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Message: [QUOTE="gtcam, post: 5128547, member: 2844"] Defense - Dan Hurley was blessed last year because DC and Castle were/are ELITE defenders so those two carried the weight off the other's shoulders. This year UConn does not have that shut down defender on the perimeter and in the interior - huge difference. Unbelievable how few on this year's team are able to play D with their feet - all hands and arms (which should be up in the air and not on the opposition's bodies). The refs are horrible and call the game like it is a Jr. HS match-up. What a difference the Bama/Houston game yesterday - let them play. On a side note - the NBE refs may be a welcome sight. Note to Dan Hurley - put your big boy pants on and direct your frustration towards how you are teaching D in practice - something you are doing isn't working - figure it out. Keep the ref bashing out of your press comments - amazing how one person can appear to be ignorant to the fact that he is hurting his team. Flapping lips deserve little respect. Can your staff teach these kids to not react to every up-fake by jumping out of the gym????? D101. Team make-up - Yeah, UConn has athletes but very few of them are actually gamers at this time. What he saw in AM mystifies me. Ross needs to learn how to play basketball at a manageable pace, Stewie needs help on his D, SJ has no hands and seems to have lost his BBIQ when on the floor. Ball is a really good shooter but when he is playing it looks like he is afraid to make an error and lose his minutes. AK acts like a leader, now he has to play like one (T Newton) - drive to the hoop. I have been saying since early fall that Nowell is the PG that this team needs. HD is an energizer bunny and perfect 6th man. They needed to get a 5th year big man in addition to Reed. Ball and AM are shooting guards. Period. McNeeley is a pure shooter but has a body that needs to be driving and finishing at the rim. It's November with a lot of basketball ahead of us. The sum of the parts is definitely a NCAA tournament team, but they need to put it all together very soon. UConn is not the only team to have growing pains - Creighton suffers also. I expect UConn to become more competitive. Losing by a combined 3 or 4 points in 2 games is not the end of the world. Hopefully the turn around starts at 11:50 tonight. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach