Memphis and Dayton are both very good teams. Our bad loss was to Colorado. We could have won both games against Memphis and Colorado, but it wasn't meant to be. The biggest issue was Hurley didn't have any time making adjustments during the 3 games in 3 days stretch at Maui.
We are getting better on defense, and players are getting into their roles. We will be dangerous come March.
Nah, the biggest issue by far was the early season scheduling in not incrementally increasing the competition leading up to a 3 games in 3 nights tournament against a field that was leaps and bounds better than any team they faced to that point. BTW, their biggest loss in Maui margin wise came after having a day off, if you want to split hairs.
As for Fishy's post, much of it was to be funny and was likely more dropping a match in a pile of dried leaves during a Red Flag warning. Now I can't begin to get into Fishy's head, but that's my take on it.
Props to Hurley and the staff for righting the ship that took a horizontal 180 and looked doomed to Davey Jones' locker.
But with that said, even at the current moment it does look like Hurley might have swung and missed with Mahaney as one of their two primary PGs, though most thought he was a great portal get for UConn. Now maybe the staff can coach him up and Aidan will figure it out. Apart from an impressive stretch a few games back, he continues to look too slow and physically weak to stay in front of his man and fight through screens. He doesn't seem to process things quickly on offense and seems to lack mental toughness, losing confidence in himself far to quickly.
The fact that Hurley seems to be looking elsewhere for lead guard play, points to him either realizing Aidan isn't what he had envisioned or at least is not yet ready for it and needs a lot more time and coaching to get there. Note that I haven't written him off. I really don't know if Aidan can give UConn what they thought they'd get. I think he's shown some good instincts when he's driving towards the basket. My hope is as follows:
1. He will eventually make quicker and more correct decisions once he learns the motion offense.
2. He'll no longer be a liability on D once he gets stronger, improves his footwork, lateral movement, positioning and anticipation, though that might not be realized till next season.
3. Improves his consistency with his shot making, particularly from 3, if he's committed to putting in the extra work.
How much of the above can and will be realized this season and how much of an impact will him not being the player that Hurley had hoped is yet to be determined. Just the fact that Hurley tried Aidan at the 1 early on and is now inserting him more off the ball, and had started to insert Nowell in the rotation at the 1 before he got hurt, does point to him reassessing Mahaney as an answer at the 1, at least at this stage.
I like the 3 win response after Maui and am still hopeful. This is a young team that's going to get better as the season goes on. Bringing my reply full circle, the Boneyard implosion could have been averted if they had scheduled better leading up to the tournament where assessments, improvements and adjustments would have already been in place. They lost the first of those 2 games by a total of 3 points. Imagine what things would have been like returning 2-1 or even 3-0. Let's see if they learned their lesson by scheduling better next season. And as for this season things are pointing to another exciting ride.
