Creighton Post game thread

[superjohn]

Open your eyes, Kimani been carried, by exceptional defensive players like Jackson, Clingan, and Castle. there is no cleverness or strategy in their defense. Hurley’s demand for toughness on defense has carried it. They play a basic man to man with a stupid high hedge. A good defensive coach can mold a good defense twitch average players. UConn’s defensive strategy the entire year has been the exact same defense as last year and it hasn’t worked well all season. On the flip side offense has great movement and a lot of easy baskets.

This is all on Kimani?!??

That's a hell of a take.

We're lucky to have him.

 

[Trudy Gay]

How Steven Ashworth has managed to have the career he’s had, especially against us, is such a mystery to me. I will never wrap my head around it.

 

[JCisthegoat]

Huh??? UConn's offensive scheme is aweful.

Mix in a water

 

[Jimdish255]

So Creighton was unconscious for the first ten minutes of the game and we couldn't get a bounce to go our way. Righted the ship then another implosion near the end of the half left us in a big hole. We made a great run in the second half but it just seemed like the air came out of our sails, after two straight blown out of bounds calls when we were down I think two points. That was huge for us because at that point getting over the hump and taking the lead changes your mindset and the crowd becomes an even bigger factor. It was a big hill to climb but it seemed like that killed our momentum.

So disappointing but probably not decisive in terms of whatever our destiny is in the Big Dance. We can beat anybody on a given night but the question becomes can our guards play up to tournament level and can we get a little more consistent production down low. We lost some great talent last year but we've proven we can grind back even when shots aren't going down. But we do need to shoot better. In the end shooting percentage determines a lot of games. As mentioned by others we can't have as many mental lapses. This should have been a much closer final score than it was but the bottom line is we aren't going to out-talent teams every night like we did last year. So there's just less room for error.

Take the rest and recovery and let's get ready to rumble! It's Tourney Time!

 

[IndyLives]

A lot of blame should be put on UConn's Athletic Director for not getting us into the ACC over the past many years. Its only going to get worse as NIL dynamics are really starting to accelerate. The BE is a dying conference...and everyone knows it.

 

[NCHusky91]

Down 4 they had 3 empty trips in a row. That could have overcome the awful OOB calls if they converted 1 or 2.

 

[JBK]

Defense not really the issue despite 48 in first half and 76% FG. Too much McNeeley on a night he went 6-20 and too many second chances tk Creighton. We were right there.

Mcneeley a bit too confident for his performance

 

[Scoe]

Can Spencer’s sadly don’t grow on trees. I hate we only got 1 year of that

Well we had that, and every other program didn’t have that.

 

[WhereistheDove?]

I thought the key moment was when Kalk knocked a ball out of bounds, but they ruled it Creighton ball. Then Neal comes down and buries a 3. The whole Garden knew who knocked it out. Momentum killer.

Listen, we shot ourselves in the foot but those two straight out of bounds calls that were botched and were blatantly obvious real time from TV were absolutely unacceptable from refs in the BET. Just can’t happen.

 

[DogMania]

Horrible defensive effort in the first half compounded by Creighton shooting lights out in the first half. Lots of missed close range shots. McNeeley struggled to finish in the paint. AK had a bad game on both ends. Got very little from our bigs. No one had a good shooting game, though Diarra started off hot. Imagine if we had one player lighting it up.

With as poorly they played they had multiple chances to carry that late spurt to the finish line but lost the mo. McDermott's time out followed just seconds later by the TV timeout seemed to snuff out the momentum.

Unlike the past two seasons, this team has not been a winning time team.

 

[BFieldHusky]

Why was McDermont yelling at Luke?

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

Huh??? UConn's offensive scheme is aweful.

First, you gotta spell “awful” right. Second, for all the flaws this team has calling out the “offensive scheme” on a top 15 offensive team that hasn’t even played particularly well this season after rolling over college basketball the last two seasons is really dumb. Even in a place where dumb takes grow on trees.

See you all Sunday.

 

[gsmooth]

64-58 and AK missed that open 3, you could feel the team and the crowd kinda deflate with that miss

Yup and that's my issue with AK. He has definitely got his fair share of clutch shots, but I am not sure I would call him a pure shooter. He is a streak shooter.

 

[Scottobot]

It's not. Look at the team and tell me who the best defender is. I'd say Reed or an injured Hass. When you don't have the defenders, no amount of coaching will help. We're smaller and less athletic than previous years. It's team construction, not coaching.

