Chief’s Briefs - FSU Edition

[Chief00]

This may be your best Chief’s Briefs yet.

I’ll add that once the break is stopped I’d like to see a little more structure on offense. We don’t have the talent or court awareness to freelance as much as we do.

Also, notice that the game seemed slow and controlled for T. Mann - and hurried and frenetic for Adams a lot of the time.

Some good observations about freelancing and the John Wooden thing - of being quick but don’t hurry. Gilbert and Vital sometimes hurry when freelancing but Adams is too often on cruise control.

 

[billybud]

To beat the better teams, we need to stop beating ourselves with careless turnovers poor open shooting and silly fouls. We really work hard and commit fouls to turn over the other team while we give them these gifts. We also bail out the other team too often with dumb fouls. Since we are less talented than these teams, we need to eliminate these mental errors do we can pull some upsets.

So far, Hurley’s sideline act has gotten us to play harder but has been unsuccessful with the refs. Not sure where these refs were from and to me the issue last night was choppiness for both teams. However, against Iowa and Arizona his style was counterproductive and he needs to adjust.

Just a thought, at Wagner and URI he
he had primarily Northeast refs, who may be more comfortable with the style?
Whatever change was made with the hook and hold rule needs to be deleted. Is it called in our games more than others or is this a national disaster?

national....from Warchant hoops...

"There’s a major problem in college basketball this year and it’s all thanks to a freak injury in the NCAA Tournament last year. If you’ve watched a college hoops game you’ve likely heard the term ‘hook and hold’ which leads to a flagrant foul. It’s a point of emphasis this year for ‘player safety’ and it’s ruining how this game is being officiated and really played.

The freak injury happened to Purdue’s Isaac Haas. As he was going up for a rebound he got his arm tangled with a Cal State Fullerton player and ended up fracturing his elbow. It was an absolute freak play. But, because it happened in the NCAA Tournament, the NCAA freaked out and changed a ‘point of emphasis’ for a play that has occurred as long as basketball has been around.

So why am I complaining about this? Well, watch a game. This call has led to just a complete change in games when it’s called. We’re seeing teams get two shots and the ball for a play that’s barely a foul at best. Not only that but there are just way too many stoppages now as refs can’t go 2 minutes without looking at the monitor for 5 minutes to decide if there’s a flagrant or not. It’s brutal. There are too many whistles to begin with in college basketball. There are too many timeouts to begin with in college basketball. So now we’re combining the two!

The worst part? In about a month this won’t be called. We see this all the time. There’s a point of emphasis that’s called excessively in the early part of the season. Then conference play rolls around and refs go back to how it’s been called for years. There’s no consistency, which is why college officiating is brutal and completely changes how teams play.

 

[Rico444]

To beat the better teams, we need to stop beating ourselves with careless turnovers, poor open shooting and silly fouls. We really work hard and commit fouls to turn over the other team while we give them these gifts. We also bail out the other team too often with dumb fouls. Since we are less talented than these teams, we need to eliminate these mental errors so we can pull some upsets.
So far, Hurley’s sideline act has gotten us to play harder but has been unsuccessful with the refs. Not sure where these refs were from and to me the issue last night was choppiness for both teams. However, against Iowa and Arizona his style was counterproductive and he needs to adjust.

Just a thought, at Wagner and URI he
he had primarily Northeast refs, who may be more comfortable with the style?
Whatever change was made with the hook and hold rule needs to be deleted. Is it called in our games more than others or is this a national disaster?

I thought the refs weren't great but we got the benefit of the whistle in the 2nd half.

 

[cohenzone]

Kabengele, Nickols, Mann and 21 played great for FSU. Having good Bigs matter and we saw that tonight. We did not get many shots in close. Our drives were impacted by shot blockers. FSU can compete against the Big Boys this year. Lots of depth too. Best team UConn has played and probably will be the best team we play this season.

Where is our team at? We are winning the games we are suppose to but we have not learned the habits necessary to beat good teams. Some bad trends are surfacing against good teams. Too many unforced turnovers, committing silly fouls/not getting calls and the wrong guys taking the wrong shots. Today our shooting was mostly horrible too.

