My Take Away from Yesterday's Game... | Syracusefan.com

My Take Away from Yesterday's Game...

newmexicuse

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OK -we have an apparent big three of Rak, G, & Cooney.

Yesterday we had nice games from two of the three - Rak & G. We had a well below average, but not his worst game from Trevor. At least he made two treys, though he did little else. We did not get any "surprise" contributions from anybody else.

So, I think this means that if two of our big three are having good games that we can play with and probably beat mediocre teams. If only one of our big three are on - we beat nobody.

In order to beat a ranked team we would need solid games from each of our big three plus meaningful contributions from one or two others.

I personally was shocked by Jimmy's comment about McC. The kid badly needs a dose of confidence. I fail to see the Coach's comments as being the best way to deliver that dose. Clearly he needs to get stronger. Clearly he has unmanifested skills. What is different for him as compared to earlier in the season ???? Maybe, he feels under too much pressure. My solution, start Roberson & let McC come off the bench. Change the psychology. Roberson has outplayed him & deserves to start anyways. Speaking of Roberson, yesterday's game was a step back - not his finest hour. I will give him a pass because he was in foul trouble the entire game and seemed to be playing on eggshells as a result.

The Joseph- Buss duo. Wow, a combined ZERO points in 41 minutes. Totally unacceptable. Kaleb only found two shots for himself - if i remember correctly - a missed finish on a drive & a missed pullup j. Those were good shots for him to take. He should be encouraged & given the green light on those - not discouraged because he had a couple of misses. I do not see why he shouldn't be getting his 8 or so every game if he was playing with more confidence. I think the leash is too short & he figures he will stay on the court longer if he does nothing & doesn't risk a negative attempted scoring play. Gotta instill more confidence in the starting PG. Buss also only had two shots, er check that, two bricks. Speaking of Buss, he is getting more minutes lately because of his D. That is OK as long as he can at least be a decoy on the o end. I expected inconsistency from Buss, but recently his O has been simply non-existent. However, they did combine for 7 dimes w only one TO.

Clearly this is a team that will struggle most games. Jimmy has to find a way to get some help for the big three. There is no reason why between McC, Roberson, Buss ,and Kaleb that at least one of them shouldn't be scoring decently in a given game. As mentioned above, I think a huge part of that is confidence for McC, Kaleb, and Tyler. Buss hasn't sold on his skills as of yet.

Well as to Jimmy, I will beat my head against the wall again, but why is Trevor out there for 39 minutes when he is having an off game ??? A couple of minutes of bench time might have been the catalyst to get him going. Well, at least he did get a minute's rest.

Anyways, my bottom line, is that I will take the ugly win, but the only unexpected positive I saw was fewer mistakes in terms of TOs from Kaleb & Buss, but simply reducing mistakes and not making positive plays will not be enough to beat the better teams.
 
I expect JB is not all that surprised or disappointed -- just being honest about what he sees and has seen since October. The team is trying as hard as they can. But they need to figure things out, and sort out what they can do (drive, take short jumpers, push the break when there is an opportunity, rebound and score on garbage inside) and what isn't their game (Buss taking jump shots, as one example).
 
On Kaleb - Zero points sucks. Big time. That being said, I've seen some nice developments regarding his chemistry with teammates. 5 assists last night. He's starting to set up Cooney in transition (much like Ennis did so effectively last year).

On possibly our only successful fast break, he looked for Cooney, recognized that the defense was staying with him, then adjusted and fed the open man (Gbinije?) for the layup. He's going to be up and down all year. Hopefully he starts taking (and making) more shots. But I think he's slowly but surely getting into the flow of the game and developing chemistry with the rest of the team.
 

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