Reed, Samson Johnson, Diarra, Ball, McNeeley, Stewart, Ross are all athletic and talented enough to play good defense. Pete Carril coached good defense with a bunch of nerd Ivey league walk ons. There is no reason why this years team can’t play good defense. No reason to give up a record breaking 75% FG percent in first half. THIS WAS Kimani’s job, he is a professional and he didn’t get it done this year.

 

[UCfor3]

When we play a decent team it really magnifies ou warts. The lack of defense and focus(not boxing out) at times is crazy. Drive on us on offense and on defense pressure our ball handlers, grab and bump all our players off ball to disrupt offensive sets, and run us off the 3 point line. Nobody is worrying about us driving and finishing or our mid-range game. Feels like we sacrificed athleticism and defense for shooting but we have one shooter that has been remotely consistent this year in Solo. Liam's shot has gone to wherever Alex's shot went for a while. The refs were not the reason we lost but they were awful....again. I get we foul more than Creighton or most teams but Kalk just never fouls according to refs. They think he is infallable. Just so many missed calls.
Stay classy Neal. What a tool. What beef did McDermott have with Murray?

 

[TouchdownHusky]

Relying on a freshman to be your #1 option is probably not going to work out

Yeah Flagg is imaginary

 

[RuffRuff]

This 100. Adjustments need to be made based on personnel. The one play where they were down 4 with the ball, after they cut 17 pt lead, and they had a shot clock violation because players were standing around trying to figure out what to do got me PO'ed.
I was in Hawaii to see the games live. They have improved, but they still have the same issues that they had in Hawaii.

They really are - and you see what happens when you try to turn a freshman 3 into your go to playmaker. It’s why we shouldn’t expect Braylon Mullins to come in here next year and be the messiah. It won’t happen.

Lots of issues with the roster, all have been beaten to death over the season and haven’t changed. Why you don’t get too high on thinking you’ve become a defensive bees nest overnight in the last 5% of season against a Neptune offense. This team has only had one formula to go long - our three shooters get hot and Tarris is a staple.

Samson can look great against the Hall, a centerless Marquette, but if you want to prepare for real teams you play the one chip you have to gain advantage. Thats Tarris. He is the only true plus player on the team, when he’s on. He bullied the BEDPOY today and changed the game. The key was getting him mentally ready to be on as often as possible - instead we abandoned him for Samson. Samson Johnson is fools gold.

 

[JBK]

Based on the post game interview and lip reading the altercation between McDermott and Murray, he seems to have taken exception to Hurley’s “2 rings” comment, and defended that his guys felt disrespected by it

You can see him saying something like “come on man, you came to your place and *points at finger * said two rings.” Then Murray says “I didn’t say that”

McDermott is a classy guy

 

[scotty0330]

someone launch this dude into the sun

What did the sun do to deserve him?

 

[WrenchFan69]

This season feels too similar to 2012, like when we drew the Anthony Davis Kentucky team in our bracket.

And got boat raced by Iowa St before we ever met them

 

[superjohn]

Listen, we shot ourselves in the foot but those two straight out of bounds calls that were botched and were blatantly obvious real time from TV were absolutely unacceptable from refs in the BET. Just can’t happen.

And our commissioner will do nothing about it. The refs have been disgraceful all season.

 

[Palatine]

We played defense the 2nd half. Just can't let the first half happen.

It didn't matter. We scored 62 points. You have to play incredible defense to win scoring 62 points.

 

[bendm]

Huh??? UConn's offensive scheme is aweful.

We have the 14th ranked offense…

 

[BlueWolf25]

Also, aside from the missed OOB calls and the missed shots we had, I felt that the back to back media timeouts around the 12 minute mark really halted our momentum. We never got back into a real flow on offense after that

 

[EnochRoot]

They really are - and you see what happens when you try to turn a freshman 3 into your go to playmaker. It’s why we shouldn’t expect Braylon Mullins to come in here next year and be the messiah. It won’t happen.

Lots of issues with the roster, all have been beaten to death over the season and haven’t changed. Why you don’t get too high on thinking you’ve become a defensive bees nest overnight in the last 5% of season against a Neptune offense. This team has only had one formula to go long - our three shooters get hot and Tarris is a staple.

Samson can look great against the Hall, a centerless Marquette, but if you want to prepare for real teams you play the one chip you have to gain advantage. Thats Tarris. He is the only true plus player on the team, when he’s on. He bullied the BEDPOY today and changed the game. The key was getting him mentally ready to be on as often as possible - instead we abandoned him for Samson. Samson Johnson is fools gold.

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