sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
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- Aug 15, 2011
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Strange game. We led almost the whole first half and then collapsed late to give the Vols a 5 point lead.
Second half, we outscored them by 2 until the last 3 minutes or so, when we completely fell apart again.
Do we have fitness issues? Based on the Colgate game, probably not. We do have consistency issues. They haven’t cost us a game until today.
Props to UT for playing tough, physical defense. Our team isn’t like that and we actually responded better than I thought we might. If the refs called what I would consider a normal game, maybe we win this one.
But I think the biggest reason we lost was bad defense. We played good solid man defense maybe 1/3 of the possessions. But way too often we just seemed to lose focus and let a UT player dribble all the way to the basket unchallenged. Like we have been doing since the first exhibition game. Good job by the UT staff to see we have issues here. I think for the most part, Judah, JJ and Justin play good man defense. Bell, Benny, Nadeem , Kyle and Q seem to have limited attention spans and usually let their man go by them and get to the basket. It looks to as though Bell does this on purpose and his strategy is to try and get the block from behind.
That might work against 6’2 power forwards in HS but you can’t do that at this level. All of these guys sometimes look motivated on defense and sometimes stay in front of their man and play good defense. They are all capable of this. And that makes it all the more disappointing when they fail over and over.
The offense struggled all game long. Poor ball movement. Guys going 1 on 2 all the time. No one hits the offensive boards. Seemingly ever. People don’t even position themselves well for a pass. Most of this lies with Judah and his continuing struggles to run the offense and play like a point guard. Right now he is in shoot first mode. It doesn’t help that players aren’t cutting to the hoop or running to open spots when he drives.
No one is even trying to play the low post. Nadeem stands down there but has no interest in the ball. If by chance he gets it, he immediately kicks it out. Doesn’t even look at the hoop. MaliQ just stands on the high post and passes it to someone on the perimeter. Another guy with no interest in trying to score.
I thought Starling was probably our best offensive player. He got to the hoop repeatedly and missed a lot of short easy shots. Yes, he got bodied a lot and sometimes really hard. But you have to make some of those shots. Hopefully he is able to finish better the rest of the season. This was the first time I have seen him struggle to finish.
Nice job by Justin on the boards but he needs to do more than that. He was quite good defensively too but he isn’t getting many shots and isn’t making many either. I would never have guessed he would lead the team in rebounding this season. As of today, it looks like pretty much a lock to happen..
UT is a top 10 team. I think they did not play well and with all the injuries they had, we had a real chance to get an upset. We really don’t play bad. Just not great either.
Let’s hope we play better tomorrow. It is going to be tough. Again.
Second half, we outscored them by 2 until the last 3 minutes or so, when we completely fell apart again.
Do we have fitness issues? Based on the Colgate game, probably not. We do have consistency issues. They haven’t cost us a game until today.
Props to UT for playing tough, physical defense. Our team isn’t like that and we actually responded better than I thought we might. If the refs called what I would consider a normal game, maybe we win this one.
But I think the biggest reason we lost was bad defense. We played good solid man defense maybe 1/3 of the possessions. But way too often we just seemed to lose focus and let a UT player dribble all the way to the basket unchallenged. Like we have been doing since the first exhibition game. Good job by the UT staff to see we have issues here. I think for the most part, Judah, JJ and Justin play good man defense. Bell, Benny, Nadeem , Kyle and Q seem to have limited attention spans and usually let their man go by them and get to the basket. It looks to as though Bell does this on purpose and his strategy is to try and get the block from behind.
That might work against 6’2 power forwards in HS but you can’t do that at this level. All of these guys sometimes look motivated on defense and sometimes stay in front of their man and play good defense. They are all capable of this. And that makes it all the more disappointing when they fail over and over.
The offense struggled all game long. Poor ball movement. Guys going 1 on 2 all the time. No one hits the offensive boards. Seemingly ever. People don’t even position themselves well for a pass. Most of this lies with Judah and his continuing struggles to run the offense and play like a point guard. Right now he is in shoot first mode. It doesn’t help that players aren’t cutting to the hoop or running to open spots when he drives.
No one is even trying to play the low post. Nadeem stands down there but has no interest in the ball. If by chance he gets it, he immediately kicks it out. Doesn’t even look at the hoop. MaliQ just stands on the high post and passes it to someone on the perimeter. Another guy with no interest in trying to score.
I thought Starling was probably our best offensive player. He got to the hoop repeatedly and missed a lot of short easy shots. Yes, he got bodied a lot and sometimes really hard. But you have to make some of those shots. Hopefully he is able to finish better the rest of the season. This was the first time I have seen him struggle to finish.
Nice job by Justin on the boards but he needs to do more than that. He was quite good defensively too but he isn’t getting many shots and isn’t making many either. I would never have guessed he would lead the team in rebounding this season. As of today, it looks like pretty much a lock to happen..
UT is a top 10 team. I think they did not play well and with all the injuries they had, we had a real chance to get an upset. We really don’t play bad. Just not great either.
Let’s hope we play better tomorrow. It is going to be tough. Again.
