Frustrating

[Peacefrog]

Agreed, he was way out of line with his Smith comments. Besides that I simply find his analysis less than compelling and wrong more often than not. If he displayed a similar lack of expertise in his field in a "real world" job he would have been fired long ago. I don't understand why ESPN keeps him around. We do tend to get our underwear into a bunch over what he has to say for some reason.

 

[superjohn]

You're right about the Roscoe Smith thing, that was complete bullshit. Didn't exactly like his wording today about Ryan either.

 

[Prezidint]

Gottlieb's greatest quote ever - "Duke is alarmingly unathletic." The Dook goes on to win the NC that year.

Guy is a hack, simple as that.

 

[msgordon]

i guarantee a bunch of boneyarders were calling duke unathletic too that year

 

[John Fryer]

This Harvard run started because Roscoe Smith decided he didn't have to guard anyone and just stood in the paint and allowed a skip pass to a wide-open three without ever moving. Then Bazz decided he had to match the three.

IMO, SN dribbles entirely too much. Not only does he dribble too much. All too often he dribble without a discernable objective.

How many times did he allow the clock to run down to around 10 seconds while the rest of the team essentially waited for him to initiate the offense?

UConn's half court set needs a lot of work.

And I am beginning to believe that SN may not be our best option to run an effective half court set.

These are, of course, just my opinions.

Peace,

John Fryer

 

[UChusky916]

At this point it's just funny, Gottlieb knows that many Husky fans can't stand him and he has fun with it. Gottlieb is too much of a contrarian for me a lot of the time but he's more knowledgable than most of the morons employed by ESPN.

This exactly. He knew he was 100% wrong about the team and just kept riding that until UConn was going to prove him right. They just never did.

 

[aceboon]

Have you guys ever stopped to think part of the reason he's dribbling too much is because nobody is moving on offense? The same stuff happened when Lamb was the other primary ballhandler, no movement and alot of dribbling in space by Lamb far out from the basket. I don't know, maybe we need to see Shabazz sit on the bench for 5 minutes and see what happens if Boat mans the position, but I think you guys are ignoring the fact that the lack of movement on offense is a big contributor(not all) to the reason why he ends up with the ball in his hands dribbling so much. Imo its something that we've seen a great deal of all of our PGs during my time as a fan, Kemba dribbled alot, Jerome did his senior year when he assumed alot of the ballhandling duties, AJ & Marcus did too.

 

[OkaForPrez]

At least you yahoos are centralizing all the crap cynacism and gotlieb hate in one thread, makes it easy to avoid. Frustrating is a good name for this pile

 

[Walker11]

I am only responding to those ripping on Gottlieb....the guy said Uconn is the most talented team in the country this year and that JC is the best at assigning roles in the country (even though it may)

 

[Gurleyman]

The issue is pretty simple - we usually have an athletic front line that aren't "triple threats" to shoot, drive or pass when they have the ball. So our offense when protecting a lead is usually keep it simple and the ball in the hands of our best ball-handlers and go late in the clock. A differently-constructed team with versatile but smaller forwards might be able to run more sets and not get stagnant because there are four guys who can make good decisions with the ball. But up 10 with seven minutes to go, we don't want the ball on the low block or along the baseline with the personnel we have. What we need to do is find the balance where we're still moving and making the defense work a little - even if it just fake offense.

 

[aceboon]

The issue is pretty simple - we usually have an athletic front line that aren't "triple threats" to shoot, drive or pass when they have the ball. So our offense when protecting a lead is usually keep it simple and the ball in the hands of our best ball-handlers and go late in the clock. A differently-constructed team with versatile but smaller forwards might be able to run more sets and not get stagnant because there are four guys who can make good decisions with the ball. But up 10 with seven minutes to go, we don't want the ball on the low block or along the baseline with the personnel we have. What we need to do is find the balance where we're still moving and making the defense work a little - even if it just fake offense.

summed it up perfectly

 

[champs99and04]

Gottlieb's greatest quote ever - "Duke is alarmingly unathletic." The Dook goes on to win the NC that year.

Guy is a hack, simple as that.

