- Joined
- Dec 28, 2024
- Messages
- 33
- Reaction Score
- 179
It is a disaster and while McNeeley bailed us out tonight it is going to cost us more games. And this is an issue largely of our own making.
On defense, our three biggest issues to my eye are the deep hedging by our bigs, reaching in, and the arm locks.
On the hedges, I just don’t get it. Our bigs have proven time and again they are likely to foul, and if they don’t can’t recover. We had back-to-back plays tonight where we either had a big foul at mid-court, or over-contested so hard we almost got a foul and in any event it led to an alley-oop. We are essentially getting all the downside of small ball with none of the upside.
On the reaching, I just don’t know what to say. We get burned and just reach (probably because with hedging there is no help). Mahaney in particular just goes scraping around and is shocked he is called for fouls.
On the arm locks, Johnson does it all the time and must think he can get away with it? I also saw a shove in the back in like the first minute he was lucky not to get a call but that indicates a complete lack of control. I believe it was the St John’s game he did something similar, and I recall Hurley arguing but Diarra saying something along the lines of ‘why did you do that’?
On offense, outside of McNeeley nobody puts pressure on the D and more often than not will use their strong hand for a layup, even if that means going right into a shot blocker (Ball does this a lot). To compound the situation, we can’t set screens. All the way to Karaban who should know better, on virtually every screen you will see shoulders, rear ends, wholly bodies leaning and checking.
It’s just so frustrating to watch because while we don’t get a favorable whistle, we are largely doing this to ourselves and until it gets cleaned up on both ends I think this will be a major obstacle to a deep run this year.
On defense, our three biggest issues to my eye are the deep hedging by our bigs, reaching in, and the arm locks.
On the hedges, I just don’t get it. Our bigs have proven time and again they are likely to foul, and if they don’t can’t recover. We had back-to-back plays tonight where we either had a big foul at mid-court, or over-contested so hard we almost got a foul and in any event it led to an alley-oop. We are essentially getting all the downside of small ball with none of the upside.
On the reaching, I just don’t know what to say. We get burned and just reach (probably because with hedging there is no help). Mahaney in particular just goes scraping around and is shocked he is called for fouls.
On the arm locks, Johnson does it all the time and must think he can get away with it? I also saw a shove in the back in like the first minute he was lucky not to get a call but that indicates a complete lack of control. I believe it was the St John’s game he did something similar, and I recall Hurley arguing but Diarra saying something along the lines of ‘why did you do that’?
On offense, outside of McNeeley nobody puts pressure on the D and more often than not will use their strong hand for a layup, even if that means going right into a shot blocker (Ball does this a lot). To compound the situation, we can’t set screens. All the way to Karaban who should know better, on virtually every screen you will see shoulders, rear ends, wholly bodies leaning and checking.
It’s just so frustrating to watch because while we don’t get a favorable whistle, we are largely doing this to ourselves and until it gets cleaned up on both ends I think this will be a major obstacle to a deep run this year.
