
I barely noticed Kingz.
Luke battled. Did some nice things. I have a feeling he will be like he was in international competition this summer. He didn’t impress in that first game I saw, and then he improved over the course of that short tournament.
The best thing about this game is that there was a game. The worst thing is that, again, I have an anhedonic experience with SU basketball. No joy, half-attention, no panic, and no relief. I was geared up to watch it, and then… flat. If we had lost, I just would have laughed. I really want to get back to where it means more.
DoctahLexus
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I was most frustrated/disappointed with Donnie's performance, but he would also be the guy I would give a slight pass given how long it has been since he has played at game speed. We have too many guys who can hit from range to have him firing away semi-contested threes. I trust his ability to hit those at a higher rate then he did yesterday, but it still felt like the wrong approach to take. He looked at his best when he was involved with some pick and rolls/interior passing plays towards the end. To his credit he did have some strong plays on the boards, but there were also some space cadets moments defending on the interior, both of which we saw last year in real games. I am giving him a little time, but we need him to be more of an alpha then what we saw yesterday. He should be getting some blocks against these more undersized matchups on the interior.
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