They probably were unathletic. I mean, Kyle Singler and John Sheyer were two of the best players on that team.

 

[champs99and04]

For the record, I don't mind Gottlieb. I feel like he has always liked Calhoun and respected the program. With us fans, we tend to ignore the good stuff a person says and only focus on the positives.

I don't remember Gottlieb picking against us all last season. In fact, even during the start of the year he said UConn was the Big East team most likely to make the final four. He wrote an excellent article on Calhoun not to long ago.

Telling a kid to de-commit on national TV is inexcuseable. I don't care what program. (Well, maybe BC) That said, he was far from the only analyist questioning UConn after the disastorous 2010 campaign. I'd even be willing to wager that some of you same folks who rip Gottlieb said similar things about the program after the amount of talent squanered during that season.

And by the way, the guy picked us as his pre-season #1 this year when nobody else would. Cool it on the Gottlieb hate.

 

[HeGotGame]

The dude went on the air and essentially told Roscoe Smith that he should decommit and go somewhere else. That ok with you?

Today he said that Ryan Boatright was suspended for six games due to an "off the court incident". I find that almost as unacceptable.

I don't care if he tries to say that Kemba Walker is the 10th best point guard in the NBA Draft (just trying to get under our skin) or is very critical of Shabazz today (he played point guard and was on point with what he was saying) or picks Bucknell to win (it wasn't outrageous to think we'd be tired in that game). But I can't forgive him for what he said regarding Roscoe Smith and I consider myself reasonably level-headed, as far as internet messageboard doofuses go.

Relisten to the broadcast he did not say that. He said it was an off the court issue involving his AAU team with the NCAA. Is that not fact?

The guy said one thing about Roscoe, was it bad? Yes. Awful? Sure. But it was 3 years ago and he has also said a lot of great things about the team.

I cannot force you to grow up and move on but please stop (not speaking just to you) polluting the board with Gottlieb this Gottlieb that threads. It makes us look like a bunch whinny babies and were UConn fans, not Lousiville fans.

And I hate to break it most of you, if you took your head of the sand and look at the entirety of his predictions he is the most accurate analyst on ESPN over the last couple of years. For those you that like to lay some $$ down on games I recommend following him on Twitter...............

 

[Gurleyman]

Relisten to the broadcast he did not say that. He said it was an off the court issue involving his AAU team with the NCAA. Is that not fact?

The guy said one thing about Roscoe, was it bad? Yes. Awful? Sure. But it was 3 years ago and he has also said a lot of great things about the team.

I cannot force you to grow up and move on but please stop (not speaking just to you) polluting the board with Gottlieb this Gottlieb that threads. It makes us look like a bunch whinny babies and were UConn fans, not Lousiville fans.

And I hate to break it most of you, if you took your head of the sand and look at the entirety of his predictions he is the most accurate analyst on ESPN over the last couple of years. For those you that like to lay some $$ down on games I recommend following him on Twitter...............

At the moment Boatright first checks in - his exact words were "an off-court incident". He did not elaborate. They kicked it to Andy Katz on the sideline who talked about watching Boatright in September and he was the most vocal person in practice - then said it was an NCAA suspension and they went back to calling the game. If he mentioned the AAU stuff later in the broadcast, it still didn't excuse extremely poor wording, because it made it sound like he was involved in some sort of criminal activity. Yes it's a live broadcast and sometimes poor choices of words happen, but that was extremely poor to make the issue sound worse than it was for those not familiar with it.

 

[DogMania]

I don't think Harvard is trying to run the clock and then shoot the three... That's just what they're being left with once other options run out. Uconn needs to stop jumping at pump fakes and helping on drives. No Harvard guards are looking to do anything more than drive and kick. Trust the bigs to make the play and stay on your man

That's a great observation. I was at the game tonight and It drove me nuts that they kept on collapsing too far on the weak side and giving up way too many open looks on the perimeter. Harvard is a pretty good team, but they don't have many who seemed all that dangerous taking midrange shots in traffic.

I thought they did a better job in the 2nd half staying at home on their defensive assignments, broke the game open at one point but then went back into a funk again, mainly on the offensive end.

