Hurley needs to put a “bird” in the refs ears about Timme traveling on many of his inside moves to the rim.
Yeah, he gets away with a lot with his rep. That said Sanogo does at times also.
They are probably the two post players in the nation with the best footwork.
Statistically they are pretty similar players on a per minute basis.
Timme is a better passer, though Sanogo isn't bad now. Sanogo is the better shooter, Timme is 19 of 75 from three in his career (4-24 this year), Sanogo is 17-48 this year. Timme is pretty money from inside the foul line though. He has fantastic touch inside the FT line, whereas Sanogo rarely takes a shot that would be considered mid-range (he took more last year I believe and was pretty money).
Sanogo is a better FT shooter, but Timme gets to the line at a much higher rate (overall and per minute). This is the biggest difference in their scoring averages.
I don't think UConn will double Timme to start though, he has some nice moves but doubling will just open up the shooters. Much like how teams are forced to defend Sanogo one-on-one a lot of the time due to shooting threats. I would assume Gonzaga will do the same. I would bet Gonzaga tries to get Sanogo in foul trouble as that is the most likely way for them to win. Just have to trust that Sanogo can play him straight up to start and not foul.
UCLA fell into three issues playing Gonzaga after a wonderful first half.
1) They had nobody to challenge Timme to play defense and no big to come in and spell the guy who did start which led to the UCLA center playing very passively on defense a lot of the night. Timme really had an easy cover down low all game. Though he did sometimes defend Jaquez (6'7), it was less than four minutes of game time that one of UCLA's poor centers were in and he only defended Jaquez because he was the biggest UCLA player on the floor. It was just embarrassing how bad UCLA was down low. Actually worse than Arkansas, and Arkansas wasn't particularly good. Iona and SMC may not have outstanding centers but both had better and bigger centers than anyone Timme faced so far in the tournament. It will be his biggest challenge.
2) They played way to fast. They are a slow it down, grind it team but they played fast and looked drained in the second half. For some reason they tried to play at Gonzaga's pace.
3) The above leads to the third issue, they lacked the depth to play at that pace. It's not their style and they were short handed. Just a poor decision by Cronin to let them go at that pace. Wore them down as the game went on. It's one thing for a team like Creighton who has played that way most of the year. UCLA was not used to that situation and it showed.
Gonzaga only has one decent big off the bench in Gregg, and he is decent but a big drop off from Timme.
They two guards they bring off the bench do have size and strength. They are one of the bigger backcourts UConn has faced this year. Less athletic but much better shooters than Arkansas.
This is (obviously) the second team that Joey has history with. He put up 11 in one game last year on 5-10 and 1-1 from three.
Gonzaga is as prone to making 10-0 runs as UConn is, and doesn't give up a ton (like UConn). Where UConn relies on it's defense to stifle runs, Gonzaga relies on its superb offense to stop other teams from having extended runs.
Gonzaga only wins if they can find a way to play better defense close to UConn's level. This could be a very high scoring affair, I would bet at least one team hits the high 80s.
I do wonder if they try their PF on Sanogo to save Timme, as he is their best defender, but he is too short and light to really defend Adama. And that makes Timme have to defend Karaban, which is also a bad idea for them as Karaban lives from the three point line. They could put Timme on Jackson I guess, but I don't think that will work anymore. They could also try double bigs, but then so can UConn.
