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^not to nitpick, but I think kw’s diminished role is less about his poor defense (and he is bad), than about the emergence of Abu and more consistent play of Anya on both ends. Freeman and kW got the bulk of early season minutes. Gottfried experimented a lot in conference play, even reducing Freeman’s time at one point
My point is that gottfried wasn’t exactly sacrificing offense for defense. Xphoenix, I think, authored fantastic post about our defensive ineptitude, and trade offs with the bigs.
My biggest problem is that we generate very few turnovers. Gott talked a lot early about pressuring the ball, but aside from cat, we don’t.
CD, for the record, I wasn’t crediting Boeheim with the matchup zone. I know your father’s influence. The announcers were clueless last night. They’ve employed that matchup zone at least 4-5 times in the last month or so.
If Cat has a concussion, that will be his second that’s been reported while at State. Add that to an ankle injury that forced him to sit last year, and the regular bumps and bruises of a regular season. He’s a tough youngster, fearless, and plays hard. I’m not blaming anyone for last night, but it shouldn’t have ever happened at that stage in the game.
Depending on matchups and his health, we could still be trouble for someone in the tournament.
I’m not a Washington fan, but I agree, he should’ve played last night earlier and more often against the matchup zone. He had 9 on 4/7 shooting in 20 minutes last game. We needed his offense to collapse that zone, or at least threaten it. Freeman and Abu are passive at the top. Anya had a solid performance in Game I, but he cannot defend their bigs or the screen and roll. We were dead last night anyway you slice it, but I do think we could’ve been more competitive. The score doesn’t really accurately reflect how much of a blowout it was. K called off the dogs early.
^Bill, I agree with 90% of what you say above, but you’re wrong on one big point. K learned that matchup from Boeheim several years ago, and his teams have employed it, on occasion. They’ve done so multiple times in the last month or so of the season. This wasn’t new. Read my pregame comments. I was in fact referring to the matchup zone. The halfcourt 2-1-2 was a wrinkle I didn’t quite expect, but I did think they’d try to push tempo even more than usual, and the press didn’t blow me away either. Again, they’ve done that against multiple teams over the last month, particular teams that play at a slower pace, like us. All said, I don’t think better preparation would’ve made a difference. I do think that the lineup we’ve gone to, which I like, is not the best lineup against Duke. Our bigs don’t matchup well against their bigs. Defensively, their a nightmare for us. Game 1, as I said then, was a fluke. They shot poorly by their standards, and not on account of superior defense (we were worse at that stage of the season), and we shot lights out. Note, that was a against a straight man defense by Duke. They’re on the #1 for a reason.
We don’t have a lot of old school karma in that bunch. We shoot jumpers. If dez wasn’t getting a little justice for that screen, it wasn’t to be hsd
Duke played well. We didn’t. Thought the line should’ve been closer to 14-15. The team we dropped who lost 4 in a row grew up a long time ago. 1 man full court presses down 30 get your players killed. I hope he’s ok. Tough kid but I’ve had my share of concussions, and if it’s a bad one, he may be done this year. Damn shame. I do think our staff wasn’t prepared for the duke zone.
Cook and Winston concern me more than Okafor and Jones. I think Barber will handle Jones, or at least limit him if he stays out of foul trouble. They’ll attack Barber and Lacy early and often and push tempo. Duke’s been playing some zone lately, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it at least a little.
They’re a completely different team than early in the season. We are too, with Cat’s emergence, but I still think the outcome will depend on how well we defend them. We should score barring no major foul trouble and dead legs.
Very excited about the second half improvement of the team but two facets of play still worry me. Shot selection is still a problem early in the clock. When they fall, everybody looks good, but many of the Turner and Lacy shots last night weren’t good shots. The outcome was good, the shot was not. Past performance indicates we don’t consistently shoot over 50%. THat would be nice but it’s a pipe dream. We can score with Duke, don’t get me wrong, because they’re not great defensively either, but we’ll win this one on the other half of the court.
There’s still significant room for improvement on defense. We gave up 47 in the 2nd half last night to Pitt. That’s abysmal. Too many open looks. Too many second chances. That doesn’t fly against Duke.
