Potpourri.....

[newmexicuse]

1. Congrats to CJ and Jerami for great games and setting personal scoring highs. As many great plays as both of them made, perhaps nothing was more cumulatively impressive than Jerami's ten for ten from the line.

2. Congrats to Tyler for his usual clutch play and tying his career assist high.

3. Congrats to Rak for a great overall game and setting a personal best in blocked shots.

4. Congrats to Trevor for his patience and expansion of his game.

5. Rebounding - hard to believe that we outboarded them - it didn't feel that way and the end of the game stats surprised me.

6. The fouls - Despite the Duke fans griping, I thought the majority of clearly bad calls/no calls went against us, but I will concede that we probably were the beneficiaries of more of the borderline calls.

7. Our up three point strategy at the end of the game - just horrible. Jimmy said that he wanted to foul at the end of reg & we didn't. How can that happen ??? If we lost in OT, that loss would have been on Jimmy for not fouling. At the end of OT - we foul w 9 secs left and the ball not even across the mid-court line - almost as bad. More patience and the foul could have been given with several less ticks of the clock remaining.

8. I know they spread the floor with with three or four trey threats out there simultaneously, but how do we give up 35 trey attempts - the vast majority of them solid open looks ?? As great as we were on O, we were almost as bad on D. Our only good D was at the rak (pun intended).

9. Speaking of treys - we utterly failed to get Trevor looks. His only clean look was the kick-out from Rak. You would think in a game where we are dominating inside that he should have been wide open for more kickouts.

10. - Thornton = Shades of Patterson

All in all - clearly a game for the ages - second best regular season game ever after the 6 OT game.

 

[pfister1]

7. Our up three point strategy at the end of the game - just horrible. Jimmy said that he wanted to foul at the end of reg & we didn't. How can that happen ??? If we lost in OT, that loss would have been on Jimmy for not fouling. At the end of OT - we foul w 9 secs left and the ball not even across the mid-court line - almost as bad. More patience and the foul could have been given with several less ticks of the clock remaining.

8. I know they spread the floor with with three or four trey threats out there simultaneously, but how do we give up 35 trey attempts - the vast majority of them solid open looks ?? As great as we were on O, we were almost as bad on D. Our only good D was at the rak (pun intended).

8. Speaking of treys - we utterly failed to get Trevor looks. His only clean look was the kick-out from Rak. You would think in a game where we are dominating inside that he should have been wide open for more kickouts.

I agree that we should have fouled at the end of regulation especially with as little time as was remaining. CJ halfheartedly tried to give the foul at half court. I know after the game that JB said he had wanted us to give the foul, but as poor an effort as we made at giving it, I wonder whether he made clear his desire to give the foul in that spot. I was ok with Ennis giving the foul where he did. It was early, but in an end of game situation you have to balance between giving it early and waiting too long and either not fouling or getting the guy when he has gotten into his shooting motion. Last thing you want is for it to be three free throws.

Duke had four guys last night that made 3 or more 3 threes, that is a lot of guys for the zone to find and bother. If we are going to beat them in Cameron we're going to have to find a way to tag those shooters, but I think it is really really hard for out defense to handle that many shooters who are shooting with success.

I was surprised that Cooney didn't get a few more looks from three, but I think it was a result of our strategy rather than a failure to get him looks. We very clearly decided to get the ball inside and score from there, we only shot 4 threes all game. I don't think that is a result of a great defense or lack of anything we failed to do, rather I think it is a direct result of what we were doing scoring nearly at will from 15 feet and in.

I'd add congratulations to Christmas for playing 34 minutes, staying on the floor and only picking up 2 fouls. Granted Duke isn't a strong interior team, but Keita still managed to accumulate 3 fouls in just 11 minutes.