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Message: [QUOTE="sutomcat, post: 1986830, member: 27"] Great national anthem by a woman from Bingo. Really impressive. Pretty good turnout by the students, who almost filled the lower level seats allocated to them. Not a good turnout by the locals. Probably 15K actually in the stands. Very quiet crowd. Might be partly on the fans but to be honest, this is not a team that excites that much. Not much in the way of showmanship, spectacular dunking, flashy dribbling and moves, etc. I think it is a blue collar team with heavy white collar tendencies. Wow, what a violent change in the rotation over the course of a couple of games. I think JG, PC and TR are getting no respect from opposing teams and are not being covered. That makes it really hard for the players who are capable of scoring, as they are doubled or even tripled at times. The guys that can score are AW3, TL, FW, DC2 and TB. I think JB decided to go with his scorers early to try and get ahead. The problems happen when the subs come in and the offense stagnates. TT was given some serious run at center for the first time Saturday to see what he could do there. It didn't go well. He looked like a fish out of water. Didn't help he has been struggling badly trying to learn how to play forward in the 2-3, trying to find ways to score against good opposition. He did well early against the bad teams but has hit the wall a bit and I think his confidence is shaken. JG doesn't even look at the hoop anymore. His confidence is gone and he is lost as lost can be. Kind of shocking for a senior. Some guys react well to tough love. Some don't. I don't think JG is a negative reinforcement kind of dude. On the positive side, DC2 and FH reacted really well to increased playing time and played really well. FH got inside well, passed it really well, and did a great job in particular getting AW3 open looks from the perimeter. Also drew a bunch of fouls getting into the paint, where he used his excellent athletic ability to draw fouls. TL gets the benefit of getting covered by a 4 instead of a 3, which should help him a lot. At least in theory. And I think it will in reality too down the road. But TB might have benefited the most from extra PT and from the psychological boost he got becoming a starter. He was a different player. Also benefited from the improved flow in the offense with 5 players that had to be covered, also benefited from a couple of nice passes from FH. But maybe the best benefit from this lineup was the improved defense, led by having FH and TB up top. They got some steals and deflections and made it a lot harder for the Ospreys to get the ball into the paint. AW played almost exclusively at forward (5 minutes at guard). Looked more comfortable there on defense. There was a drastic dropoff in play when the subs came in, especially in the second half, when a blowout became a fairly close game because the subs were so bad. They were bad on offense and possibly worse on defense. JB kept them in for a long time over because he was desperately trying to get them playing well, with some confidence, for the UConn game. It didn't happen. PC didn't play at all. It will be interesting to see what happens with him the rest of the year. I assume he has found the wrath of JB with his positioning woes on defense as well as his troubles on offense. Hope he is able to find his way into the rotation again. It will be very helpful for next season. Will SU press UConn tonight? If the press is going to be an important feature for this team this year, they better start doing it soon. UConn doesn't have much in the way of PG play with Gilbert hurt... [/QUOTE]

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