Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="ctchamps, post: 4888884, member: 37"] We were up 11-5 when Donovan picked up his second foul five minutes into the game on the moving screen. That changed the entire complexity of the game. Three negatives resulted from this. First, Samson was overmatched by Kalkbrenner necessitating one or more of our players to leave the player they were guarding to help out accounting for the open threes. He ended up playing many more minutes than was desirable. Second, once they started making their first uncontested threes confidence built up and not only individual Creighton players exceeded their normal performance it became infectious for the team. Once the lead built up the team played looser. It was the mirror of what happened to Xavier and Marquette when we played them at home. Third, the screening foul was legit but normally not called when the movement is as minimal as Donovan made. Our motion offense is predicated on having our bigs be screeners on the periphery to free up Alex and Cam. That was taken away with that second foul. Samson and Donovan were very hesitant to set picks. When we put Donovan back in at the end of the first half the lead did not increase because our defense did not have to help out but our motion offense was still stagnant. The second half they increased the lead initially primarily because Creighton adjusted their defense with Castle. This allowed Cam and Alex to be overplayed and completely eliminated their ability to shoot mid range floaters, something we had success with in the first half because Castle's defender hung back. Stephon became the type of offensive liability we observed with AJ last season when he played out on the perimeter before we moved him to the baseline. I expect that we will be making a similar adjustment for Castle now that this weakness was exposed. In spite of this, the ability to keep Donovan on the floor for most of the second half and the incredible will of Tristen to not surrender brought the lead down to ten around the 4 minute mark. I felt we had a chance to win the game when Tristen led a fast break and passed to a wide open Alex for a three that he normally makes in these situations. But Alex hesitated ever so slightly, the shot was blocked and the game was pretty much over at that point. He makes that shot things could have gotten very interesting. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach