A good effort to come back late in the second half but the hole was too deep. We need more defensive pressure early to uptempo and take the legs out of the 3 point shots.
A combination of 3 pointers and foul shots beat us when St Joe’s was on offense. Our offense was very selfish and we are not a good team when AG and Vital take too many shots and force their offense without other guys getting touches.
When you can’t shoot and don’t rebound, you need to do the other things to mitigate those factors. There was no ball movement for most of the game and the defense was perplexing since Chief knows the goal was to take away Daly. Instead, they left him open and no one seems to have a clue who was suppose to guard him.
if Polley can’t/won’t rebound, seldom demands the ball to shoot and if he isn’t used as a defensive stopper - what’s his role? Why did we wait until about 11 minutes were left in the game to put Tyler on Daly? What Tyler needs to do is demand the ball from AG. It isn’t his personality to do so, but he needs to grow and do that. Or else you can argue, Sid or Adams get those minutes?
Gilbert looked terrible on his drives that have no option other than a force shot against three taller guys. If he gets fouled, he doesn’t make them pay due to poor foul shooting. Chief thinks Gilbert needs to think pass first and then shot. That would create more space for him and less poor forced shots. The bottom-line, it’s the point guard’s responsibility to get a team into their offensive flow and he’s not even close tonight to accomplishing that objective. Someone needs to tell Gilbert he’s not a good enough shooter to take so many shots. Akok, Josh and Polley barely touched the ball. Vital shot poorly as well.
What’s concerning on offense is the lack of self and team awareness. There appears to be no identification of who does what well and where?
The team defense lacked intensity and I fault Dan for getting down by 10 before using a time out. That gave St Joseph’s confidence and sent a message of zero urgency to his team. I can’t really explain why guys don’t put their hands up on defense. Is it laziness, a lack of focus or something else? They gave guys really good 3 looks, accounting for 10 in the first half.
Chief is not blaming the crowd for the loss, not much to cheer about. But, lots of empty seats to start of game. The student seats are free, the game is on campus, so the problem is deeper than people acknowledge.
One good piece of news, Javonte Brown Ferguson announced for UConn as Chief confirmed weeks ago and later via DM confirm+ his verbal on 11/3.