Additionally, our foul shooting was poor tonight. Gilbert consistently misses his first shot and makes his second - 50% doesn’t cut it for a pg and guys don’t seem confident at the line. Cobb was really poor at the line.

How we defend the screen on the top of the key is evolving but still very poor. Today our guards went behind the screen but that left the outside shot open and Nickols nailed it. Chief likes the guards fighting over the top of the screen. At least we avoided the Big on guard mismatch down low.

Adams offensively needs to be much more aggressive, he was too passive today.
Yakwe had his best game and Hurley has no confidence in our starting center against good teams. Yet actually tonight Josh wasn’t terrible but he did not see much time.

We need to find a shooter - if it’s Polley we need to get him the ball in the right spots and he needs to work harder at getting open.

Gilbert tonight alternated between hurrying and brilliance. A cross over dribble jumper and a pretty drive but then careless turnovers followed by a couple nice threes. Chief would like to see him run the team more and let the scoring come to him once they start playing the pass.

Having said the above, we did not quit and competed. I already lost my write-up once - so I will end here.

I’m out of country and could follow only on ESPN.com game tracker. Given that FSU is #11, it seems to me the overall performance and result isn’t that bad. What seemed to jump out without being able to watch, was the number of turnovers. I couldn’t tell what caused the turnovers. It also seems as if UConn went through a stretch from about 3 minutes left in the first half to about 8 minutes or so gone in the second where they fell apart or something and got too far behind.

 

[billybud]

I thought the refs weren't great but we got the benefit of the whistle in the 2nd half.

Maybe it's a good game if both fan bases think that the refs were hammering their team....

And both teams got hammered...and both fan bases are focussing on the calls against them this morning.

 

[Kenny11]

Adams has below average handle for a point guard. It really shows up against good teams throughout his career.

 

[mauconnfan]

Kabengele, Nickols, Mann and 21 played great for FSU. Having good Bigs matter and we saw that tonight. We did not get many shots in close. Our drives were impacted by shot blockers. FSU can compete against the Big Boys this year. Lots of depth too. Best team UConn has played and probably will be the best team we play this season.

Where is our team at? We are winning the games we are suppose to but we have not learned the habits necessary to beat good teams. Some bad trends are surfacing against good teams. Too many unforced turnovers, committing silly fouls/not getting calls and the wrong guys taking the wrong shots. Today our shooting was mostly horrible too.

Additionally, our foul shooting was poor tonight. Gilbert consistently misses his first shot and makes his second - 50% doesn’t cut it for a pg and guys don’t seem confident at the line. Cobb was really poor at the line.

How we defend the screen on the top of the key is evolving but still very poor. Today our guards went behind the screen but that left the outside shot open and Nickols nailed it. Chief likes the guards fighting over the top of the screen. At least we avoided the Big on guard mismatch down low.

Adams offensively needs to be much more aggressive, he was too passive today.
Yakwe had his best game and Hurley has no confidence in our starting center against good teams. Yet actually tonight Josh wasn’t terrible but he did not see much time.

We need to find a shooter - if it’s Polley we need to get him the ball in the right spots and he needs to work harder at getting open.

Gilbert tonight alternated between hurrying and brilliance. A cross over dribble jumper and a pretty drive but then careless turnovers followed by a couple nice threes. Chief would like to see him run the team more and let the scoring come to him once they start playing the pass.

Having said the above, we did not quit and competed. I already lost my write-up once - so I will end here.

Well done Chief mostly.

Kabengele is too long for us and we're not strong enough or smart enough to bang him away from the basket on offensive rebounds he ate us up there, big reason we lost. And besides 7'3 he's not very good but that size goes a long way when we're play 3-4 guards and a 6'5" Yakwe. They have 5 seniors starting that's monstrous and the experience wore us down.

FT shooting isn't good but not awful. But during the minutes we tried to come back they fouled us and we made 1 of 4 in big spots. 0-2 Cobb during a run which made the possession worthless and they went down and scored. 1-2 for Gilbert on a lay up they fouled him on we got one instead of 2. Small numbers but big when moving on comebacks.

