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Watching them run that baseline curl for Rowan on the play before the game-winner was embarrassing. Why are you running a play to get a 3 when you’re down by 1? Oh yeah, it’s because you have no other set plays. The lack of playcalling ingenuity could not be more clear. I, like many State fans, I’m sure, said out loud “I know what play we’re running” the moment Gott called timeout. I’ve never been sadder to be right. Despite the fact that it was an illogical play to run, despite the fact that every opponent has seen it 100 times on film, we all knew it was coming, because we have nothing else. It’s embarrassing, and emblematic of so many of this team’s problems.
Poor Cat Barber. What an effort tonight. Thoughts:
– Props to Gottfried for the halftime adjustments. The zone worked and, more importantly, the double high screen was extremely effective. I hope we continue to see it for the rest of the season.
– Maverick Rowan’s confidence is in the toilet. He’s had plenty of off shooting nights, but this was by far the worst. His form was noticeably bad, and at no point did he look like he thought his shot was going in. Late in the second half, I was actually wishing for Shaun Kirk instead. With Maverick’s shot so broken, he just brings nothing else to the table.
– Speaking of Kirk, he wasn’t a disaster in this game, which means its the best game he’s played yet. His length and quickness helped cover ground in the zone, and he wasn’t jumping out of position like normal.
– Our late game execution continues to be abysmal. When you’re down 4 with 15 seconds left, you have to score as quickly as possible and foul. There should’ve been no timeout, you just want Cat to fly down the court and go for a layup. You take advantage of the fact that they don’t want to foul you. Even if that shot by Maverick goes down, there’s maybe 5 seconds left on the clock, which just isn’t enough. Plus, we only have one play that we run for a late game shot. All of us knew that play was coming, and you’d better believe that FSU knew it was coming too.
– I have no idea why Abu was in the game for that last defensive possession rather than Freeman or Anya. There was a timeout called, you can go offense for defense, and Abu is our worst defensive big men by a substantial margin. If you’re worried about Anya’s lack of mobility I can kind of understand that (though you’re in a zone and know that they’re going to run the clock down. That’s exactly when you want your big, long shot-blocker in there), but there’s nothing Abu does on defense that Freeman doesn’t do better. For that matter, why didn’t you have Freeman in instead of Rowan?
– Cat Barber would average 7-8 assists per game if he played with big men who could actually catch and finish.A great coach, a pioneer for women’s sports, and a world-class human being. I’ve been a life-long fan of the Wolfpack Women and know several people close to the program, and you never heard a bad word about her. She famously sent personalized birthday and Christmas cards to all of her former players. Some family friends of mine who were also big fans had a young daughter diagnosed with cancer, and Yow and the whole team were incredibly supportive and generous with their time. When she finally passed, Yow and several of the players were there at the memorial service. She was an outspoken Christian who didn’t just talk about her faith, but lived it out in the kindness and love she showed to others. You couldn’t ask for a better representative for the university.
Some of my fondest sports memories come from the end of the Wolfpack Women’s 06-07 season, just 2 years before Yow passed away. Her cancer had come back in 2005, and started worsening early in the season, so Yow took a leave of absence to fight it. The team struggled in her absence, and had a 13-7 record when Yow returned to the bench. The pack proceeded to win 8 of their last 9 games, including Yow’s 700th career win, as well as the best game I’ve ever seen in person. On February 16th, word started getting out that they were going to be naming the court at Reynolds “Kay Yow Court” in her honor before that night’s game against #2 UNC. Not only that, but it was senior night, and State had 6 seniors on the roster. Now, if you don’t go to the women’s games, you might not realize that the crowds are usually pretty sparse. UNC and Duke bring good crowds, but Reynolds is rarely packed. Well, that night it was packed. The atmosphere was incredible. The game started, and those seniors blew the doors off. Carolina didn’t know what hit em, and we ran out to a 26 point first half lead, then closed it out from there. They didn’t stop there, and in the ACC tournament they unseated #1 and previously undefeated Duke. Though they lost the title game to UNC (the season would eventually end with a sweet 16 loss to UCONN), it was an incredible run. I’ll always remember being in the crowd at the ACC tournament and seeing every single person in the arena, Wolfpack fan or not, stand and cheer for Yow every time she walked onto the floor. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The road games are normally on either ESPN3 or FSN. The home games you can stream on gopack.com. They’re playing their home games at Broughton this year because Reynolds is being renovated, which is a little sad, but you can go to the games for real cheap.
