Chief’s Briefs - VCU Edition

[Chief00]

Was it the coaching, play or the red shirts that gave Chief flashbacks of Bobby “Red Pants” Diaco. Given that recent sports history, who thought red shirts were a good idea?

Thanks to RJ Cole we stayed in an ugly game. He didn’t have much help and many counter productive plays. He was the only guy who played thoughtful and scored meaningful points (26) besides Whaley threes.

The coaching staff made a bad decision not going all in to get an experience guard in the transfer portal to give RJ help. The book on UConn is to pressure us due to a lack of ball handlers and general poor composure under pressure.

The only time we semi handled the pressure was when Gaffney was in as another ball handler.

VCU was more ready to play than UConn. The third game in a row, we had difficulty with pressure and did not achieve a noticeable mitigating solution.

Early on really disappointing guard play. Too many plays where we beat ourselves or couldn’t handle pressure. They are blitzing Cole with a double and we are unable to use a safety val and make them pay on the second pass. He is unable to beat the defense with speed either, something Chief pointed out a couple weeks ago. Now against the better teams that flaw is highlighted.

All that and his own poor judgement led to Sanogo fouling 22 feet from the hoop, but this time on offense. Of course that play symbolizes the guards inability to handle defensive pressure. If Jackson is our second ball handler that’s a problem. He needs to get over striving for the degree of difficulty highlight play and make the simple play.

Sanogo picked up his 3rd foul 22 feet away from the basket defending a guard off the dribble. He needs to play smarter.

Having said that Jackson has the potential to be our best shot blocker and rebounder.

The one guy Hurley seems to have zero patience with after a bad play is Hawkins, perhaps the guy he should have the most patience with due to his potential and tenure.

Tough to beat good teams when you have more turnovers than assists and shoot about 25% on 3 pointers. Whaley was one of our Big 3 guy today along with with two, whike Coke had three.

Pretty bad when you don’t have confidence to play your second or third best ball handler (Gaffney and Hawkins) in the last two minutes. But, a win is a win.

Polley needs to play well in more than 1/3rd of his games.

 

[GHSWolverines]

Was it the coaching, play or the red shirts that gave Chief flashbacks of Bobby “Red Pants” Diaco. Given that recent sports history, who thought red shirts were a good idea?

Thanks to RJ Cole we stayed in an ugly game. He didn’t have much help and many counter productive plays. He was the only guy who played thoughtful and scored meaningful points (26) besides Whaley threes.

The coaching staff made a bad decision not going all in to get an experience guard in the transfer portal to give RJ help. The book on UConn is to pressure us due to a lack of ball handlers and general poor composure under pressure.

The only time we semi handled the pressure was when Gaffney was in as another ball handler.

VCU was more ready to play than UConn. The third game in a row, we had difficulty with pressure and did not achieve a noticeable mitigating solution.

Early on really disappointing guard play. Too many plays where we beat ourselves or couldn’t handle pressure. They are blitzing Cole with a double and we are unable to use a safety val and make them pay on the second pass. He is unable to beat the defense with speed either, something Chief pointed out a couple weeks ago. Now against the better teams that flaw is highlighted.

All that and his own poor judgement led to Sanogo fouling 22 feet from the hoop, but this time on offense. Of course that play symbolizes the guards inability to handle defensive pressure. If Jackson is our second ball handler that’s a problem. He needs to get over striving for the degree of difficulty highlight play and make the simple play.

Sanogo picked up his 3rd foul 22 feet away from the basket defending a guard off the dribble. He needs to play smarter.

Having said that Jackson has the potential to be our best shot blocker and rebounder.

The one guy Hurley seems to have zero patience with after a bad play is Hawkins, perhaps the guy he should have the most patience with due to his potential and tenure.

Tough to beat good teams when you have more turnovers than assists and shoot about 25% on 3 pointers. Whaley was one of our Big 3 guy today along with with two, whike Coke had three.

Pretty bad when you don’t have confidence to play your second or third best ball handler (Gaffney and Hawkins) in the last two minutes. But, a win is a win.

Polley needs to play well in more than 1/3rd of his games.

Hawkins can't handle the ball

 

[prankster]

I sense that Hawkins is both hard on himself and sensitive. The coaches are, I sense, trying to bring him along, diminish his propensity to be overly hard on himself (the burfled handle, for example), and help with his learning curve.

Some of that requires that he be held out, in certain situations, from time to time.

Still early in the season. Lots of growing to be done.

 

[jibsey]

When Hawkins is in the gym he should work on his handle, must be a drill for that with a defender.

 

[Ant3411]

I have disagreed with some of Hurley’s late game lineups: our two best shooters not in the game when we need to make shots - ball handlers not in the game when we need to handle pressure, maybe work some offense/defense in with Polley in on offense late in the games…anyways I’m thankful we came out with the win, this is a game we lose last year and the many years before.

