SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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The Upside
- We’re now 10-3. The only teams from our 9 year down period that had that good a record after 13 games were the 2016 Final Four team, (10-3) and the 2018 Sweet 16 team. Those are the only teams we’ve had in that period who wound up in the Top 25, (10th and 25th, respectively).
- This team is at its best when they play aggressive defense, go after the ball and don’t care who scores as long as it’s one of them. (Any team is). They are fun to watch when they do that. They also reflect their coach, who clearly wants his team to play that way. He had a phrase in his press conference: he wants them to be competitive, but he also wants them to be tough. This team was both.
- Coach Autry has shown the ability to make adjustments during games, (in this case, getting on their shooters and disrupting the pick and roll plays), to fire his team up to get on the boards, to script plays coming out of time outs and to get them to play as a team. That’s what we wanted those other guys people wanted to hire to come here were supposed to do. We had a guy right here who is doing that.
- Of all these guys the one who looks most like an NBA player to me is, (with one exception), Quadir Copeland. He’s got good size for a guard, is strong and athletic and plays with aggression on both ends of the court. He plays and thinks three-dimensional basketball. The only thing missing is a jump shot. Today, he was, ironically, the guy who hit our first three pointer – and made it into a four pointer. He can pass the ball and score in these wide-open games. Right not he’s G-Leaue guy but if he ever gets that shot, he’ll have a shot.
- When Copeland and Malik Brown came into the game at the 12:55 mark of the first half, there was a buzz in the crowd and people nudging each other, saying “Watch This!”. They had 37 points, 17 rebounds 5 steals and 5 assists in the last 32:55 minutes of the game between them. And after years of always losing the bench points stat, we won it today, 52-17. How many teams can bring in three guys as talented as Quadir, Maliq and Benny off the bench?
- Maliq was all over the court, making steals out front and hanging around the basket to get passes from the many good passers on the team and lay it in. But he also showed he could move around people in the paint to score. He had 15 points and 8 rebounds as an under-sized center.
- Benny seems to have found himself and appears to be having fun in this team concept and coming off the bench without the pressure on him. He scored 15 with a couple of spectacular dunks and grabbed 7 rebounds in 24 minutes.
- On the radio post game show, they said we were behind on the boards at halftime, 7-16 and wound up out-rebounding Pitt. We did so 40-39, which would mean the second half was 33-23, (and that there were 23 rebounds in the first half and 56 in the second half, which doesn’t seem right). Anyway, we got on the boards in the second half and it mattered.
- We had 12 steals and 6 blocks. Pitt had 3 and 5. The Panthers have been bad news for us this whole century. The pattern is very simple to football: We beat them 22 of 25 games from 1989-2001, then lost 19 of 26 games until they faded in ACC play, (worse than we did), and we beat them 8 of 9 before they turned it around again to win 5 of 6. Jeff Capel, in his presser, said that Syracuse had out-toughed his team. On Tuesday January 16 at 7PM we’ll have to do it again.
10-3 with 18+ to go…
LET’S GO ORANGE!
Net Points
This year I’m going to make things a bit easier on myself and just list the net points in each game after the Upside. Once a month I’ll do a deeper dive into the numbers rather than doing a “Net Points, etc.” post after every game. ‘Net’ points is the positives (points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks) minus the negatives, (missed field goals and free throws, turnovers and fouls committed).