The women bounced back from an incredibly painful loss to #23 Louisville (led by 8 with 3 min to go and lost not because they turned it over a ton or missed a bunch of free throws, but because Louisville couldn’t miss from 3) by handing Va Tech their first home loss. They’re playing very well right now, and the young players are really starting to come along.
I cannot stress how much more fun they are to watch than the men’s team right now. They’re smart, move the ball, have dynamic guards and a bunch of shooters.
I haven’t posted thoughts on game threads much recently because I feel like I’m just repeating the same flaws. It’s been a few games though, so here goes:
– This was easily our best defensive game of the season. We rebounded well, mostly kept our feet and didn’t bail Pitt out, and did a really good job getting back in transition. It was less good in the second half, but still pretty sound overall. That said, a lot of this game just felt like Pitt playing terrible. We played good D, but they just looked off all night.
– Offensively we still look terrible a lot of the time, and I think we should be better than we are given our talent level.
– Perhaps the most frustrating thing about watching the team this year has been a real lack of urgency. We’ll take 15 seconds to even start running an offensive set, and then none of the cuts are sharp and players are jogging from spot to spot. This was infuriating during the FSU game. I understand that we want to keep the pace down, but the purpose of playing a slow, deliberate style isn’t just to slow the game down, it’s to be patient to get a great shot. To do that, you have to be disciplined with your cuts and passes, and not just take time, but make use of the time to get good shots. We don’t do that.
– I love the switch from Caleb to Cody. In theory, Caleb is the better fit because we need shooters. The problem is that Caleb actually hasn’t been able to shoot since early in the season. When Caleb isn’t effective as a shooter, Cody is better at literally every aspect of the game. He’s a better ball-handler, passer, rebounder and defender.
– Abu has had his struggles this season, but he’s been very good in ACC play. He’s still our weakest defensive big man, but he has cut down on his long jumpers and is attacking the glass like a maniac.
– There are signs of life with this squad, not just with this game but with the first half against UNC, and maybe we’re seeing the start of that late season improvement we’ve seen each year that Gott has been here. Duke is looking weak right now, and they’re very beatable in Raleigh. Even so, it’s hard to imagine a path back to 9-9 or even 8-10. The Va Tech and Wake losses are gonna continue to loom large.That’s an inexcusable call. There’s no way that isn’t a charge. He lowers his shoulder, he initiates the contact, Cat is in perfect defensive position. It’s the wrong call, and it’s a call that you have to get right if you’re the official standing right on top of it.
KenPom projects us at 7-11 in the ACC and 17-14 overall. I think we’re slightly worse than his system currently has us, but We should be getting a starting-caliber player back at a position of need, and we’ve always closed strong under Gottfried. If that pattern holds, 9-9 is not at all out of the question, and that should put us on the bubble. This team really is remarkably similar to the 2014 squad, a relatively weak team with one great player. I think it’s going to be close, and things do have the potential to go off the rails, but I’m not ruling it out yet.
I posted this right after the Michigan game, and I’ll just leave this here:
Numbers are always fluctuating a lot this early in the season, but statistically (via KenPom) we’re ranked very similarly to how we were ranked at this point in the last two seasons (KenPom has us ranked #63 currently. After 7 games last season it was #55, and it was #68 the previous season). Now, it’s certainly frustrating that we keep having these slow starts under Gottfried, but we’ve seen a pattern of improvement over the course of past seasons, and I see enough potential that I’m not writing this season off…The rest of the out of conference schedule is much, much weaker than what we’ve played so far, and we should be favored in every game. It is entirely feasible that we will be 10-3 heading into conference play which, again, would put us right in line with the last couple seasons.