Just an example: final possession of the game, tied up we have a chance to win it. We got 3 good shots and missed them all, yet our two best shooters in my opinion (Polley and Hawkins) are on the bench…

 

[Ts5034]

I sense that Hawkins is both hard on himself and sensitive. The coaches are, I sense, trying to bring him along, diminish his propensity to be overly hard on himself (the burfled handle, for example), and help with his learning curve.

Some of that requires that he be held out, in certain situations, from time to time.

Still early in the season. Lots of growing to be done.

I agree, and It is still very early. It’s not even December yet. There is still a lot of basketball to be played. Hawkins has shown flashes that he could be a great player. I can’t wait to see what his stats are in February.

 

[Ts5034]

As always, good job, Chief. I think everyone is on the same page on the ball handling situation after these last 3 games. The coaching staff knows this as well, and that’s why I think we will finally see more of Rahsool in our next game. But, how is Corey Floyd as a ball handler? This has not been brought up, but was red shirting him the best move?

 

[Chief00]

When Hawkins is in the gym he should work on his handle, must be a drill for that with a defender.

Agree, that and getting stronger is what he needs to do.

 

[Hankster]

Hawkins can't handle the ball

WEll again as I said in other posts, the cupcake games did give false impressions. Hawkins made everyone jaw drop against the cakewalks. Now he played against the big boys. That threw him off I am sure.

 

[Chief00]

WEll again as I said in other posts, the cupcake games did give false impressions. Hawkins made everyone jaw drop against the cakewalks. Now he played against the big boys. That threw him off I am sure.

He will be good, needs to get stronger and tighten up his dribble.

 

[gtcam]

Hawkins is the least of the problems as long as the staff doesn't play with his head.
The biggest problem is Sanogo (because he is the 1st option on so many offensive possessions) forcing it with two or three defenders hanging on him. He passed the ball out in that situation ONCE during the tournament and it led to a successful 3 point shot. He obviously feels he has the green light to continue to play hero ball because I see zero change in his behavior. If Dan Hurley had urged him strongly to look for the open man in those situations, I am fairly sure he would do so. If he has been instructed to pass out and refuses, he sits. Completely ridiculous to watch this behavior game after game. You ever notice that he rarely looks at the rim when he throws those 10 -15 foot prayers? I see it and the coaches don't?
Gaff needs to quickly turn his game around. He shoots less than 70% from the FT line and he hasn't provided the PG strength the team needs in order to give Coles the rest he needs. RJ can't play all these minutes against the better teams.
Why do the UConn players like to get caught in the corners when pressured on inbound plays? It happened every game this week and not just once a game.
I strongly feel UConn beats MSU with Whaley, make that I am positive. Both he and Martin have the tickers that the rest of the guys need to show (RJ does have that in his game on offense at times)
AJ showed the world he is an athlete - can UConn afford to have someone out there that many minutes who provides the minimal amount of points?
Why didn't Sool get any burn?
No need to belabor Dan Hurley's game coaching

I was unsure that UConn would be ready to play yesterday afternoon and I saw that occurring but was delighted that they pulled it out in that OT period. It would have been a disaster to leave the island 1-2.

Much work to be done. This team can be really good and hope it does. Changes are needed before the NBE schedule starts

 

[Salty Dog]

Yeah, Hawkins body language after a mistake is not great. He's really hard on himself - almost to a detriment. Want to see him take his mistakes in stride and bounce right back.

 

[8893]

Yeah, Hawkins body language after a mistake is not great. He's really hard on himself - almost to a detriment. Want to see him take his mistakes in stride and bounce right back.

IMO that’s at least partly a function of Hurley’s short leash with him. I don’t see the justification for it, but he never allows the guy to play through a mistake and yanks him immediately. To my eyes, it’s having the opposite effect: it’s making him more skittish and looking to the sideline immediately after every play to see if he is getting pulled.

Meanwhile, Andre has free reign and Hurley has endless patience for his errors, which only seems to embolden him.

I think Hawkins’s body language is more frustration with the situation than with himself. And he’s not wrong.

 

[coachn]

Coaches need a better plan for the team not just RJ to recognize what is happening and be in a better position not only to break but make the opponent pay. Be prepared for the trap.
These are zone traps and must be dealt with with a team approach. Can't leave Cole on an island. I'm surprised the coaches have not had a solution.
Running into the corner on the full court inbounds is a defenses dream come true.
Andre is the answer to the future correction . A tighter handle will put him over the top. Smart. He can and will do it
Look for Gafney to improve also ,goodplayer.
R Diggins will help just give him a chance. Seems to be calm and assured from what I've seen.
Be sure we will see everybody trapping us but none like VCU.
Have to work on this in practice and I'm sure they are.

