My Take | Syracusefan.com

My Take

sutomcat

No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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Losing Melo accentuates our weaknesses; defensive rebounding and half court offense. Cooley was a man among boys tonight, Christmas and Keita are not ready to play big boy basketball yet and made a decent inside player look really good. When he played last week against Drummond, he had his shot blocked 8 or 10 times and was awful. The same thing would have happened had Melo made the road trip.

Disappointed with the offense. Some panic, lots of forced shots, little patience, no one willing to set picks or run plays. Lots of one on one, over dribbling and stupidity out there. Thought we were a smarter team than this. Everyone contributed.

While I am disappointed with the offense, I am really disappointed with the defense. Worst effort of the season by far. Yes, everything ND threw up there seemed to go in, no talent guys who cannot shoot were dead eyes, etc. but to me, the lack of interior defense and help was horrific. Credit to ND for doing a good job attacking the zone. But everyone on the team and Keita and Christmas in particular have to show up, man up and at least try to get rebounds. I got physically sick watching Keita hide under the basket away from Cooley everytime there was a chance to get a rebound. Hope both of these guys watch this film and decide they are going to compete the rest of the season.

Was this our last conference game ever in South Bend? I think so. I do not believe I will miss the place.
 
Losing Melo accentuates our weaknesses; defensive rebounding and half court offense. Cooley was a man among boys tonight, Christmas and Keita are not ready to play big boy basketball yet and made a decent inside player look really good. When he played last week against Drummond, he had his shot blocked 8 or 10 times and was awful. The same thing would have happened had Melo made the road trip.

Disappointed with the offense. Some panic, lots of forced shots, little patience, no one willing to set picks or run plays. Lots of one on one, over dribbling and stupidity out there. Thought we were a smarter team than this. Everyone contributed.

While I am disappointed with the offense, I am really disappointed with the defense. Worst effort of the season by far. Yes, everything ND threw up there seemed to go in, no talent guys who cannot shoot were dead eyes, etc. but to me, the lack of interior defense and help was horrific. Credit to ND for doing a good job attacking the zone. But everyone on the team and Keita and Christmas in particular have to show up, man up and at least try to get rebounds. I got physically sick watching Keita hide under the basket away from Cooley everytime there was a chance to get a rebound. Hope both of these guys watch this film and decide they are going to compete the rest of the season.

Was this our last conference game ever in South Bend? I think so. I do not believe I will miss the place.
Agree 100% on Keita. Looked scared and never was in position to get a rebound.
 
The offense has been going down hill the past several games because it has become too much 1-1 in the half court set whether it be KJo or Dion. The defense was worse because of no inside presence. Even if melo doesn't block the shot, he alters a lot and guys can't just hang out down low either.
 
i wish we attacked the hoop like we did in the second half the entire game
 
Is it too much to say Keita is not a high level D-1 player? I mean the guy is 6-10 and he averages 3 boards a game, is always out-muscled for position down low; he fumbles 95% of the passes that come to him, and loses 90% of them, and is just no threat whatsoever on the offensive end. Unless this guy puts on some beef, I can't imagine him turning into much here. Maybe I'm just over sensitive after the loss, but that's just how I see it. I can't remember the last time I said, "Nice play Baye!"...
 
Regarding the half court offense, tonight just highlights how delusional the people are who insist Kris has a great handle. He's such a trainwreck with the ball it's not even funny.
 
I'm sure Keita is trying hard. His ineffectiveness has nothing to do with effort. He just isn't big enough or strong enough to play against most BE centers. How can you expect a 212 lb guy to give away 40 or more lbs to every center and be effective? Not gonna happen. He constantly gets pushed/shoved out of position under the basket. Secondly he has terrible hands. Even when he gets an uncontested rebound he usually bobbles it before controlling it. He touches a lot of balls but can't control them. If Fab is out, we're in trouble.
 
Losing Melo accentuates our weaknesses; defensive rebounding and half court offense.

Defensive rebounding wasn't an issue in this game. In fact our defensive rebounding rate was actually higher than our average tonight.
 