Adams needs a lot, he is so disappointing in the last 2 Saturday games I have no idea where to start. Way too many celebrations for a guy not deserving tells me he's all about himself. That pass from around half court that said over Sids head in the first half was pitiful and I believe made me know this was just another JA game. He's in another world it seems when out there, kind of giving it all on defense but still the guy who doesn't get in his guys grill trying to take it from him but making it look like he's all in. Feel for Dan this kids an enigma and has been for 3 plus years. He could be the reason we won the last 2 weekends but instead he's a big part of the reason we didn't.

Polley needs to want to rebound the ball more as 2 in 19 minutes again very low. Also needs to be able to dribble to his shot on occasion, actually did once off a ball fake and threw up a nice 12 footer that he missed but was well done. What I saw from Sid was some nice rebounding, one a mans board on the offensive end, and a great take to the basket across the lane and a running 10 foot banker he just missed but liked the aggressiveness. He needs lots of work but you can see the "it" hanging around waiting to come out.

Gilbert had his moments of both again mostly a little crazy in the first half but really brought us back all himself and kept our pulse the 2nd half. He did get a little hurried but I was ok with it as he was the only one scoring so let him at it. Nice 2nd half and hopefully a sign of things to come. As someone said in another thread he reminds me of Kemba as a frosh, never know what you're going to get but man he can play. He did a great job on Forrest made him work hard to get anywhere and typically made him get rid of it instead of staring their O, excellent D for the most part.

As far as Florida State they're a nice team and pretty deep. Not sure I agree with everyones thoughts of Finla Four material or even much of a contender but they're tough. Mann is a leader everyone would want, does it all. They need Cofer back healthy to be potentially what you're alluding to. The guards are ehh, don't shoot it all that well but are big and tough. They're size overall is impressive. I think a 12-6, 11-7 ACC year and a run through to 32, maybe 16 in the tourney. For Mann's sake hopefully better, like that kid would love him on my team for sure.

Huskies, great they didn't quit but they need to win winnable games. If they aren't planning on winning 13-14 games in the league they need to beat Nova who will be the same as the last 2 unless they shoot it good on the 22nd, worst!

 

[mauconnfan]

Adams has below average handle for a point guard. It really shows up against good teams throughout his career.

Maybe or is it below average head which makes his handle look less stellar due to his sudden need to do something pretty?

 

[mauconnfan]

I thought the refs weren't great but we got the benefit of the whistle in the 2nd half.

They gave is the benefit of the whistle when we were out of it I agree. But overall they were just plain awful the whole game for both teams. This was a crew of guys who painfully guessing and making up stuff just to blow the damn thing. The fact that one guy blew a double on Vitla nd the other guy was ridiculous. Early in the game time to walk in between them and have a discussion let them know NO MORE.

Not a good look for them.

 

[BPT2Storrs]

I am not one to usually complain about officiating, but from what I have watched so far this season, in a few of our games we have started with a lot of rhythm only to see it fade due to blatantly bad or no-calls, game stoppage due to technical issues, etc. We started off hot and pushing the ball, and then came some issues such as the hook and hold call, etc., which took time to figure out and slow our momentum. I am not saying it's the reason we lost, but could be a contributing factor, especially in a game at a "neutral site" in which we had a large fanbase.

I am not worried about this team. We would have been blown out by FSU the last few years. We quickly forgot that at this time last year, we were getting absolutely throttled by Arkansas by close to 40 points and barely squeezed out an OT win against Monmouth and ended up losing to 'Cuse by 10 and Arizona by 15 (obviously we beat 'Cuse this year, and I think we should have beat Zona as well). We are playing with pride and fighting to the end, that shows buy-in from the players. I truly believe our OOC games against Cuse, Iowa, Arizona, FSU and soon to be Villanova will have this team ready for AAC play. I think we can do some damage in conference.

