SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- This was not JB’s 1,000th win. It also wasn’t his 899th win. He’s responsible for everything that has happened with this program since a 75-48 win over Harvard on 11/26/1976 and this was the 1,004th win since then. The real 1,000th win was over Boston College on 1/14/2017. There’s more to coaching than being on the sidelines, sending players in an out and diagramming plays during time outs. It’s recruiting, training, teaching, creating strategies, motivating and setting the tone for everything that happens.
- Matt Park, in the pre- game interview, asked Jim about the success of the press in the NCAA game. JB: “We got a couple of of turnovers and then had to stop using it because it wasn’t working. “ Is that how you remember it? To JB, the press is a freshman, who he’ll use until a mistake is made. Then he’ll yank him form the game because he wants no further mistakes. The teams that press well, like West Virginia and Louisville, keep pressing even when they give up baskets like the three Virginia got today. They know that, as with any other strategy, there’s a trade-off and they are willing to accept the negatives along with the positives because they feel that the latter will matter more. They treat the press like a senior: they will accept the occasional missed shot or turnover because they know what the senior can do for them. We beat Virginia last year because we speeded the game up from 33 1/3 to 45RPM and Virginia couldn’t play at that level. Also, our players did everything with more energy because being in the press excited them and increased their energy level. Fortunately, in this game, we were able to generate that energy in the half-court defense. But I’ll continue to wonder what our long athletes could do in a press if we made a real commitment to it.
- Who would have predicted a win with John Gillion going from 43 to 4 points and Andrew Lydon getting only six points. Tony Bennett wanted to take those two out of the game offensively and he did, double teaming Gillon- one guy to get in his face to prevent jump shots and the other to confront him if he tried to drive past the first guy. This effectively shut him down until the late going when fatigue, White and Battle caused them to back off a bit. And, as JB said in his presser, Lydon was always going 1 on 2 inside, both offensively and defensively. But both men got big baskets, Lydon the 3 that gave us the lead for good and Gillon that dive to the basket that gave us a 62-59 lead with 56 seconds left.
- Poor Tyler Roberson. He made his first ten free throws this season and has now missed his last nine. JB in the presser said it would have been nice to get those last two “but that was not going to happen!” Tyler had a double-double against Virginia Tech on January 10th. Since then the senior forward is averaging 4 points and 4 rebounds per game. It will all be over soon, Tyler.
- We had an early play in which Lydon took a pass near the top of the key and hit someone, (Thompson?) for an easy basket underneath. We sepnt the res tof the half moving the ball sideways and jacking up threes against the best defensive team in the country. In the second half we determinedly drive to the hole against a couple of freshmen who won’t always be freshmen. Teams burn us all the time by getting the ball to an intermediate passer but we rarely use that tactic. The top of the key is typically empty in our offensive sets. Maybe it’s something that works better against zones than man for man. But I hate it when all we go is launch threes or try to drive 25 feet to score. And we’ve got the ideal personnel, (Lydon and Thompson) for a high-low attack. Is it just another one of those things we don’t do because we don’t do them?
- Matt Park, in the pre- game interview, asked Jim about the success of the press in the NCAA game. JB: “We got a couple of of turnovers and then had to stop using it because it wasn’t working. “ Is that how you remember it? To JB, the press is a freshman, who he’ll use until a mistake is made. Then he’ll yank him form the game because he wants no further mistakes. The teams that press well, like West Virginia and Louisville, keep pressing even when they give up baskets like the three Virginia got today. They know that, as with any other strategy, there’s a trade-off and they are willing to accept the negatives along with the positives because they feel that the latter will matter more. They treat the press like a senior: they will accept the occasional missed shot or turnover because they know what the senior can do for them. We beat Virginia last year because we speeded the game up from 33 1/3 to 45RPM and Virginia couldn’t play at that level. Also, our players did everything with more energy because being in the press excited them and increased their energy level. Fortunately, in this game, we were able to generate that energy in the half-court defense. But I’ll continue to wonder what our long athletes could do in a press if we made a real commitment to it.
- Who would have predicted a win with John Gillion going from 43 to 4 points and Andrew Lydon getting only six points. Tony Bennett wanted to take those two out of the game offensively and he did, double teaming Gillon- one guy to get in his face to prevent jump shots and the other to confront him if he tried to drive past the first guy. This effectively shut him down until the late going when fatigue, White and Battle caused them to back off a bit. And, as JB said in his presser, Lydon was always going 1 on 2 inside, both offensively and defensively. But both men got big baskets, Lydon the 3 that gave us the lead for good and Gillon that dive to the basket that gave us a 62-59 lead with 56 seconds left.
- Poor Tyler Roberson. He made his first ten free throws this season and has now missed his last nine. JB in the presser said it would have been nice to get those last two “but that was not going to happen!” Tyler had a double-double against Virginia Tech on January 10th. Since then the senior forward is averaging 4 points and 4 rebounds per game. It will all be over soon, Tyler.
- We had an early play in which Lydon took a pass near the top of the key and hit someone, (Thompson?) for an easy basket underneath. We sepnt the res tof the half moving the ball sideways and jacking up threes against the best defensive team in the country. In the second half we determinedly drive to the hole against a couple of freshmen who won’t always be freshmen. Teams burn us all the time by getting the ball to an intermediate passer but we rarely use that tactic. The top of the key is typically empty in our offensive sets. Maybe it’s something that works better against zones than man for man. But I hate it when all we go is launch threes or try to drive 25 feet to score. And we’ve got the ideal personnel, (Lydon and Thompson) for a high-low attack. Is it just another one of those things we don’t do because we don’t do them?