I'm thinking that without Melo in the middle our zone isn't going to be nearly as good as it was. I posted that early this afternoon, and this game seemed to verify that.

I'm afraid that we just won't be able to neutralize other team's bigs inside games and that'll hurt our ability to play aggressive defense on the wing and pressure zone D on the guards. I see our zone possibly taking a big hit.
 
I'm thinking that without Melo in the middle our zone isn't going to be nearly as good as it was. I posted that early this afternoon, and this game seemed to verify that.

I'm afraid that we just won't be able to neutralize other team's bigs inside games and that'll hurt our ability to play aggressive defense on the wing and pressure zone D on the guards. I see our zone possibly taking a big hit.

Spot on. We need to hope for a positive resolution on Tuesday or we can all kiss Nawlins goodbye.
 
The difference in athleticism between Melo and Keita, and the position between Melo and Xmas are both incredibly vast. That said, if we don't settle for jumpers on what seemed like 80% of the time, we win in the second half easily
 
Regarding the half court offense, tonight just highlights how delusional the people are who insist Kris has a great handle. He's such a trainwreck with the ball it's not even funny.

Yep...I've been saying this all year. Bilas said it in the Florida game about how he should be a one or two dribble catch and shoot guy.
 
The offense has been going down hill the past several games because it has become too much 1-1 in the half court set whether it be KJo or Dion.

For those of you looking for some reality: this is it.

This team has the potential to be one the best teams of all time. I did not believe until a couple of weeks ago. How they come out against Cincy will tell us a lot. But this was not the team I expected to see tonight based on what seemed like a difference Cuse team than we are used to (year in and year out).

44cuse
 
Losing Melo accentuates our weaknesses; defensive rebounding and half court offense. Cooley was a man among boys tonight, Christmas and Keita are not ready to play big boy basketball yet and made a decent inside player look really good. When he played last week against Drummond, he had his shot blocked 8 or 10 times and was awful. The same thing would have happened had Melo made the road trip.

Disappointed with the offense. Some panic, lots of forced shots, little patience, no one willing to set picks or run plays. Lots of one on one, over dribbling and stupidity out there. Thought we were a smarter team than this. Everyone contributed.

While I am disappointed with the offense, I am really disappointed with the defense. Worst effort of the season by far. Yes, everything ND threw up there seemed to go in, no talent guys who cannot shoot were dead eyes, etc. but to me, the lack of interior defense and help was horrific. Credit to ND for doing a good job attacking the zone. But everyone on the team and Keita and Christmas in particular have to show up, man up and at least try to get rebounds. I got physically sick watching Keita hide under the basket away from Cooley everytime there was a chance to get a rebound. Hope both of these guys watch this film and decide they are going to compete the rest of the season.

Was this our last conference game ever in South Bend? I think so. I do not believe I will miss the place.
i'm not giving up on christmas, if jb plays this right, christmas will break out against cinncy. he needs confidence, and the green light to go full force particularly in the cinncy game.not worry about fouling out. you cannot play be bball scared
 
i'm not giving up on christmas, if jb plays this right, christmas will break out against cinncy. he needs confidence, and the green light to go full force particularly in the cinncy game.not worry about fouling out. you cannot play be bball scared

I'm not ready to give up on Rak because he's only a frosh. However, his time is way off in the future. It is clearly not now and it has nothing to do "with how JB plays it". He has been trying to get Rak to play more agressively all year, as reported by Rak himself.

I don't see Rak breaking out against Cincy because all year he has resembled frosh-vintage Fab. If we're lucky, that may change by the time we hit post season. I don't see it changing much over the short term.
 
Losing Melo accentuates our weaknesses; defensive rebounding and half court offense. Cooley was a man among boys tonight, Christmas and Keita are not ready to play big boy basketball yet and made a decent inside player look really good. When he played last week against Drummond, he had his shot blocked 8 or 10 times and was awful. The same thing would have happened had Melo made the road trip.

