RichZ
Fort the ead!
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 5,263
- Reaction Score
- 22,397
- Jalen sans headband is much, much better than Jalen with the headband.
- Is it me, or was Welsh particularly critical of the Huskies? He sounded more like a Boneyarder than a TV commentator, especially early.
- The touch fouls early on were brutal, and by late in the 1st half, made it tough for Hurley to juggle the line up to keep enough of the players that were hot on the floor without jeopardizing their 2nd half availability. The crappy calls went both ways, so it didn't sway the outcome, but it made stretches of the game very choppy, and not as much fun to watch, and I'm sure to play.
- Whatever the hell Hurley was drinking looked pretty unappetizing.
- With 5:42 left in the half, Sid's block with possession and ensuing putback slam to push the lead to 20 will be on end of season highlight reels. One of the best sequences of the year.
- 3:30 1st half. Not a break, but bringing the ball up quickly. JA passes to CV along the left sideline and CV starts as if to drive into a defense that has everyone back but not yet settled in. Last year's CV would have driven into traffic in this instance, and 90% chance would have dribbled it off his foot or otherwise turned it over. Today's CV dribbled in two steps, backed off and passed it back to JA. The play ended with a well executed Yakwe lay-in. So much improvement in Vital's decision making under Hurley. He's no longer playing the game faster than he can think it.
- Just under 14 to go in the game, Jalen misses a 3. Vital comes in from the wing, right between two Drexel bigs and steals the rebound, fakes a move outside just enough to create enough space to give him an easy 3 foot jumper off the glass. He has become a totally different player.
- Another unspectacular play with spectacular results -- Yakwe took a charge at one end, then tapped the rebound of Jalen's missed shot out to Smith who fed Polley for the uncontested 3. Basketball done right.
- Tarin Smith's block/steal with about 10 minutes to go went kind of unmentioned, but it was a sweet play that lead to a nice baseline floater for Alterique. Basketball done right.
- As big as it seemed the impact of Sid and Yakwe was, I was surprised that they only scored 4 points each and had 4 boards between them. Consider though that 2 of Sid's 3 boards were offensive, Yakwe added a couple blocks and they each had a steal. They brought energy and excitement while playing under control and scoring opportunistic goals. Do I need to say it? Basketball done right.
- Whalley had 4 boards in less than 5 minutes.
- We ended up with a 60/59/71 team shooting percentage line in the box, and the 3 point percentage was 67 until the walk-ons came in.
- With Sid and Yakwe coming into their own, the evolution of Vital, and Polley settling into the sniper role, we look a lot more like the team that many of us envisioned at the start of the season.
- We still have rebounding issues though. We lost the rebounding battle 30 to 35, to a not very good rebounding team. More to the point, there were 39 rebounds available at the opponent's basket, and we only got 22 of them. When the bad guys have almost as many offensive boards as the good guys have defensive, that is an issue. Thanks to our lights out shooting percentage, there were only 26 rebounds available at our basket, but Drexel managed 18 of them.