Now, that said, I’m a little less optimistic after this game than y’all are. The defense was ok, but it wasn’t exceptional. The slow pace of the game makes it look better than it was (also, our standard for defense around here is very, very low). Northeastern is a dangerous team (they won at Miami earlier this season), but they’re not that great overall (they’re not gonna be a tourney team) and we played them at home. This was a “meh” result for me, it doesn’t move the needle much. Anyway, a few thoughts:
– Cat seems to continue improving every single game. This game it was showcasing a wider array of finishes around the rim than we’ve seen from him before. I love how aggressively he attacked the rim and the total confidence that he’s playing with.
– The offense outside of Cat continues to struggle. Abu and Rowan struggle with shot selection, but at times I find it hard to blame them. Someone other than Cat has to shoot the ball, and we do a poor job of generating easy shots. Rowan came alive in the second half, but a lot of those were tough shots. Sure, you have to guys make some tough shots, but you also have to create some easy looks with your offensive sets, and we really don’t do that. It’s very frustrating to watch.
– My primary problem is that in our half court sets we don’t disguise anything. Everyone on the court knows where we want the ball to go 5 seconds before it goes there, whether that’s Rowan coming off a screen or Abu posting up. Team’s sell out and deny those actions, and then we’re just stuck in the mud. It either stops us dead, or it takes us 20 seconds of the shot clock to set up a post-up. We don’t have a second set of actions or any weakside motion that takes advantage of the defense overcommitting in one direction. Every now and then it leaves an open driving lane for Cat, but most of the time we just get stuck.
– Defensively, we still have some huge weaknesses. The Martins (particularly Caleb) and Rowan all allow way too much penetration from the perimeter (also, this is why they had 10 fouls between the 3 of them). Part of that is because we don’t have guards, so they’re constantly being matched up against guys who are faster than them, but part of it is just bad footwork and positioning.
– Our rotations on the back end of P&Rs were much better. We had a few plays where we ended up completely shutting down the play or getting a steal because we were on the ball with helping the helper. I’m hoping that will continue improving as we go forward. The next thing we need to shore up is our rotations and communication when we’re scrambling on the perimeter. We’re terrible at that, and it’s the reason we give up so many open 3s. You can’t let a team that shoots as well as NE shoot 24 threes, that’s a killer.I haven’t read the whole thread, which is apparently fraught with drama, but as usual here are a few (hopefully constructive and insightful) thoughts:
– Obviously, this was a real horror show. It’s as bad as the offense has looked all season against a truly terrible UNCG team. The off-ball movement was non-existent, and Caleb and Maverick both played their worst games of the season. As bad as it gets without an L
– We kept entering the ball into the post and then doing absolutely nothing to exploit the matchup advantage. UNCG was sending doubles, and by and large Anya actually did a really good job being patient when they sent the trap. The problem is that absolutely no one was moving. There were no passing lanes, there were no cutters through the lane, there was no relocating on the perimeter. We threw it in and watched. Unsurprisingly, this did not go well. When a terrible team is double teaming your post players every time, it is inexcusable to not get open three point looks out of it.
– What continually frustrates me about this team (and it’s been true of all of Gottfried’s squads) is how hard we have to work for shots. Under Gottfried, State has consistently had good offenses, but they never look pretty. Tonight was the worst-case scenario of that. How many open layups did we get? 1? 2? How many open three pointers did we create? 2? Maybe 3? That’s crazy. It’s UNCG!
– The defense was still bad this game, but UNCG is terrible so it didn’t matter as much. There were some really catastrophic breakdowns, particularly late in the second half.