 

[navery12]

Yeah, Hawkins body language after a mistake is not great. He's really hard on himself - almost to a detriment. Want to see him take his mistakes in stride and bounce right back.

I'm with you there, Hawkins is way too hard on himself. I think Hurley is actually protecting him by taking him out and not letting things spiral. Hard to say if it's the right move but the coaches are the ones seeing him every day in practice so they know better than me how to handle these kids

 

[DCT]

Was it the coaching, play or the red shirts that gave Chief flashbacks of Bobby “Red Pants” Diaco. Given that recent sports history, who thought red shirts were a good idea?

Thanks to RJ Cole we stayed in an ugly game. He didn’t have much help and many counter productive plays. He was the only guy who played thoughtful and scored meaningful points (26) besides Whaley threes.

The coaching staff made a bad decision not going all in to get an experience guard in the transfer portal to give RJ help. The book on UConn is to pressure us due to a lack of ball handlers and general poor composure under pressure.

The only time we semi handled the pressure was when Gaffney was in as another ball handler.

VCU was more ready to play than UConn. The third game in a row, we had difficulty with pressure and did not achieve a noticeable mitigating solution.

Early on really disappointing guard play. Too many plays where we beat ourselves or couldn’t handle pressure. They are blitzing Cole with a double and we are unable to use a safety val and make them pay on the second pass. He is unable to beat the defense with speed either, something Chief pointed out a couple weeks ago. Now against the better teams that flaw is highlighted.

All that and his own poor judgement led to Sanogo fouling 22 feet from the hoop, but this time on offense. Of course that play symbolizes the guards inability to handle defensive pressure. If Jackson is our second ball handler that’s a problem. He needs to get over striving for the degree of difficulty highlight play and make the simple play.

Sanogo picked up his 3rd foul 22 feet away from the basket defending a guard off the dribble. He needs to play smarter.

Having said that Jackson has the potential to be our best shot blocker and rebounder.

The one guy Hurley seems to have zero patience with after a bad play is Hawkins, perhaps the guy he should have the most patience with due to his potential and tenure.

Tough to beat good teams when you have more turnovers than assists and shoot about 25% on 3 pointers. Whaley was one of our Big 3 guy today along with with two, whike Coke had three.

Pretty bad when you don’t have confidence to play your second or third best ball handler (Gaffney and Hawkins) in the last two minutes. But, a win is a win.

Polley needs to play well in more than 1/3rd of his games.

I agree but also don't get how players repeatedly caught with the ball in a corner and seems like no other player immediately provides help. I have seen many other coaches solve this problem during games. It looks like this isn't worked on during practice. Problems inbounding the ball are not getting better.

 

[Watchdog]

IMO that’s at least partly a function of Hurley’s short leash with him. I don’t see the justification for it, but he never allows the guy to play through a mistake and yanks him immediately. To my eyes, it’s having the opposite effect: it’s making him more skittish and looking to the sideline immediately after every play to see if he is getting pulled.

Meanwhile, Andre has free reign and Hurley has endless patience for his errors, which only seems to embolden him.

I think Hawkins’s body language is more frustration with the situation than with himself. And he’s not wrong.

I think Hawkins body language is more him beating himself up than frustration with the situation and I say that based on how dejected he was on the sideline after he lost the ball against Auburn.
Several staff and players were consoling him because I would imagine he was thinking he just lost the game for the team.

As for AJ, he may be light on shooting ability right now, but look at his rebounding and other factors. There was a guy who had a pretty nice 14 year career in the NBA averaging 7 points and 13 rebounds at 6'7", 210 pounds.........https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/rodmade01.html
And I know he's not Rodman (yet)!

 

[Puertorock43]

WEll again as I said in other posts, the cupcake games did give false impressions. Hawkins made everyone jaw drop against the cakewalks. Now he played against the big boys. That threw him off I am sure.

Hawkins had 16 points in 15 minutes against auburn who was ranked 19th in the country. He can play with the big boys, Dan Hurley just needs to play him

 

[Jbirdp5]

I agree but also don't get how players repeatedly caught with the ball in a corner and seems like no other player immediately provides help. I have seen many other coaches solve this problem during games. It looks like this isn't worked on during practice. Problems inbounding the ball are not getting better.

I don’t think any of our problems were going to get solved over the course of the tournament. There was less than 24 hours to prepare for each game. I would imagine we will have a much better plan for full court pressure and see much sharper inbounds plays in the future because of how poorly we did in the Bahamas.

 

[CL82]

I think Hawkins’s body language is more frustration with the situation than with himself. And he’s not wrong.

I don’t. He seems pretty unforgiving of his own mistakes. A lot of players are perfectionists, that’s a big part of what drives them. It also has a dark side to it, as Hurley knows only too well.

