newmexicuse
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I am taking a deep breath. Being out here in NM this was only the 2nd game I have seen. The first was the Wisconson game. So put this post in the context that I have seen most of the bad and none of the good from this team, though, of course, the "good" was only accomplished against cupcakes, so maybe i haven't really missed much on the plus side.
The two things that stand out the most to me are:
1. This team lacks toughness. Robey hasn't been himself so far this season and everybody else other than Coleman plays soft.
2. The team lacks leadership and a playmaker when we really need a hoop. Playmaking starts with the PG. Howard gets most of the minutes and at least in the two games that I have seen he did not do much creating. A lot of E-W ball movement supplemented by wild drives to the hole where he failed to find an open man for a dish & could not finish himself. Gillon is not a natural playmaker at all. Nobody else shows any ability to create for his teammates nor does anybody on the team show an ability to create a good shot for themselves.
Uconn was a terrible team, but at least they showed effort and grit, if we had shown half as much we would have beat them by double digits.
Maybe, we lack pieces, but certainly the coaching has been marginal at best this season.
In the UConn game we were desperate to score. Thompson showed as much as anybody else out there in his brief cameo. Why didn't he get more minutes? Yes, i know there are holes in his game, but the staff needs to recognize what we need and get the right pieces on the floor.
Let's start with the D. In a zone it is a given that we have to give up something, but in both games that I saw we could not defend the paint AND we gave up too many good trey looks. Most teams now a days have multiple three point shooters, so I think we need to start by defending the trey line. That means staying at home against shooters. That however, is not the way our Zone works. The staff needs to make adjustments. It seems to me that our Zone operates & rotates in a void wo regard to recognizing who can hurt us and who can't from distance. Is that really bad coaching or really bad player recognition ? Probably a bit of both.
However, as bad as the D has looked to me so far, the O is worse. our star was supposed to be Lydon, so it starts with him. He looks like his confidence is totally shaken. He has a lot of open looks from the trey line when he didn't pull the trigger. Of course, when he did shoot, he missed, so that reluctance was understandable. If there is to be any hope for this team it has to start with Lydon making a decent trey percentage AND expanding his game to either make some drives or make some post ups. Of course, the only good news in this is that unless he shows quantum improvement he will be back for his junior season.
White's strength is as a shooter, but the team's ball movement has been so bad that he hasn't gotten many good open looks in the two games that i have seen. He also does have some ability to shoot a 15 footer over a smaller player when he gets that matchup. It is the overall stagnation of our offense that fails to create those mis-matches.
Roberson I see as the linchpin player. He needs to get back to what he showed most of last season. He can give us toughness, he can give us rebounding, and when gets his 8 to 10 garbage points those are critical because they are not the type of points anybody else would get for us. They are the "free" points and every team needs some of those to win games. I do not know why his game has gone south so far, but i just can't see us having enough grit to win games wo him playing well.
Battle, yes, a better three point shooter than advertised and pretty athletic. What he lacks is that explosive first step to get by his man when there is a potential lane. Hopefully, that comes with time.
Coleman is the one guy who has exceeded expectations. However, as good as he was overall against UConn, he still missed 4 critical FTs in a row. My guess is that he was simply tired at that point in the game from too many minutes relative to his conditioning.
The coaching has been awful. In the Wisconson game we were somehow there at halftime, but instead of us making any adjustments to get over the top, they were the ones who really came out and exploited us in the 2nd half. Against UConn it was flat out inexcusable how badly we executed once they went man. The game is passing by a 100% Zone team. I am not saying that we should become a man team, but we need to at least find better wrinkles with the Zone that we have - like see above and taking away the trey line.
Anyways, I have had my vent.
The two things that stand out the most to me are:
1. This team lacks toughness. Robey hasn't been himself so far this season and everybody else other than Coleman plays soft.
2. The team lacks leadership and a playmaker when we really need a hoop. Playmaking starts with the PG. Howard gets most of the minutes and at least in the two games that I have seen he did not do much creating. A lot of E-W ball movement supplemented by wild drives to the hole where he failed to find an open man for a dish & could not finish himself. Gillon is not a natural playmaker at all. Nobody else shows any ability to create for his teammates nor does anybody on the team show an ability to create a good shot for themselves.
Uconn was a terrible team, but at least they showed effort and grit, if we had shown half as much we would have beat them by double digits.
Maybe, we lack pieces, but certainly the coaching has been marginal at best this season.
In the UConn game we were desperate to score. Thompson showed as much as anybody else out there in his brief cameo. Why didn't he get more minutes? Yes, i know there are holes in his game, but the staff needs to recognize what we need and get the right pieces on the floor.
Let's start with the D. In a zone it is a given that we have to give up something, but in both games that I saw we could not defend the paint AND we gave up too many good trey looks. Most teams now a days have multiple three point shooters, so I think we need to start by defending the trey line. That means staying at home against shooters. That however, is not the way our Zone works. The staff needs to make adjustments. It seems to me that our Zone operates & rotates in a void wo regard to recognizing who can hurt us and who can't from distance. Is that really bad coaching or really bad player recognition ? Probably a bit of both.
However, as bad as the D has looked to me so far, the O is worse. our star was supposed to be Lydon, so it starts with him. He looks like his confidence is totally shaken. He has a lot of open looks from the trey line when he didn't pull the trigger. Of course, when he did shoot, he missed, so that reluctance was understandable. If there is to be any hope for this team it has to start with Lydon making a decent trey percentage AND expanding his game to either make some drives or make some post ups. Of course, the only good news in this is that unless he shows quantum improvement he will be back for his junior season.
White's strength is as a shooter, but the team's ball movement has been so bad that he hasn't gotten many good open looks in the two games that i have seen. He also does have some ability to shoot a 15 footer over a smaller player when he gets that matchup. It is the overall stagnation of our offense that fails to create those mis-matches.
Roberson I see as the linchpin player. He needs to get back to what he showed most of last season. He can give us toughness, he can give us rebounding, and when gets his 8 to 10 garbage points those are critical because they are not the type of points anybody else would get for us. They are the "free" points and every team needs some of those to win games. I do not know why his game has gone south so far, but i just can't see us having enough grit to win games wo him playing well.
Battle, yes, a better three point shooter than advertised and pretty athletic. What he lacks is that explosive first step to get by his man when there is a potential lane. Hopefully, that comes with time.
Coleman is the one guy who has exceeded expectations. However, as good as he was overall against UConn, he still missed 4 critical FTs in a row. My guess is that he was simply tired at that point in the game from too many minutes relative to his conditioning.
The coaching has been awful. In the Wisconson game we were somehow there at halftime, but instead of us making any adjustments to get over the top, they were the ones who really came out and exploited us in the 2nd half. Against UConn it was flat out inexcusable how badly we executed once they went man. The game is passing by a 100% Zone team. I am not saying that we should become a man team, but we need to at least find better wrinkles with the Zone that we have - like see above and taking away the trey line.
Anyways, I have had my vent.