– Twice in the second half we made risky, unnecessary gambles that led to open shots. Once, it was Cat trying to double a big who had the ball at the top of the key. It was a risky decision, but the error was compounded when the big passed it to Baldwin (a terrible shooter) and whoever was guarding Troy (a good shooter) rotated hard to Baldwin. A simple swing pass led to a wide open 3 (the last shot UNCG made). It’s a combination of a bad gamble and then not recognizing personnel, and it led to an open 3 in a situation (up 6 w/ :30 left) where literally the most important thing for you to do is not give up an open 3. Good teams don’t do that. The other time was when UNCG got a turnover and Anya lunged forward to try and get a steal as the guard brought the ball up the court. It was a steal he was never going to get in a million years, and the result was that he was behind the play and they got an open layup in semi-transition.
– Something that has plagued us this season showed up again in the second half. On one instance the ball was kicked out to a shooter in the corner, and both wing defenders in the area sprinted towards him. That made it an easy pass up to the wing for another wide open 3. I feel like I’ve seen that at least once in every game I’ve watched. It’s a problem with the scheme and players not knowing their role, and it’s a problem of communication. Again, it’s the kind of thing good defensive teams don’t do.
– I wanted more Cody Martin in this game. Maybe he’s still recovering from that ankle sprain and they want to manage his minutes, but man we needed someone with a pulse on the wing. Rowan just isn’t good for much if he isn’t making shots, and Caleb lets his shooting impact other areas of his game too much. He wasn’t scoring tonight, so he wasn’t doing much else either. Cody didn’t have a good game, but he’s always active and doing things when he’s on the court. He makes an impact with rebounding and defense.
– On a positive note, Cat’s game continues to progress and any hope we have of being a tournament team rests on his skinny shoulders. He’s looking really confident in that jumper, much more so than early in the season. If the pull-up three is a legitimate weapon for him, it takes his game to a completely different level. I would’ve liked to see a bit more aggressiveness getting to the rim/FT line from him in this game, but I’m nitpicking. He was great.
– Also on a positive note, that’s the best offensive game Beejay has played. He looked much more composed in the post than he normally does, and made a couple very nice reads out of the double (his passes weren’t exactly on target, but the reads were right). If he can give us a little offense in the post going forward, that’s a huge deal. I’m hoping this is a confidence booster for him going forward.Cat is gone after this year, 100% adios. Thats written in stone.I keep reading people saying this. Is there any particular reason to believe this? Like, is there inside information about Cat that he’s already decided? Cause just from the outside looking in, it’s far from a foregone conclusion to me. He’s not anywhere close to a first round draft pick at this point, and maybe not even a second rounder. If he really wants an NBA career, he’d be better off trying to have a Jerian Grant-esque senior year and winning scouts over.
Listening to the last 90 seconds of that on the radio (had to pick the kids up from Beaver Creek) was really depressing. Not only did Twin B’s idiocy in not pulling the ball out for the last shot almost cost us the game, but it may have also cost us Twin B. YEESH.
Plus, you know…our horrible radio guys.
Cody absolutely made the right play there. He had the angle and 99 times out of 100 he’s going to get either a layup or get fouled. I’d absolutely rather be up 1 or 2 without the ball with 13 seconds left than holding for a difficult shot at the end. We had the misfortune of Cody getting injured, but that doesn’t mean that trying to score there was the wrong decision.
There’s not a ton you can learn from a game like this, but a 20 point win on the road is a good thing, crappy opponent or not. It’s easy to say “well, they were garbage, of course we should’ve done this,” but you still have to do it, and a mark of a good team is that they blow out bad teams. We had our only 2 shooters go a combined 2-20 (on mostly pretty good looks), and still won by 20. That’s a good sign.
Thoughts:
– Good confidence builder game for Beejay. He’s always been really agile for his size, and actually has pretty good form on his hook shot, but he rushes things in the post and doesn’t have great hands. With a little more confidence in his post game, I think he can at least be someone you have to guard, which, combined with his defense, makes him a great asset.
– Not a good shooting day for Abu, and I’d still like to see him more balanced and composed when he goes up for a shot, but he was relentless on the glass. Generally speaking, good things happen when he is attacking the rim. I would like to see more P&R with him and Cat, since he’s so deadly if he gets a free roll to the rim.