Quadir Copeland game: 27NP in 24 minutes; season: 143NP in 255 minutes = 22.4NP/40m
Maliq Brown game: 19NP in 31 minutes; season: 165NP in 296 minutes = 22.3NP/40m
Benny Williams game: 14NP in 24 minutes; season: 49NP in 134 minutes = 14.6NP/40m
Judah Mintz game: 12NP in 37 minutes; season: 183NP in 405 minutes = 18.1NP/40m
JJ Starling game: 8NP in 36 minutes; season: 120NP in 449minutes = 10.7NP/40m
Naheem McLeod game: 7NP in 9 minutes; season: 109NP in 195 minutes = 22.4NP/40m
Justin Taylor game: 4NP in 15 minutes; season: 101NP in 356 minutes = 11.3NP/40m
Chris Bell game: -3NP in 16 minutes; season: 69NP in 330 minutes = 8.4NP/40m
Kyle Cuffe game: -3NP in 5 minutes; season: 19NP in 149 minutes = 5.1NP/40m
Mounir Hima game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 8NP in 15 minutes = 21.3NP/40m
Peter Carey game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 2NP in 12 minutes = 6.7NP/40m
William Patterson game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m
Chance Westry game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m
The Downside
- Matt Park said during the game that Judah Mintz and the referees were “not on the same page”. That’s going to happen sometimes. Judah only got to the line 5 times and scored only 12 points. Fortunately, he adjusted his tactics to play in the wide-open game, passing to his teammates for 5 assists and playing the open court to get his points, which I like better than his ‘flop and get to the line’ game.
- On one possession, Pitt had collapsed in to deny any drives and we were moving the ball around, looking for a shot, when I realized there wasn’t anyone out there I wanted to wind up with the ball. We wound up with a Maliq Brown three pointer. Chris Bell and Justin Taylor are our three point guys. Justin attempted one shot, a trey. in this game. He didn’t make it. Chris Bell attempted 8 shots and made two of them. He was 0 for 4 from the arc and they weren’t close. Hs form didn’t even look good. Between them they played 34 minutes because they weren’t being productive. We’ll need them to be more than occasionally productive to have the season we want to have.
- We had 13 turnovers, which negated all those steals we were making. At least three of them were passes to no one in particular. You can’t do that in a close game.
- Pitt really chewed us up with wide-open threes and the pick and roll in the first half. Red made some adjustments and it became less of a problem in the second half. But all those ‘pickle rolls’, (as that kid called them in those old commercials), reminded me of Jesse Edwards and made me wonder what this would have been like with him.
- And a big thank you to the Panthers for missing 11 free throws in an 8 point game. They had it within their power to make our feelings very different than they are right now. So does Duke.
- We’re now 10-3. The only teams from our 9 year down period that had that good a record after 13 games were the 2016 Final Four team, (10-3) and the 2018 Sweet 16 team. Those are the only teams we’ve had in that period who wound up in the Top 25, (10th and 25th, respectively).
- This team is at its best when they play aggressive defense, go after the ball and don’t care who scores as long as it’s one of them. (Any team is). They are fun to watch when they do that. They also reflect their coach, who clearly wants his team to play that way. He had a phrase in his press conference: he wants them to be competitive, but he also wants them to be tough. This team was both.
- Coach Autry has shown the ability to make adjustments during games, (in this case, getting on their shooters and disrupting the pick and roll plays), to fire his team up to get on the boards, to script plays coming out of time outs and to get them to play as a team. That’s what we wanted those other guys people wanted to hire to come here were supposed to do. We had a guy right here who is doing that.
- Of all these guys the one who looks most like an NBA player to me is, (with one exception), Quadir Copeland. He’s got good size for a guard, is strong and athletic and plays with aggression on both ends of the court. He plays and thinks three-dimensional basketball. The only thing missing is a jump shot. Today, he was, ironically, the guy who hit our first three pointer – and made it into a four pointer. He can pass the ball and score in these wide-open games. Right not he’s G-Leaue guy but if he ever gets that shot, he’ll have a shot.
- When Copeland and Malik Brown came into the game at the 12:55 mark of the first half, there was a buzz in the crowd and people nudging each other, saying “Watch This!”. They had 37 points, 17 rebounds 5 steals and 5 assists in the last 32:55 minutes of the game between them. And after years of always losing the bench points stat, we won it today, 52-17. How many teams can bring in three guys as talented as Quadir, Maliq and Benny off the bench?
- Maliq was all over the court, making steals out front and hanging around the basket to get passes from the many good passers on the team and lay it in. But he also showed he could move around people in the paint to score. He had 15 points and 8 rebounds as an under-sized center.