 

[alphasigko]

Too many unforced turnovers at the wrong time. A BIG problem that needs to be solved quickly. Also, I do not understand why they did not drive repetitively on the several FSU players who had 4 fouls late in the game,

 

[Stinger92860]

Some may say Chief was a little tough on Gilbert’s FTs when I should have singled out Sid and Cobb instead of Gilbert and Cobb. But, Gilbert is the point guard and his foul shooting is the most important. Shooting 67% doesn’t cut it for that position. Eric has a softer shot than he showed - it was mental and lack of a comfortable routine for him.

Small sample size for Sid. Cobb though needs to work on his stroke. He was long on most if not all of his misses. If we feed him, he is going to the line a lot.

 

[alphasigko]

I am not one to usually complain about officiating, but from what I have watched so far this season, in a few of our games we have started with a lot of rhythm only to see it fade due to blatantly bad or no-calls, game stoppage due to technical issues, etc. We started off hot and pushing the ball, and then came some issues such as the hook and hold call, etc., which took time to figure out and slow our momentum. I am not saying it's the reason we lost, but could be a contributing factor, especially in a game at a "neutral site" in which we had a large fanbase.

I am not worried about this team. We would have been blown out by FSU the last few years. We quickly forgot that at this time last year, we were getting absolutely throttled by Arkansas by close to 40 points and barely squeezed out an OT win against Monmouth and ended up losing to 'Cuse by 10 and Arizona by 15 (obviously we beat 'Cuse this year, and I think we should have beat Zona as well). We are playing with pride and fighting to the end, that shows buy-in from the players. I truly believe our OOC games against Cuse, Iowa, Arizona, FSU and soon to be Villanova will have this team ready for AAC play. I think we can do some damage in conference.

Perhaps not "damage" but will play competitively and should do better than .500.

 

[Stinger92860]

For Mann's sake hopefully better, like that kid would love him on my team for sure.

Did we recruit Mann?

 

[mauconnfan]

Did we recruit Mann?

If I remember correctly yes we did. Not sure how much of a player we were but I thought we had a small chance.

 

[billybud]

If I remember correctly yes we did. Not sure how much of a player we were but I thought we had a small chance.

Mann is from Lowell Mass.

Had offers from FSU, BC, Florida, Iowa State, Maryland, VCU, Georgetown, Miami, Indiana, Marquette, R.I.

I find no cite of an offer from UConn

 

[AdamaNation]

Hamilton said that he was impressed by the Husky defense....said it took the Noles out of their regular offense.

Called it a "rock 'em, sock 'em....old Big East type of game"

FSU is ranked #5 in the ACC (KenPom)...this physical game will be good prep for playing the conference schedule.

UConn will play in the tournament this year....not as dark as some are making it....this team will wgames in the AAC>

I still have them finishing second in a very competitive and ugly division battle. Lots of losses in conference for everyone but we at prevail.

 

[CL82]

I fear that it may take a near-complete roster overhaul, or at the very least more than a full season of coaching.

I think we do have some culture issues that lingered after the staff change. I hope it will improve as the season progresses but I think it will be better next season.

 

[Chief00]

Maybe it's a good game if both fan bases think that the refs were hammering their team....

And both teams got hammered...and both fan bases are focussing on the calls against them this morning.

It was a very choppy refereed game. Bad for both teams. Too many fouls , too many hook and hold stoppages. I can only think refs are being evaluated wrong - so this is what they call. Thank you Mark Emmett for this officiating disaster this season.

 

[Chief00]

Mann is from Lowell Mass.

Had offers from FSU, BC, Florida, Iowa State, Maryland, VCU, Georgetown, Miami, Indiana, Marquette, R.I.

I find no cite of an offer from UConn

Man we could have use Mann.

 

[CL82]

Man we could have use Mann.

Agree for a lot of the game it was Mann against boys.

 

[Chief00]

7 assists and 19 turnovers - a 0.37 assists to turnover ratio - Brimah Territory. Not good.

 

[Chin Diesel]

I think we do have some culture issues that lingered after the staff change. I hope it will improve as the season progresses but I think it will be better next season.

Keeping with the season, I mentioned this game had a feel of a Christmas Carol.

