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Message: [QUOTE="Henny & Coke, post: 1250829, member: 323"] Yes, this was ugly as hell & tough to watch at times. So how can I be encouraged after what I just saw? Well, even though the score was close throughout, I saw a Syracuse team that was getting mostly good shots, close to the hoop - except that the shots weren't falling. Meanwhile, I saw a GT team that was really struggling each & every possession to get any type of shot, and usually ended up throwing junk up against the backboard, hoping to get rebound/putback (and a few times not getting a shot at all, leading to shot clock violation). Basically, what I saw was a Syracuse team going through a good process that usually yields better results, but just didn't tonight. Things like really making an effort to feed the ball into our big guys like RAK & McCullough, who would often have good positioning down low, leading to high percentage shots that simply didn't fall tonight. In fact, I swear RAK had at least 2 shots that were halfway down but spun out, while Roberson had 1 like this as well. Also, guys seem to be willing to drive to the hoop more (Gbinije, Patterson, Roberson, McCullough, RAK all had strong drives to the hoop that I remember), leading to either layups (again, some that just did not fall tonight), good dishes to open players (Patterson's was a beauty), fouls (Cooney was fouled going to hoop) or, at very least, a block out of bounds where we get ball right back (happened to RAK). Being aggressive & driving the ball like this usually leads to good outcomes...yet tonight there were a few fluky things that occurred to negate this usually positive action. I may be wrong, but I'd be interested to see the shot chart, because I generally think we got good looks, close to the hoop...high percentage shot attempts that just didn't fall tonight - BUT, if we keep doing these things...if we continue to feed the post to our bigs with good positioning & we continue to drive the ball to the hoop instead of simply settling for low percentage outside shots late in shot clock (which was a habit that last year's team fell into that ultimately was their downfall, IMO - relying on low percentage outside shots by Fair, Cooney, etc)...these are good habits to get into & should lead to better results. If/when that starts happening, if we could also figure out a way to then cut out some of the silly errors/turnovers we are making (guys dribbling out of bounds, not being on same page with passes, etc) then we will really have something. Hopefully that stuff gets cleaned up the more experience the younger guys get. It's possible I'm being naive & looking too hard to find positives...guess rest of season will be the ultimate judge of that...but at this point I'm still encouraged. [/QUOTE]

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