The one thing that I thought they did poorly, which I've seen in some of their other games, is either running too many high screens or relying on dribble penetration. I don't know why they don't pull the bigs and their defenders closer to the foul line area and set back screens for them and throw the ball over the top for dunks and shots close to the basket. At one point I noticed Harvard strung the back end of their defense in line about half way between the basket and the foul like and there was a lot of space behind them and our bigs. I can remember them throwing it over the top just a couple times, exploiting that, but IMO, that type of offense was there throughout the game. Instead they pounded the ball at the top ran high pick and roles time and time again.

I realize they are a work in progress, but they need to start showing more variety in their half-court offense. Far too may empty trips for a team this talented. I'm not worried and believe the staff and players will make adjustments and improve. It's just a little frustrating at times.

 

[DogMania]

First of all, Harvard deserves their ranking. They have more talent than about 2/3 of the Big East, and they're experienced. I'm not a big fan of Tommy Amaker, but it wouldn't surprise me if they not only went to the NCAA tournament, but also won a game or two while there.

Second, check out their schedule. They will be favored in every game they play the rest of the year. They'll lose some, but when it's all said and done, they'll have a pretty decent rpi.

I mean no disrespect to Harvard, but I was at the game and I thought they were a solid team, but nothing spectacular. They missed a lot of lightly contested shots. Our D was very good at times and deserved some of the credit, but I thought we played sloppy and careless at times, executed poorly in the half-court and kept Harvard in that game when they should have broken it open a few times during the second half and won going away by 20 or more.

I'm sounding more negative than I feel about this team. They had some very good defensive and offensive stretches. They have been improving in some areas each game. They have the pieces to cut down the nets when it's all said and done.

 

[Mr.Phat]

The dude went on the air and essentially told Roscoe Smith that he should decommit and go somewhere else. That ok with you?

Today he said that Ryan Boatright was suspended for six games due to an "off the court incident". I find that almost as unacceptable.

I don't care if he tries to say that Kemba Walker is the 10th best point guard in the NBA Draft (just trying to get under our skin) or is very critical of Shabazz today (he played point guard and was on point with what he was saying) or picks Bucknell to win (it wasn't outrageous to think we'd be tired in that game). But I can't forgive him for what he said regarding Roscoe Smith and I consider myself reasonably level-headed, as far as internet messageboard doofuses go.

As you said, I didn't like that beady-eyed little stoat's comment about a Boatright infraction without saying what it was - receiving a free plane ticket from an AAU team. It sounded like he committed murder. I guess to Gotleeb receiving a plane ticket is of a moral equivalence to stealing credit cards like he did. A truly, meretricious, reptilian creature who we are going to hear A LOT more from.

 

[Kitaman]

Far too much Shabazz pounding the ball at the top of the key, not even close to enough ball movement. Blaney should have a stop watch, and if Bazz ever dribbles the ball for ten consecutive seconds, he should automatically be pulled from the game. He needs to do a better job of rotating the ball to force the defense out of position.

I was clocking him he was dribbling for 15 seconds per possession, reminded me of Craig. We have got to remember he is still very young, and about a year or so away from reaching his full potential. He is not there yet and that's okay.

 

[Prezidint]

i guarantee a bunch of boneyarders were calling duke unathletic too that year

Absolutely.
But we're biased, and we're not on national TV.

 

[Prezidint]

They probably were unathletic. I mean, Kyle Singler and John Sheyer were two of the best players on that team.

Agreed, again, that they were unathletic.
Gottlieb's statement that they were "alarmingly" unathletic, however, was ridiculous. They were clearly a very good team.
Whatever.
People don't fundamentally change after a certain age.
I still find it interesting that ESPN hired him knowing he was a convicted thief.

 

[HeGotGame]

Gottlieb's greatest quote ever - "Duke is alarmingly unathletic." The Dook goes on to win the NC that year.

Guy is a hack, simple as that.

They were alarmingly unatheltic, so what, he never said they were not good. Plenty of unathletic teams have done great, see 1991 Duke team. Is that really the best you have?