^Jigsy beat me to it. Those average numbers tell you little about defense. Our pace of play, as I’ve complained all season, is far too slow. For all Gott’s talk about outscoring the opponent, we don’t tend play a style that’s conducive to more possessions. Given our defensive woes, my feeling has always been that a faster style of play once you’ve built depth is favorable, given how efficient we typically are on offense. In other words, I’d bet our defense over the long run would improve simply by goading teams into early shots and by dictating a faster pace of play (pressing, trapping, running), changing defenses to keep opponents on their toes. Instead, we plod on offense. With this year’s inexperienced interior players, and a guard oriented offense, it would’ve made all the sense in the world to speed up play.
I’m a Kenpom believer. I’ve filled out a few brackets in recent years where I go strictly by Kenpom ratings, or RPI, or some other metric, for the first few rounds. I always go by gut when I’ve seen teams play, by the Sweet 16, but I’m able to watch less and less ball now that I’m a dad, but my results are typically far better than most.
If you look at the top 64 Kenpom teams, there are only 9 teams with worse defensive efficiency ratings than us (Notre Dame, Davidson, BYU, Ole Miss, Vandy, Stephen F. Austin, Oregon, Indiana, and the Wood Chopper’s bunch). To be a real contender, as Jigsy is showing in his Champions articles, you have to be good on offense but Gott has to really improve on the defensive end.
He, lee, and turner start. The tim wells debacle was a season long fiasco of the wood chopper. Sr. Day was just the top of the woodpile.
I don’t know the circumstances of battles dwi but why is that relevant? He starts. And I hope coach buys them all a cold one for the ride home.
I don’t have a problem celebrating a win. What’s troubling is the lack of recognition of what goes right, what goes wrong, win or lose. There’s just a lack of discipline, and little expectation of excellence there. I think most realize it, and that’s the rub. We know this school recruits itself. A mediocre coach can win here, regardless of system, and can be competitive the majority of the time they take the court. After the previous two coaches, a mediocre coach was an improvement.
But as time goes on, that loses its luster. To both fans and recruits. The changing shape of the ACC will have a lot to do with Gottfried’s future success. The top tier coaches are aging. When will they step down? Who will replace them? Ours is lower middle, upper bottom tier, at least imo. Hard to can when you make the tournament, but hard to get excited about also.
Just an embarrassing loss for this staff and team.
Right now, our bigs just clog up space on offense. It was clear early in the year, that if we were to continue the plodding style of play on offense, to continue trying to run some version of the UCLA high post, we’d be forced to choose between interior players who were deficient on defense or offense, or both. WE’ve been an outside-in team pretty much all year, so no suprises on the jumpshots. Shot selection for Lacy and Turner is still a problem. Similar to TOB, we’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Defensively, same old same old.
Said it all year, even when he was struggling, Barber needs more shots, not less. OUr best offense is him creating off the dribble, spacing, and the bigs getting the heck out of the way. Defensively, there is no cure this late. Just pray for off nights for the opposition, or good matchups, or a combo of both.
^mak, I beg to differ. Totally on coaches. Preparation, execution, and game management completely lacking today.
I think as a player, these results have to be confusing. You wonder why you hear the same old coach speak and player babble: “we didn’t have enough energy,” “we’ve got to play for 40 minutes,” “we just couldn’t known down shots,” yada, yada…BS. If this is what your coach is selling, and accepting, then you’re going to continue to see plenty of bed crappings.
I think this staff is dumbfounded. Too much fire, too little fire, don’t think it matters with this bunch. Just don’t think they get it.
I’m not really that shocked about the defensive execution, even after the UNC win. The offense is just downright offensive though. Horrendous. Putrid. Dumb basketball.
Ah, tjfoose, had the same concern when watching the postgame interviews and jubilee…This staff takes “big wins” as validation that it’s doing it right. And it does do some things right. The problem is that it doesn’t look critically at what it does wrong with these kind of efforts and losses.
Paki, we’re typically tired on defense. But the offense lately in the halfcourt has regressed. Some of have pleaded all year long to run in subs, press, and play full throttle. I just don’t get it. What’s worse, our staff doesn’t either. I hoped the defense versus UNC was a sign, like the surge on that end in Gott’s Year 1, that we get it. But I also recognized that Cat can neutralize Paige, UNC isn’t good from 3, and their bigs are big, slow, and soft. In sum, UNC isn’t that good.
Beat upper tier, lose to bottom tier, split in middle. Far from inconsistent, we’re very consistent. This is a certainty with Gott. Very frustrating.