– Good defensive effort, particularly fighting through screens. Also, after some initial problems early in the game our bigs did a better job than usual of not being jumpy and contesting without fouling.
– I’m a little worried about what the coaching staff seems to be doing with Cat. Look, I love Cat Barber and he’s obviously the reason we have a chance at being good. He’s far from a perfect player though, and his shot selection leaves something to be desired. Based on what I’m seeing from him, particularly early in the game, it seems like he’s being encouraged to take jumpers. Now, I would certainly like to see him be more confident in his jumper, but I want him to do it by taking good shots, not by taking forced 18 footers with 25 seconds lefts on the shot clock. He’s so explosive and creative going to the rim, I just want to always see him probe that before settling for a mid-range shot.
– In games we’re up by 20 on a crappy team, I want to see our non-Cat lineup. We’re going to have to use that lineup at some point in the ACC season, and I want it to have as much practice as possible. Also, I’m not really worried about him getting tired (especially in this game, after they were off for a week), but it would be pretty terrible if he suffered a major injury in a complete blowout.
–We trapped a little in the second half, but the game was played at our normal speed. We average 70 possessions a game, and we had 71 this game. Both defenses were just poor. We got cut to pieces by their two shooters.
I wasn’t quite watching this with my normal critical eye, so I’ll have to watch it again to make some notes about defense. A few thoughts though:
– So, that stretch without Cat in the first half. On the one hand, they didn’t make up any ground in 11 minutes without our only point guard. That’s way better than we have been doing without Cat. On the other hand, man we looked sloppy in that stretch. The Martins (Cody in particular) have pretty good floor vision, but their passes aren’t very sharp. There were several plays in that stretch that should’ve ended in open layups, but because the passes were weak or off-target, they ended up being turnovers or tougher shots than necessary.
– Nice bounceback games from Abu and Rowan, particularly Maverick. He was showing off all the offensive potential that makes him an exciting prospect. That little two dribble pull-up on the baseline is so deadly.
– I loved the balanced scoring effort and the strong team-wide free throw shooting. We won the Winthrop game because Cat just put us on his back against a lesser opponent. This game we won with a much better team offensive effort, with better spacing and ball movement.We haven’t played more than 2 minutes at a time without Cat on the floor, and each time we have we’ve looked like a disaster. We played 11 minutes without him and grew our lead. I’ll take that as a win.
Phoenix, I really do appreciate your thoughtful analysis and observations after the games. It always gives me more insight both on the strategies from the game and on individual player strength and weaknesses. I also appreciate it’s not just Gott bashing and player bashing and we’re not any good and never will be. You’d think we are the only school in the whole world who has a terrible coach who doesn’t know what he’s doing and incompetent assistants too. While I agree it is not going to be a very good year for us, we’re not the only ones with problems. We are short handed for sure but blaming Gott for everything that ever happens doesn’t even make sense. I love discussing our problems and what could be done to overcome them, but all of the end of the world stuff gets so tiresome.
Thanks, I’m glad you appreciate it. It lets me exercise some of my frustration through being a huge basketball nerd. I just find I’m generally happier as a fan when I’m understanding and appreciating why things are going well or poorly, and not just riding swings of emotion. That’s just my process though, and I’m basically a robot-person :).
At one point last year I considered putting some videos together about some of this stuff (primarily because I wanted to take a closer look at our defensive improvement at the end of the season), but cutting the clips together is just too much work.
The notion that Abu hasn’t improved since last year (not to mention the massive improvement he made from the beginning of last season to the end) is ludicrous. Yeah, he’s had 2 bad games. It happens. If you actually watch the games and not just the box scores, you can see that even in these bad games, his positioning and his initial post moves have been much, much better than they were last season. He’s catching much closer to the rim and he’s attacking much more decisively. I don’t think he’s a star yet by any means, but he’s a much improved player from last year.
