Game thoughts - Monmouth (an extra long one tonight)

[Milo65]

I know our offense has been maddening, but UConn is scoring points. Not sure if it’s because of the competition? Our defense has been horrible. Even some of our very best teams would sometimes score in the mid sixties, but the defense was always rock solid. I think they can improve, there seems to be a lack of will to lock down from the start, whether its perimeter D, switching, closing out, boxing out, etc. The zone experiment has been a disaster. A lot of young guys, they need to start to get it together.

 

[pj]

I know our offense has been maddening, but UConn is scoring points. Not sure if it’s because of the competition? Our defense has been horrible. Even some of our very best teams would sometimes score in the mid sixties, but the defense was always rock solid. I think they can improve, there seems to be a lack of will to lock down from the start, whether its perimeter D, switching, closing out, boxing out, etc. The zone experiment has been a disaster. A lot of young guys, they need to start to get it together.

Kenpom 121 offense, 71 defense. The offense is limited by talent, so the biggest scope for improvement is still in defense. They need to become a top 30 defense / top 80 offense to make the NCAA tourney. Don't know if that's possible without a rim protector in the middle.

 

[mauconnfan]

Thanks for taking the time interesting thoughts.

#40 hit it on the noggin, that's where we are!

 

[Doctor Hoop]

1. 1st possession turn over seems to be our modus operandi of late.
2. Onuorah's performance kind of confirmed that he is not particularly good.
3. Early on, it appeared that we were moving the ball with a sense of purpose. No windshield wiper offense so far. The guards and Larrier moving well, making crisp cuts and going very tight on screens. Passing looks sharp as well. Now score some points, dammit!
4. 12 minutes left in the first half and suddenly I am getting nervous about the whistles. Monmouth in the bonus on the next one.
5. Jalen looks like he's focused and enthusiastic. That's a good sign.
6. 10 minutes in, we are playing our best basketball of the season, and we still can't get any separation.
7. 8 minutes left in the half - Mamadou's long arms! Great intercept to start the break.
8. Nice run augmented by CV with some great D!
9. Lead gets up to 9. Better, but how can any Husky fan relax unless we can go into the half with a double digit lead?
10. And just like that, a 9 point lead is gone. Ollie should have called a TO when it got down to 5.
11. There go the whistles again. Three possessions in a row.
12. Larrier's floaters are awful tonight, but other than that, he seems engaged and is putting in some work on the boards.
13. Jalen with a 3 at the buzzer. Not sure how he stayed airborne long enough for a fake and a complete position shift, but he did, and still beat the clock. Hope it gives us some momentum. On replay, I think he should have been shooting a foul shot, too, but the refs are too busy making sure they credit Monmouth with a 3 from earlier.
14. Can't believe how badly we were out rebounded in the 1st half. It didn't feel like we were being abused on the boards, but evidently, we were.
15. Nice start to the 2nd half.
16. It's pretty clear that our most effective lineup right now is Adams, Vital, Anderson, Larrier and Diarra. And I'd be more than fine with Carlton as the first big off the bench.
17. Foul on JA at 10:18 was an awful call.
18. As was the call on Polley on the block 20 second later.
19. Can't let questionable whistles take us out of our game like they did in the first half.
20. Too late. Now we're down again. Playing very hesitantly on offense now. The crisp ball movement has disappeared.
21. DO out, Carlton in. Diarra's been our most effective big by far. Can we safely buy him a few more minutes at this point?
22. 5:11, Diarra back in. Best lineup is together again.
23. JA got called for an invisible foul on Seaborn, then Larrier tipped in Seaborn's missed FT.
24. After Tillman scored the lay in with 2:14 left, he slapped the ball down court as he headed back up. Should have been a technical. He didn't bump into the ball, he reached out and slapped it down court.
25. JA just doing it at the end offensively again. Amazing how easily he gets to where he wants to be, and how much control he has in putting the ball in at odd angles with varying degrees of English required.
26. Up 1 with a minute to go.
27. OT. Against a mid-major. Again.
28. CV really off from 3 tonight, but money at the line, and providing good D and effort on the glass.
29. MD done for the night -- good call, bad foul.
30. Getting ugly now with 2 and a half to go in OT.
31. At first, I was infuriated on that call on Vital's steal. Replay showed that it was a good call. The hesitation between him getting bumped from behind and him bumping the guy was too noticeable to ignore.
32. 1 point game with a minute to go. Didn't I say that a few minutes ago, too? Deja Vu!
33. Good call on Tillman when he hooked Carlton to go to the rim. That could be called all night in most games when a big makes a move on the baseline. But Welsh called it a chicken wing. That would be keeping his elbow pretty fully bent, and just using his upper arm. He extended his whole arm around Carlton to make room. That's just a hook. No chickens involved.
34. After being down by 6 boards at the half, we ended up outreboundng them, which is encouraging.
35. Antoine's D on Seaborn in the 2nd half was every bit as important to this W as Adams 31 points. He looked a little Ricky Moore-ish tonight!
36. Diarra's reach absolutely came into play on 5 separate occasions. Of course without a strong effort, the wingspan would just be a number.
37. 9 Steals is impressive.
38. Overall, the game wasn't called poorly, except for about 10 minutes in the middle of the 1st half, when we were playing our best ball, and the whistles took our aggressiveness away.
39. It wasn't the prettiest thing in the world, but we've got to take our joy where we can find it, and 6-2 is way better than the 3-5 we would probably be if we still had last year's squad.
40. Still too many lapses, but I see improvement over the last couple games. We can't expect mediocrity to be instantly replaced by greatness, but we can demand incremental improvement toward that goal, and I think we're seeing that.

