The Downside: Eastern Michigan | Syracusefan.com

The Downside: Eastern Michigan

SWC75

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- We bolted out to a 30-10 lead and played so badly after that that Jim Boeheim was at a loss to describe how badly we played. “I don’t know what you’d call that” he said on the radio. Maybe we should just look at the numbers: Tyler Roberson hit two free throws to make it 30-10 with 7:33 left in the first half. From that point until 2:01 of the second half we got out-scored 7-22.


- I think the best explanation was the one Boeheim used in his press conference: Our guys just thought the game was well in hand and stopped playing hard. The team has a disturbing recent trend of not playing hard for 40 minutes. Against High Point, we were down 39-40 in the second half. Against Villanova we got off to a 7-25 start. And in this game we had that 7-22 stretch. You keep doing that, especially against better competition, you’re going to be looking at an unfriendly scoreboard at the end of a game. We need to start playing teams we know can beat us on a regular basis and we will.


- Jimmy Salatin made a good point: we were trying to attack Rob Murphy’s zone the way other people attack ours: from the high post. But our guys are not used to playing from there, with their back to the basket and making shots, passes or moves to the basket from that spot. People are surprised that the most famous zone team in the land doesn’t know how to attack zone. But we don’t see many of them and we face one, especially a good one like our own, we look as confused as those teams we play early in the NCAA tournament. I wish we would play from the high post more often: it’s a great way to attack in the half court. It’s easier to feed someone there than in the low post and a if you have a guy who can shoot, pass or drive to the basket, you can score a lot of points from there. And we have a guy who should be able to play well there: CJ Fair. But we keep CJ in the corner, 20 feet from the basket.


- JB was asked if he’d ever seen a game where the best player on the court didn’t score. He said, “no” and that he hadn’t seen one tonight either. He felt that grant who “won the game in the first five minutes” was the best player tonight, not Tyler Ennis. Then he discussed how points scored could be deceiving: Rakeem Christmas had 8 points at halftime but “it was his worst half of the season because he had no rebounds and let people get behind him on defense”.


- That may have been a reference to the fact that Glenn Bryant, who was averaging 9.6ppg and scored 6 points on Duke got 19 on us on 8 for 11 shooting. He scored 40% of his team’s points. His teammates were 9 for 43 from the field, (.209).


- We were 3 for 14 from three point range. Trevor Cooney was 2 for 5, his teammates 1 for 9, including 0 for 5 from CJ Fair. Why are we even taking threes when it’s not Cooney?
 
As always, thoughtful and insightful. I agree that CJ in the high post makes a lot of sense.

Have a great 2014 and thanks for all your contributions in 2013.
 
In a more or less a rout; I don't think I have seen that many lob dunks against us in quite some time. Somebody got tea-bagged on one of Bryant III's as well.
 
As always, thoughtful and insightful. I agree that CJ in the high post makes a lot of sense.

Have a great 2014 and thanks for all your contributions in 2013.

Same to you, my friend.
 
I actually think Grant makes more sense at the high post. CJ tends to go left 90% of the time (easier to defend) and his dribble drives of more than one step are a hit and miss proposition.

Cheers,
Neil
 
I actually think Grant makes more sense at the high post. CJ tends to go left 90% of the time (easier to defend) and his dribble drives of more than one step are a hit and miss proposition.

Cheers,
Neil

CJ is the better mid-range shooter and his 4 assists today show he can pass. I haven't seen Grant do any passing. I'll take CJ off the dribble, too. We saw what happened with Grant in the high post today. Not good.
 
CJ is the better mid-range shooter and his 4 assists today show he can pass. I haven't seen Grant do any passing. I'll take CJ off the dribble, too. We saw what happened with Grant in the high post today. Not good.
I didn't get to see much of the game today so I can't speak on that; but it seems to me that Grant does a pretty good job feeding Rak; while I don't notice him passing to many other players he seems to have some kind of rhythm with Rak at times.
 
CJ is the better mid-range shooter and his 4 assists today show he can pass. I haven't seen Grant do any passing. I'll take CJ off the dribble, too. We saw what happened with Grant in the high post today. Not good.

Grant got the ball at the free-throw line area 14 times in the game tonight. He made 3 turnovers, had 9 positive plays, and 2 neutral plays. Of the 9 positive plays, five involved passing as he was double teamed - passed out to Cooney for an open trey (made), passed out to an open CJ for a trey that was missed, passes to CJ right under the basket but he decides to go to the other side of the basket and badly misses what should have been a layup but Grant gets the ball and gets fouled, passes to an open CJ on the sideline who drives and gets fouled, passes to a wide open Rak who misses the dunk toward the end of the half, and passes to a wide open Cooney who misses the trey.

In the second half, they played Grant more along the sideline and let Fair flash to the middle. but that seemed more to be a decoy since many of the plays went to Grant along the baseline where he wasn't as effective while Fair, Ennis, and Cooney/SilentG passed the ball around the perimeter more than in the 1st half.

All total in the game Fair got the ball at the free-throw line 4 times, had 2 positive plays including one jump shot, 1 turnover, and 1 neutral play.

Cheers,
Neil
 
I didn't get to see much of the game today so I can't speak on that; but it seems to me that Grant does a pretty good job feeding Rak; while I don't notice him passing to many other players he seems to have some kind of rhythm with Rak at times.

Agreed, he's got a good rapport with Rak, but he's got the same number of assists as Fair and a lot less turnovers. I give CJ a pass on the TOs though, since it's obvious he's feeling the pressure of being the guy.

Cheers,
Neil
 
We always play up or down to the level of our competition for as long as I can remember. We have difficulty maintaining focus and intensity for 40 minutes against lower level teams. Don't know why other than it's just human nature. 99% of the time it doesn't matter to the outcome. I wonder how some other coaches...like Thad Motta at Ohio State for instance...seem to get their team to focus the whole game and just run these cupcakes off the court for 40 minutes always winning by 35-45 points. What do they do that we don't?
 
We always play up or down to the level of our competition for as long as I can remember. We have difficulty maintaining focus and intensity for 40 minutes against lower level teams. Don't know why other than it's just human nature. 99% of the time it doesn't matter to the outcome. I wonder how some other coaches...like Thad Motta at Ohio State for instance...seem to get their team to focus the whole game and just run these cupcakes off the court for 40 minutes always winning by 35-45 points. What do they do that we don't?
Yes, I agree with the observation. Frankly, I think the reason for that is because we play 100% zone. I think playing Zone makes it easier to get a bit lazy and lose focus when the lead feels comfy.
 
Grant's role on the team has been more a series of developmental experiments rather than a fixed role and strategy as to how he is utilized. CJ has carved out his role on the team over the past 4 years and although as time has gone on and other people have left his role has morphed from occasional contributor to "the guy", much of what he has been asked to do has remained the same. Grant is more of a wild card in that we've asked him to do several things such as be the 6th man, be the spot starter when other starters have been rendered unavailable. Yesterday we experimented with Grant at the high post.

Grant is just beginning to go about the business of developing the various aspects of his game and in spite of that it's abundantly apparent that moving forward he is going to become an uber level basketball player. He has improved his foul shooting which will translate into many points since he presents the opposing team with the choice of either fouling him or becoming posterized as he makes his way to the basket via the rafters in the building. With increased minutes he could get to the line for 10 to 16 shots each game.

As he develops his mid range and 3 point shot he will become unstoppable. It's pretty amazing just to watch him play right now and I can only imagine what sensational play he has in store for us as we move forward deeper into the season.
 
The Downside: Our RPI went down just from playing EMU
 

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