- Benny seems to have found himself and appears to be having fun in this team concept and coming off the bench without the pressure on him. He scored 15 with a couple of spectacular dunks and grabbed 7 rebounds in 24 minutes.
- On the radio post game show, they said we were behind on the boards at halftime, 7-16 and wound up out-rebounding Pitt. We did so 40-39, which would mean the second half was 33-23, (and that there were 23 rebounds in the first half and 56 in the second half, which doesn’t seem right). Anyway, we got on the boards in the second half and it mattered.
- We had 12 steals and 6 blocks. Pitt had 3 and 5. The Panthers have been bad news for us this whole century. The pattern is very simple to football: We beat them 22 of 25 games from 1989-2001, then lost 19 of 26 games until they faded in ACC play, (worse than we did), and we beat them 8 of 9 before they turned it around again to win 5 of 6. Jeff Capel, in his presser, said that Syracuse had out-toughed his team. On Tuesday January 16 at 7PM we’ll have to do it again.
10-3 with 18+ to go…
LET’S GO ORANGE!
Net Points
This year I’m going to make things a bit easier on myself and just list the net points in each game after the Upside. Once a month I’ll do a deeper dive into the numbers rather than doing a “Net Points, etc.” post after every game. ‘Net’ points is the positives (points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks) minus the negatives, (missed field goals and free throws, turnovers and fouls committed).
Quadir Copeland game: 27NP in 24 minutes; season: 143NP in 255 minutes = 22.4NP/40m
Maliq Brown game: 19NP in 31 minutes; season: 165NP in 296 minutes = 22.3NP/40m
Benny Williams game: 14NP in 24 minutes; season: 49NP in 134 minutes = 14.6NP/40m
Judah Mintz game: 12NP in 37 minutes; season: 183NP in 405 minutes = 18.1NP/40m
JJ Starling game: 8NP in 36 minutes; season: 120NP in 449minutes = 10.7NP/40m
Naheem McLeod game: 7NP in 9 minutes; season: 109NP in 195 minutes = 22.4NP/40m
Justin Taylor game: 4NP in 15 minutes; season: 101NP in 356 minutes = 11.3NP/40m
Chris Bell game: -3NP in 16 minutes; season: 69NP in 330 minutes = 8.4NP/40m
Kyle Cuffe game: -3NP in 5 minutes; season: 19NP in 149 minutes = 5.1NP/40m
Mounir Hima game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 8NP in 15 minutes = 21.3NP/40m
Peter Carey game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 2NP in 12 minutes = 6.7NP/40m
William Patterson game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m
Chance Westry game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m
The Downside
- Matt Park said during the game that Judah Mintz and the referees were “not on the same page”. That’s going to happen sometimes. Judah only got to the line 5 times and scored only 12 points. Fortunately, he adjusted his tactics to play in the wide-open game, passing to his teammates for 5 assists and playing the open court to get his points, which I like better than his ‘flop and get to the line’ game.
- On one possession, Pitt had collapsed in to deny any drives and we were moving the ball around, looking for a shot, when I realized there wasn’t anyone out there I wanted to wind up with the ball. We wound up with a Maliq Brown three pointer. Chris Bell and Justin Taylor are our three point guys. Justin attempted one shot, a trey. in this game. He didn’t make it. Chris Bell attempted 8 shots and made two of them. He was 0 for 4 from the arc and they weren’t close. Hs form didn’t even look good. Between them they played 34 minutes because they weren’t being productive. We’ll need them to be more than occasionally productive to have the season we want to have.
- We had 13 turnovers, which negated all those steals we were making. At least three of them were passes to no one in particular. You can’t do that in a close game.
- Pitt really chewed us up with wide-open threes and the pick and roll in the first half. Red made some adjustments and it became less of a problem in the second half. But all those ‘pickle rolls’, (as that kid called them in those old commercials), reminded me of Jesse Edwards and made me wonder what this would have been like with him.
- And a big thank you to the Panthers for missing 11 free throws in an 8 point game. They had it within their power to make our feelings very different than they are right now. So does Duke.
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