Look, I’m not going to say we’re a great team, and it’s a really tough ACC this year which could make it a lot tougher to mount a run down the stretch. However, I’m not in full agreement with all the doom and glooming around here. Numbers are always fluctuating a lot this early in the season, but statistically (via KenPom) we’re ranked very similarly to how we were ranked at this point in the last two seasons (KenPom has us ranked #63 currently. After 7 games last season it was #55, and it was #68 the previous season). Now, it’s certainly frustrating that we keep having these slow starts under Gottfried, but we’ve seen a pattern of improvement over the course of past seasons, and I see enough potential that I’m not writing this season off. Also, Henderson was a huge loss not just because it was losing a starter, but because of our positional deficiencies. If he returns strong it will be a huge boost, and we’ll have the added benefit of Rowan’s development. The sky isn’t falling quite yet.
Anyway, my usual thoughts from the game:
– I thought this game was very poorly managed by Gott. We were making a run at it with the Cat/Rowan/Martin x2/Anya lineup, and I know you have to give those guys a breather at some point, why on God’s green earth is Shaun Kirk the guy you turn to? He was an utter disaster, and while it certainly wasn’t all his fault, the deficit went from 4 to 10 in the minute or so he was on the floor. Utterly inexplicable that this is the game and that is the situation where you want to give that guy some run. Additionally, why are you pulling Cat Barber with 4 minutes left in the game? I don’t care that he has 4 fouls. There are 4 minutes left and you’re down by 10, what are you saving him for? Also, when you’re down 7 with 1:12 left, you have to foul immediately or send aggressive traps and then foul. You’re not going to win by straight defending at that point. Just a poorly managed game.
– It was a pretty rough game for Maverick Rowan. Not only was his shot not falling, he missed a couple layups as well and got torched on defense in the first half. To his credit, he really shored that up in the second half, and had some really great moments of help defense. I still believe in his talent and his shooting stroke, and he’s going to be better than this most games.
– The defense actually wasn’t the problem in this game. Michigan is the 9th ranked offense in the country, and we held them well below their average efficiency. Yes, their point guard missed the second half, but it was still a good showing. They play a similar 4 out system to the one that W&M torched us with, and we handled it much better. The lineup I mentioned above was particularly effective, and our wings did a much, much better job crashing down and helping the helper on P&R coverage. We forced a lot of turnovers and rushed shots out of their big men on P&R plays that yielded layups earlier this season.
– We gave up 2 offensive rebounds. Even against a team that doesn’t rebound well, that’s a terrific performance.
– I’m disappointed in Abu’s performance these last two games, but he was very good in the first 5 games and played terrific against LSU. I’m still confident he’s going to be an offensive threat this season. What I’m seeing right now is that he’s much more composed on his post ups than last year, and his first move is generally very good. When he faces up, there aren’t many big men who are quick enough to stay in front of him. The problem is that he’s rushing the finish. When he doesn’t get a clear blow-by for a dunk, he rushes or tries something difficult like a tough reverse. What he needs to do is gather himself and use his strength to finish once he’s created an angle with the initial move. He’ll be a more consistent finisher and draw more fouls that way.
– His line doesn’t look all that impressive, but I’m impressed by the development of Cody this season. Even from just the beginning of the season, he’s gotten much more comfortable facing up in the post and using his quickness advantage to get to the rim, rather than trying to awkwardly back people down. He’s a versatile defender, a good rebounder on both ends, and is working his way into becoming a threat in the midrange.
– Cat shoots 1-2 quick long twos in semi-transition each game, and I’m pretty sure he shoots about 12% on them. He played fine in this game though. Michigan was clamping down hard on him, and he didn’t force things. I wish he’d been more aggressive in the second half once the fouls started mounting up on Michigan, but it’s hard to fault him. On so many of the P&Rs he ran, he was probing and working hard to make something happen, and Michigan was just walling off the paint. When one of the two shooters on the team isn’t hitting anything, it’s tough for him to punish that.