Disappointed with the offense. Some panic, lots of forced shots, little patience, no one willing to set picks or run plays. Lots of one on one, over dribbling and stupidity out there. Thought we were a smarter team than this. Everyone contributed.

Agree with both of these points.

And especially with the latter point, it is the reason why despite not having as much talent as this year's team, the 2009-2010 team was better.

Let's see on Monday how this team reacts after its first loss facing a team that is much better than ND.

Cheers,
Neil
 
Disappointed with the offense. Some panic, lots of forced shots, little patience, no one willing to set picks or run plays. Lots of one on one, over dribbling and stupidity out there. Thought we were a smarter team than this. Everyone contributed.


This is where the game was lost, on offense not defense. Without Melo in the game it should have been obvious to all that there would be a dramatic effect on our defense. We had glimpses of it in the stints where Melo got into foul trouble in earlier games and our opponent was able to get the ball inside and get good shots at the basket almost at will. That won't change, if at all, for a few games. JB needs to retool the defense a bit to adjust to having very little presence in the middle and I am not sure that can be done effectively on one days notice. Hell if Melo's coming back he may not really do it with vigor.

What disappointed me was how bad the offense looked. Notre Dame has never been known for its strong defense, yet we look like we had lost our top two offensive players rather than our 6 point per game center the way we played on offense. When we debate whether we have go to guys or not, this game is exhibit 1 for the argument that we do not. We needed someone to pick up their offensive game to counter punch N.D.s initial body blows and make a statement to the rest of the team that the loss of Melo would not impair us...... and sadly noone was able to do that.

The guys that needed to do this were really KJo, Triche or Waiters and none of them could. Waiters 4 for 14? Nice boost going into the half, but that was the only point he really looked like the player we've all been trying to make him out to be. KJo...well...just really disappointed in what he gave us yesterday 4 for 12 and 5 boards?? Is that all you've got against a weak Notre Dame?? Triche 2 for 6?? He could only get 6 shots yesterday? Yesterday was a game that was crying out for him to take charge offensively....but he didn't even seem to try to do this.

Scoop? 0-5. He was only credited with 2 TOs, but he had a couple of passes in the first half to interior players (one to CJ comes to mind) that were thrown at their ankles and the receiving player couldn't do anything with the ball as a result. Don't know if they ended up being statistical TOs, but they were the equivalent of TOs. I would have liked to have seen him hit a few shots, but I am almost ok with his 0-5. In past seasons in a situation like this Scoop would have tried to shoulder the offense and his line might have looked more like 2-14...so maybe its progress that that didn't happen, unfortunately deferring to others didn't lead to others getting the job done.

Just really disappointed in how this team responded (or didn't respond) to the challenge yesterday.
 
The offense has been going down hill the past several games because it has become too much 1-1 in the half court set whether it be KJo or Dion. The defense was worse because of no inside presence. Even if melo doesn't block the shot, he alters a lot and guys can't just hang out down low either.

I agree our offense has been looking a lot like NBA offense lately. One guy dribbling and four guys standing with an occasional screen.

On side note I would expect to win most games when allowing 60 whatever points. In fact if before the game I was told what ND was going to score I would have felt very confident that the result would be a win for us.
 
I'm not ready to give up on Rak because he's only a frosh. However, his time is way off in the future. It is clearly not now and it has nothing to do "with how JB plays it". He has been trying to get Rak to play more agressively all year, as reported by Rak himself.

I don't see Rak breaking out against Cincy because all year he has resembled frosh-vintage Fab. If we're lucky, that may change by the time we hit post season. I don't see it changing much over the short term.
well what do you think now dick? it was absolutely how jb played it!!!!not trying to gloat as iam more relieved at this play---
 
well what do you think now dick? it was absolutely how jb played it!!!!not trying to gloat as iam more relieved at this play---

I was wrong about Rak but I don't think that JB did anything different; he has been trying all year to get Rak to play with abandon. Rak has said this himself in the past.
 
I was wrong about Rak but I don't think that JB did anything different; he has been trying all year to get Rak to play with abandon. Rak has said this himself in the past.
timing was perfect
 

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