Some stats.

[jekelish]

People act like it's easy to get Rak touches. Buzz chose to absolutely deny him the ball in the second half with as many bodies as it took. When teams do that, we have to make them pay in other areas. We had a difficult time of that in the second half.

Exactly. To an extent, you have to take what the defense is giving you. Would we prefer Rak trying to force bad shots through double teams, or have other guys get more open looks?

 

[TBCuse11]

Buzz was one sweaty, gross dude by the end. His shirt had about 10 different shades of gross... kind of like a map showing different depths in the ocean. SO many shades of blue in his shirt due to wetness.

 

[jordoo]

Buzz was one sweaty, gross dude by the end. His shirt had about 10 different shades of gross... kind of like a map showing different depths in the ocean. SO many shades of blue in his shirt due to wetness.

LMAO, A topographical map of his upper body by way of sweaty shirt. Yuck!

 

[cuseincincy]

Exactly. To an extent, you have to take what the defense is giving you. Would we prefer Rak trying to force bad shots through double teams, or have other guys get more open looks?

Right now I'll take Rak forcing bad shots. He has a feel around the rim this season so I'll take my chances with him over anyone else on the team hitting anything beyond 5 ft.

 

[jordoo]

Right now I'll take Rak forcing bad shots. He has a feel around the rim this season so I'll take my chances with him over anyone else on the team hitting anything beyond 5 ft.

I don't mind him against the double when he looks and sees that he has a decent shot. Even so tossing it into him against the double and letting him throw back out is a better shot for one of our other guys and gives Rak the option when he's feeling it. I though (as many other here did) that our post entry passes to him in the 2nd half were very poor, in design, his position, distance, angle basically everything. He didn't get very many good touches in the 2nd, maybe 3 or 4.

 

[sutomcat]

Roberson had 17 rebounds

Rak had 12 shots. Cooney had 21. That should have been reversed.

We only had 8 turnovers.

Va tech ended up out shooting us from fg, 3, and ft.

When you play a good team, they will have the ability to take an element or two of your offense away. V Tech did that in the 2nd half by doubling Rak, much like Nova did.

If the opposition has decent athletes and elects to double your big, you can't get him 21 shots. It would be great if life were that simple, but it isn't. When teams double Rak, Rak needs to find the open player, typically TRob, CMac, Kaleb or Silent G, and they have to make the defense pay by hitting the open shots they will get.

This is surely going to happen in almost every game the rest of the season and how the team reacts to it will largely determine how successful the season will be.

 

[NineOneSeven]

When you play a good team, they will have the ability to take an element or two of your offense away. V Tech did that in the 2nd half by doubling Rak, much like Nova did.

If the opposition has decent athletes and elects to double your big, you can't get him 21 shots. It would be great if life were that simple, but it isn't. When teams double Rak, Rak needs to find the open player, typically TRob, CMac, Kaleb or Silent G, and they have to make the defense pay by hitting the open shots they will get.

This is surely going to happen in almost every game the rest of the season and how the team reacts to it will largely determine how successful the season will be.

My statement wasn't completely serious, ie, I don't expect rak to shoot over 20 times once all year. How many bigs do in college? My point is, if anyone should be shooting that many shots, it should be our best player.

Don't disagree with any of your post about doubling rak and his reaction as critical to success, etc. But, va tech isn't a good team, and they really didn't have great athletes. I'll give them credit for adjusting, but that was absolutely not the entire reason rak wasn't more involved in the second half.

Our team feeds negatively off each other like no team I've seen in awhile.

 

[sutomcat]

My statement wasn't completely serious, ie, I don't expect rak to shoot over 20 times once all year. How many bigs do in college? My point is, if anyone should be shooting that many shots, it should be our best player.

Don't disagree with any of your post about doubling rak and his reaction as critical to success, etc. But, va tech isn't a good team, and they really didn't have great athletes. I'll give them credit for adjusting, but that was absolutely not the entire reason rak wasn't more involved in the second half.

Our team feeds negatively off each other like no team I've seen in awhile.

I agree that Rak should ideally get the most shots on the team.

But in the real world, you have to deal with what the other team is doing. If they elect to double or triple team a player, as V Tech did to Rak in the second half, you have to rely on others to do most of the scoring. The rest of the team is going to get a lot of open shots and they have to hit some of them.

Based on how well Rak has converted touches into points and how poorly the rest of the team has done hitting open shots (TC excepted), well coached teams are going to double and triple Christmas. He is not going to get 20 shots in any game, and won't ever even get 15 shots. Real basketball is not a video game; when they go to extremes to take away parts of your offense, you have to take what the defense is willing to give you.