 

[Chief00]

I agree but also don't get how players repeatedly caught with the ball in a corner and seems like no other player immediately provides help. I have seen many other coaches solve this problem during games. It looks like this isn't worked on during practice. Problems inbounding the ball are not getting better.

I agree, inbounding the ball to the corner without even trying to run the baseline for passing angles is perplexing. Any guy in the curbed is taking away from the screening and cutting we should be doing.

 

[Chief00]

Against MSU abd VCU Sanogo started about 6 feet further out than he should have in the post resulting in missed Juno hook shots.
A quick fix against tve bigger and better teams is to have another Big screen for him down low as he moves to the opposite block for the entry pass.

 

[Chief00]

We played 4 cupcake games over 15 days before the Auburn game. Now Danny needs to go back in the laboratory and fix problems that were there but not adequately highlighted against weak competition.
How many cupcake games should you play before a competitive one? Chief’s feeling is perhaps 2 over a week, then play a competitive team followed by a mix. This allows for experimentation and highlighting of things that need to be fixed. Thoughts?

 

[navery12]

We played 4 cupcake games over 15 days before the Auburn game. Now Danny needs to go back in the laboratory and fix problems that were there but not adequately highlighted against weak competition.
How many cupcake games should you play before a competitive one? Chief’s feeling is perhaps 2 over a week, then play a competitive team followed by a mix. This allows for experimentation and highlighting of things that need to be fixed. Thoughts?

I'm pretty much good with the set up we had this year if the cupcakes just become slightly better teams. 3 cupcakes (4 this year but 1 will be the Gavitt Games most years), MTE with some tough games. Now we get 2 more cupcakes to work out the kinks and go back with West Virginia and St Bonaventure to test it out again.

 

[yungdowork]

I think it was important that this team got shown how much work they have left before they're calling themselves a Sweet 16 caliber team. The two wins showed that we will fight to be in every game but the loss showed that we have the ability to take ourselves out of high-level games through mistakes. Hurley will have hopefully seen how badly pressure affects our ability to get into our offense and be working on that with all of our ballhandlers. St. John's and several other Big East teams will be desperately hoping we don't improve our ability to deal with the press

 

[ConnEd]

I believe Gaffney has a ton of ability as a player, but right now he's thinking too much. You can see him hesitating when he has the ball. Two strong dribbles, then slow down. And, in doing so, he takes pressure off the defense. He's far better when he's acting decisively, attacking, and putting pressure on the defense. He has to learn how to run the offense while, at the same time, looking for attack opportunities every time he has the ball. That's the main difference between him and RJ.

 

[CL82]

I believe Gaffney has a ton of ability as a player, but right now he's thinking too much. You can see him hesitating when he has the ball. Two strong dribbles, then slow down. And, in doing so, he takes pressure off the defense. He's far better when he's acting decisively, attacking, and putting pressure on the defense. He has to learn how to run the offense while, at the same time, looking for attack opportunities every time he has the ball. That's the main difference between him and RJ.

He reacts to pressure defensively. He will turn to protect the ball, move laterally etc. On the other end of the spectrum do you have guys like Taliek who attack pressure. Every player needs to have a balance between the two. Personally, I think Gaffney plays too conservatively probably because his handle isn’t great. That burns time off the clock forcing us to rush into our actions. At this stage in his career, he is what he is. I’m not sure that there is much Hurley can do about it, except making sure he has safety valves and encouraging him to pass up the court rather bringing it up himself.

 

[Husky Alien]

Hawk has been given a very short leash. I don't recall Hurley doing this to Bouk his freshman year, seemed like he would have him play through it. But not the case with Hawkins. I find it a bit perplexing and frustrating.

 

[Husky Alien]

Against MSU abd VCU Sanogo started about 6 feet further out than he should have in the post resulting in missed Juno hook shots.
A quick fix against tve bigger and better teams is to have another Big screen for him down low as he moves to the opposite block for the entry pass.

Like screen down low, also needs to use the glass a bit more and some resemblance of a jump shot would be nice.

 

[Sphinx]

I think it was important that this team got shown how much work they have left before they're calling themselves a Sweet 16 caliber team. The two wins showed that we will fight to be in every game but the loss showed that we have the ability to take ourselves out of high-level games through mistakes. Hurley will have hopefully seen how badly pressure affects our ability to get into our offense and be working on that with all of our ballhandlers. St. John's and several other Big East teams will be desperately hoping we don't improve our ability to deal with the press

Your second sentence says it all. And it's unlikely that junior and senior ballhandlers can be taught the rudiments of the trade at this stage. The BE season will be one of dogfights, and we will win more than our share, but the modest goal you suggest -- calling ourselves a Sweet 16 caliber team -- seems to be the realistic limit -- that and contending for the BE regular season title.