– The rest of the out of conference schedule is much, much weaker than what we’ve played so far, and we should be favored in every game. It is entirely feasible that we will be 10-3 heading into conference play which, again, would put us right in line with the last couple seasons.Thoughts:
– Cat played great tonight. I could quibble with shot selection on a few of his long 2s, but on the whole he was terrific. Much more aggressive attacking the rim than he’s been in previous games, both in the half court and in transition. We absolutely need him to keep that up to have a chance.
– Defense showed signs of improvement, and a few of the possessions had beautiful backline rotations and great helping the helper. Some of the same problems that we’ve seen before just keep popping up again though.
* Our P&R defends alternates between competent and lazy, and when it gets lazy it really hurts us. We often switch on very casual screens where no switch is needed. This happened on a crucial play in the last 2 minutes, they set a very casual screen for Holder (not one he was attacking or driving hard off of), and instead of fighting over it, Cat just pointed and Freeman/Abu (can’t remember which) switched onto him. Holder then blew past the big man, drew help, and dished for an easy layup. It’s not that switching is always bad, and Freeman is usually quite good in switching situations, but you have to make teams work harder to get those switches.
* Rebounding was nothing short of disastrous. It’s a mix of poor positioning (often related to poor help rotations) and lack of effort. With the athleticism and length that our bigs and wings have, there’s no way we should be getting abused like this on the glass.
* Abu has made significant strides on the offensive end (and I wish we’d gotten him the ball a little more tonight), but he hasn’t made the same jump defensively. He’s overeager to block shots, and gets himself way out of position far too often, either committing fouls or allowing easy offensive rebounds. It’s particularly egregious when he shares the floor with Anya, and tries to swoop in to get a block on a shot Beejay clearly had covered.
– I hated the decision to pull Cat after the 4th foul. There are 4 minutes left in the game and you desperately need him. If he fouls out, so be it, but I want to give him the chance to play the whole time.That was a much better performance from the team. We actually looked marginally competent on defense for most of the game. Hurray!
Offense first:
– I’ve mentioned this after the past few games, and I promise I won’t bring it up every single game, but the primary thing keeping Cat Barber from being a top-level point guard is shot selection. Cat is a fine mid-range shooter, but not a great one. He needs to realize that pulling up for an 18 footer with 25 seconds on the shot clock is a poor shot. You want to probe the defense, see if you can get a drive to the rim or work it around for an easy shot. Cat can get an 18 footer any time he wants, and if he ends up shooting it with 6 seconds left on the clock, I’m totally fine with that. The name of the game is efficiency though, and you have to try and get your team a better shot before you settle for a long 2.
– In keeping with that, we went into the post far too infrequently in the second half, after doing a pretty good job of it in the first 10 minutes. Abu is a real weapon, especially against these smaller teams, and a good enough passer to facilitate inside-out offense.
– The bigs need to work on their FT shooting, but we’re not going to shoot that poorly most games. I’m not super worried about it, I’m more excited by how many times we got to the line.
– We handled pressure very well, something that I expect will continue all year. Cat is great against the press, and the Martins are great release valves.
– Freeman is never going to be a good offensive player, but he’s come a long way in the last year. There were times last season where he seemed terrified to even attempt a layup.Defense:
– One the whole, much better job. There are still some comically large holes which IUPUI was not equipped to exploit, but the pick and roll D was much improved, and we did a better job gang rebounding.
– Much better defense by Rowan. He still wasn’t good, but he wasn’t an utter disaster. Did a better job of staying low in his stance and not reaching in, and rebounded better. He’s still figuring out what his help assignments are, and he needs to do better at forcing his man into the screen, but this was a positive development.
– The team as a whole needs better communication and/or a clearer scheme for help side defense. Too often we have two guys scrambling out towards the same shooter, leaving another guy wide open on the second pass.
– Interesting development to watch: they seemed to have Anya being a bit more aggressive in hedging on side P&Rs than he has in the past. He looked pretty spry doing so, and I’m in favor of anything that has our defense exerting more pressure on opposing offenses.That last play was our best defensive possession of the season. Anya did a great job hedging out on the screen and scrambling back, Martin came over to cover on help defense and then got back out on the closeout, and Anya contested the shot and cleaned the glass. Excellent defense.
