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Unless we have another scorer fall from the sky, it’s going to be tough for us to go .500 in the ACC.
Caleb Martin has really progressed. I think every part of his game is better.
Abu hasn’t improved at all. He’s one of those guys whose hands are too big to be a good shooter. He has moves and athletic skills that are outstanding, but his hands are terrible.
Without Rowan we’d be a sub .500 team overall. He is one spot where the team can improve. Hopefully he grows up in a hurry, but he’s a year away physically.
Frenchy playing his way into better shape will also help.
I assume Gott is worried that Kirk will get snapped like a twig and that’s why he isn’t playing. It would be nice to have a solid 8 man rotation.
As for getting killed on the defensive glass, Turner really committed to becoming a solid wing rebounder last year. One of the twins, because it won’t be Rowan, needs to embrace that role. As much as we will struggle to score, we can’t give up extra possessions to the opposition.
Sorry Texpack, but ff you really think Abu hasn’t improved, you’re crazy. He’s so much more composed when he catches the ball. He’s making quality post moves, both backing people down and facing them up. His stroke looks much better, and he’s clearly more confident in it this season. That baseline spin he got his last two points on? Absolutely no way he makes that play last year. He needs to improve as a finisher (when he isn’t dunking the ball), but overall I’m ecstatic about how he looks, one of the few bright spots here early.
Some further thoughts after watching the game:
– I know Maverick Rowan is a freshman, and he’s being thrown into more minutes because Henderson is out. He has a long way to go, and I fully expect him to improve as the season goes on. He’s genuinely exciting as an offensive player, and looks like the best pure shooter we’ve had in ages. However, I watched this game with a particular eye towards his defense after seeing a lot of bad in the previous game. He might be the worst defensive player I’ve ever seen get big minutes at the ACC level. That’s not an exaggeration or overstatement. He offered zero resistance on drives to the basket (well, unless the resistance was a foul), closed out poorly and was badly out of position off-ball the majority of the time.
– Something we do that I hate (and I saw it last year as well) is make really lazy switches on the perimeter. Their guards will have really simple motion with one guy cutting to the wing and the wing cutting up to the point, and instead of following their man, the wing defenders will just switch. Unless you’re going to say “we think all our wing defenders are equal and we’re just going to switch on everything,” there’s no way you should be doing that. It’s pure laziness, leads to mismatches, and is indicative of the poor pressure we exert off the ball.
– The pick and roll defense looked slightly better tonight, though some of that was playing against a team that didn’t exploit our mistakes as effectively. Our wings do a terrible job, on the whole, of fighting through screens. You cannot get caught on the screen if it’s Anya’s man screening. You just can’t. You have to get over the screen and let Anya fall back to his man.
– Defensive rebounding is a bit problematic, but it’s more symptomatic of our overall positioning issues on defense.
– Someone needs to tell Cat that he’s not allowed to shoot long 2s off the dribble if there are more than 15 seconds left on the shot clock. He settles for that shot way too easily, and it’s really inexcusable. He’s not a good enough shooter, and that shot is always going to be available. In one particularly egregious example, he settled for a mid-range jumper when he was leading a 3 on 1 break. If you want to be an All-ACC point guard, that has to end in a layup every time.
– I really like what I’m seeing from Caleb Martin on the offensive end. He was almost exclusively a spot-up shooter last year, but this year he’s coming of screens and looking good shooting on the move, and looks much better putting the ball on the floor.
– I still worry about the flow of our offense. Far too often, there’s one clear first option we’re looking for (say, Rowan or Martin cutting across the baseline), and very little in the way of secondary options if that first action gets shut down. We don’t leverage overplays in one direction into easy scores in another.
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