TLDR version: Some improvement, some encouraging moments, a win is better than a loss.

I just watched it this morning, was out last evening. Some comments to add

10. The lead disappeared because of our erratic shooting. Everyone missed open shots that were falling earlier. The offense wasn’t actually being run that badly.

14. We were out rebounded because they shot 57% in the half, we shot 37%. They had many more defensive boards available. Outrebounded them overall in final stats.

16. I’m liking Diarra and Carlton more each game. Cobb is not going to be on the floor a ton given his propensity to foul. Onourah is just a big body at this point.
a). I’d like to see more of Whaley.

40. Yes, too many lapses on offense and defense, but there was very good energy on the floor almost the whole game, they won a game that last year would have been lost, the offense and defense looked much more structured and effective, and to my eye I see improvements. I do want to see less of players being beaten for layups.

We shall see if the improvements hold as the competition improves. They may not be Cincy or WSU, but Monmouth isn’t cannon fodder, they are a decent team with already one scalp taken.

 

[Ts5034]

I know our offense has been maddening, but UConn is scoring points. Not sure if it’s because of the competition? Our defense has been horrible. Even some of our very best teams would sometimes score in the mid sixties, but the defense was always rock solid. I think they can improve, there seems to be a lack of will to lock down from the start, whether its perimeter D, switching, closing out, boxing out, etc. The zone experiment has been a disaster. A lot of young guys, they need to start to get it together.

Agree. I think its obvious that defense has been the problem and if that improves, which I think it can because its more of just them taking some plays off and going through the motions on the defensive end, this can be a tournament team. The 2006-2007 season comes to mind because that was a young inexperienced team. That team struggled on offense, but I think they were ranked in the top 20 in FG % defense. They finished 17-14 and that was in the Big East.

 

[intlzncster]

You can nitpick anybody though. Anderson, for the solid defense he played, was absolutely brutal on our possessions the last 10 or so minutes of game time. Almost turned out to be a zero sum game out of him late in the game.

You're not wrong, but given who he was locking down, I'm not sure that was zero sum. I mean, that kid torched us first half. Anderson gave him very little room to breath.

 

[ctchamps]

Agree. I think its obvious that defense has been the problem and if that improves, which I think it can because its more of just them taking some plays off and going through the motions on the defensive end, this can be a tournament team. The 2006-2007 season comes to mind because that was a young inexperienced team. That team struggled on offense, but I think they were ranked in the top 20 in FG % defense. They finished 17-14 and that was in the Big East.

Taking Plays off. Nah. We doubled their big because he was having his way inside. Diarra did a credible job on him but even he needed help.

There have been plays in games this season in which our guards have lost their man or didn’t make the switch.

This game they were much better in decreasing that. They still have room for improvement but I felt this game was a big improvement with the teams defense given the weakness the team has at the five.