Saw too much of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Saw glimpses of the Ghost of Christmas Future.
Mostly saw the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Against higher level competition that bad habits that weren't corrected come out in higher percentages. Not surprising. In competition you are more likely to revert to habits you've learned over time.

Hurley is instilling better habits but the upperclassmen are the hardest to change since they have the most time with the bad habits.

My quick key for bad/good habits. Watching players when they catch the ball. Good habit is they are squared to the hoop in the traditional triple threat position. Bad habit is they are a bit slow and immediately put the ball on the floor for a few dribbles to get their sense of bearing on the offensive sets.

Second key is watching the next 3 possessions after UConn builds a bit of a lead. Yesterday they were up, I believe it was 9-3, and they blew the next few possessions. They had the chance to open up a double digit lead within the first four minutes and they wasted them on low pressure turnovers, fouls and poor shots.

 

[buddy]

I really think free throw shooting could have made the difference. With Shabazz team, free throws were a given. Now, games could be lost because even the best guard can't be relied on to make his free throws. As for Cobb, he really needs some schoolin' on his free throw shooting. He misses could have been the difference in the game. I not saying it was, but it contributed.

 

[Ewekon]

To beat the better teams, we need to stop beating ourselves with careless turnovers, poor open shooting and silly fouls. We really work hard and commit fouls to turn over the other team while we give them these gifts. We also bail out the other team too often with dumb fouls. Since we are less talented than these teams, we need to eliminate these mental errors so we can pull some upsets.
So far, Hurley’s sideline act has gotten us to play harder but has been unsuccessful with the refs. Not sure where these refs were from and to me the issue last night was choppiness for both teams. However, against Iowa and Arizona his style was counterproductive and he needs to adjust.

Just a thought, at Wagner and URI he
he had primarily Northeast refs, who may be more comfortable with the style?
Whatever change was made with the hook and hold rule needs to be deleted. Is it called in our games more than others or is this a national disaster?

I am all in on Danny, Chief. I think he is a good or really good coach. I also think he may, just may be trying to fill the other Irish guy's shoes that he hasn't grown into yet. He can chill a little on the sideline for now me thinks.

 

[AdamaNation]

I really think free throw shooting could have made the difference. With Shabazz team, free throws were a given. Now, games could be lost because even the best guard can't be relied on to make his free throws. As for Cobb, he really needs some schoolin' on his free throw shooting. He misses could have been the difference in the game. I not saying it was, but it contributed.

Cobb needs to step back a foot. Done. I’ve solved his ft issues. Your welcome Eric!!
He back irons everything barring an occasional side rim.

 

[jdb50]

When Cobb was shooting free throws he looked like he was trying to make them at the Country Fair arcade where making shots is strangely difficult.

 

[Mokum]

We, the rabid fans, have just got to be patient. 10 games into the Hurley era and we are way better than the last two years. We obviously need bigger and better players to get back to being championship caliber, and I for one am confident Hurley will get those guys. But for now, I am satisfied with the marked improvement in everything and the recruiting Hurley is doing.

 

[Ewekon]

We, the rabid fans, have just got to be patient. 10 games into the Hurley era and we are way better than the last two years. We obviously need bigger and better players to get back to being championship caliber, and I for one am confident Hurley will get those guys. But for now, I am satisfied with the marked improvement in everything and the recruiting Hurley is doing.

I hope you are not just tilting at windmills

 

[billybud]

I think that UConn could use a big C. An inside presence. They are developing one if the weight room can add muscle. But could use one in the upcoming class. Akok, as a 6' 10 PF , may help with the front court.

I know that coaches run with different philosophies....some emphasize offenses with shooting guards and others may emphasize defense with shot blockers inside with a lot of length.

UConn and FSU are very close on class rankings so far for the 2019 class....but the recruits look different.

Of the four signed LOI's, Hamilton has signed a 7'0 240 lb and a 7'3 230 lb Center. He will recruit a big guy who may be a project.

To me, the best of both worlds is to have a couple of great outside gunners and a big in the front court.