Also, great cross screen by Rowan on the Abu and-1. We’ve been much better at entering the ball into the post so far in this game.
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.I haven’t read this whole thread, so apologies if I’m repeating what others have expressed.
I’ll start with this: I think the team will be fine by season’s end. There is still a lot of talent here, and Gott’s teams usually round into shape as the season goes on. The world is not ending and this is not a sign that we are doomed this year. We’ve seen this before and been fine by the time the tournament rolls around. But isn’t that the problem? Every year we see the team come out of the gate unprepared. We see the team have huge defensive problems. It’s one thing if you have a young, inexperienced team, but I expect more from this roster. Tonight was just a failure of the coaching staff to have this team prepared.
– Opposite extremes from Rowan in this game. As advertised, he’s a terrific scorer. Even though the shot wasn’t falling, you could see a good, repeatable stroke, quick release, and total confidence. He’s decisive when he catches the ball, and seems to just have that knack for getting the ball in the basket. On the other hand, he was an absolute disaster on the defensive end. He got backcut all night. He got beat off the dribble. He helped when he shouldn’t have helped and didn’t help when he should have. That has to change, because great scorer or not, he’s unplayable against good teams if he defends like this.
– At least Rowan is a freshman in his first real game. The rest of the roster has no such excuse. They were terrible defensively in 100 different ways. It was a complete breakdown both effort-wise and schematically.
– Our pick and roll defense has reverted back to where it was at the beginning of last season, after making huge strides at the end of last year. Far too often our big men end up in no-man’s land. They’re not pressuring the ball handler, but they’re not really covering their man either. That lets the guard just string them along until they have an easy pass to the big guy under the rim. You have to either aggressively trap the pick, or the weakside defenders have to be better at helping the helper and then scrambling to open shooters. As it is now, we just didn’t put any pressure on the opposing offense.
– I think Beejay Anya is a terrific defender on the whole, but you have to defend the pick and roll with him in a particular way because of his lack of quickness, and we’re not doing it. Several times I saw his man set a screen up high, and the player getting screened just didn’t fight hard through the pick. Happened a couple times with the Martin twins, and they just kind of pointed at their man instead of fighting through. You just can’t do that. It means that Anya has to stay up too long on the guard, and it leads to wide-open big men rolling to the rim.
– There’s way too much standing straight up and down from off-ball defenders, and just a general lack of activity and active hands. Guys don’t collapse and help crisply, and that leads to open layups and easy putbacks. It’s laziness and bad habits, and they’re the same bad habits that we’ve seen before. Hard not to see that as a failure of the coaching staff, and a failure to promote a culture where defense is important.
– How bout we don’t run any more post-ups for Cody Martin this year? Man, did he play terribly in this game.
– Abu is the lone bright spot. I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that he’s the guy I’m most excited about this season. He showed flashes of everything I wanted to see from him tonight. He bullied his way to the rim, he looked confident in his mid-range jumper, and he faced up and beat guys off the bounce a few times. He looked great, and we did a terrible job getting him the ball.Yeah, there’s no way Cat leaves. He’d be lucky to be drafted this year.
Barring something catastrophic happening in the offseason, I’ll be disappointed if we don’t spend most of next season in the top 25. The talent is there, the chemistry is there, and the experience is there. Even if Henderson doesn’t pan out (and I’m fairly confident he’ll be a solid piece), I’m totally comfortable with Caleb Martin sliding into that starting spot.
The big X-Factor is Abu. If he’s as good as I think he’s going to be, we have a chance to be an elite team. He’s got an NBA body already, and shockingly good raw skills (soft touch and good passing instincts). If he puts the work in this summer (and by all reports, he’s a really hard worker) and puts some polish on those skills, he could be one of the best post players in the ACC, if not the country. The potential is there for that.
