Hurley Message to Fan Base

[Excalibur]

Akok needs to work on his hands. He fumbled almost every pass to him. The box score looked ok, but sometimes that is deceiving. Last night, it was.

Yep. He was better than the box score. The only guy who brought energy from the start.

 

[AdamaNation]

That's good. In my head, I remembered him as more of a scorer vs a shooter. I know he's crafty. So that's good to hear.

He’s also small. So we can’t wait for him to grow and get mad when he doesn’t.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Did you watch the game last night? St. Joe's looked like a rec league team athletically compared to us.

and we looked like mental midgets compared to them. It’s sad really.

 

[Hamms30]

Need a shooter desperately. 13-14 UConn made 287 three pointers @ a 39% clip with three guys over 40% + Boat. Something like that. Focus needs to be on a lights out shooter or it will be NIT next year.

Maybe a grad transfer. Who knows.

FWIW we were 14/29 at 48.9% from 3 last night.

 

[superjohn]

and we looked like mental midgets compared to them. It’s sad really.

Agreed but we have way more talent than them which makes it all the more frustrating.

 

[husky429]

Akok needs to work on his hands. He fumbled almost every pass to him. The box score looked ok, but sometimes that is deceiving. Last night, it was.

To be fair, quite a few of those (particularly the carlton dump offs) were hot garbage passes.

Akok's hands will be fine. He's just weak so he's getting moved a lot of the time before a catch and is off balance.

 

[djct1999]

Did you watch the game last night? St. Joe's looked like a rec league team athletically compared to us.

and yet we were still down by 27 at one point. UConn should always be more athletic in a buy in game at home. What's your point? Mine is that this team lacks the talent to competed with good high major teams and welp, half the teams in the American.

 

[Guapo]

Last night was a bump in the road. The talent level continues to rise. Better days are ahead.

Nite*

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

That's up to DH and his staff to control not the 2 players who obviously feel that it was upon them to do so
It's not that I think they should have stats like that but it is up to the staff to put a tamper on that activity and not after the fact but while it was happening.
I applaud the recruitment of both these incoming players- nice get

Can’t tell if you’re disagreeing with me, but we’re saying the same thing

 

[UConnFranklin]

Need a shooter desperately. 13-14 UConn made 287 three pointers @ a 39% clip with three guys over 40% + Boat. Something like that. Focus needs to be on a lights out shooter or it will be NIT next year.

Maybe a grad transfer. Who knows.

Couldn't agree with you more! I've always said a basketball team that wins is a team that shoots the ball well. Not a team that assists well, creates a lot of steals, rebounds well. Its all about putting the ball in the hoop. If you put the ball in the hoop with regularity everything else flows from it. A good rebounding team never beats a good shooting team...After shooting all those other stats are secondary.

Now all we need to do is get some good shooters.

 

[SubbaBub]

I'd like to know how often the team shoots at Gampel vs the WCC.

 

[InKembaITrust]

Damn. Love how Hurley straight up tells it like it is.

This sends quite the passive aggressive message to the older guys on the team, which isn't a bad thing.

We'll see how they come out against Florida on Sunday. I'll be at Gampel and watching very closely.

 

[uchusky32]

Love the message after the game. But in game message needs some work.

 

[ctchamps]

FWIW we were 14/29 at 48.9% from 3 last night.

Funny how this is totally ignored in this thread. We have guys that can shoot. Shooting is not the problem. It's more likely focus or mental toughness or trying too hard. That entire comeback where the team got the score down to minus three twice the guys were shooting lights out. Tyler made two threes and Brendan made one all in the flow of the offense. When it was minus nine with under three minutes to play Gilbert came down and hit two long threes. In both cases he brought the ball up and shot with little time running off the clock. As observers we miss positive things when we watch what we believe to be so much negative play. We're as guilty of our emotions as players. (I'm not negating the far too many plays our guards took quick shots without trying to probe St. Joseph's defense. That was tough to watch. I'm making the case that we have shooters and scorers and need to set them up better.)

The comeback in the Sacred Heart game was the result of the team stepping up their defense. The comeback in this game occurred when the defensive pressure stepped up. It was too little too late.

St. Joes spread us on the perimeter, drove successfully or kicked out and hit an incredible percentage of their threes. They negated our height advantage. Our guys got gut punched and took too long before showing a modicum of life. Perhaps the call by Hurley should have been to let our bigs sag off their bigs to stop dribble penetration and let their team beat us with their bigs making threes. And perhaps doing that their bigs could have set up screens making it easier for their shooters to get open looks. Bottom line is they were hot and we were not and dug too big a hole to overcome.

 

[imno1]

ST Joes easy drives thru the lane. UConn drives into 3 guys and still tries to make a shot. Casual fan here but I don't get how Coach was unable correct this. Did we run one play during the game?

 

[Chief00]

Cole can shoot. Teams sold out to stop him and he shot 39%. He won't be the focal point like he was in the past.

I think we should be ok shooting next year assuming Bouknight and Gaffney follow their reputations as shooters. Cole is a good shooter. Polley is excellent. I can see B. Adams improving his percentage. And Akok has shown he can shoot for his size and can be better.

Mostly agree with your observations but a key thing is getting it to guys in the right spots. As I mentioned in the Briefs the starting front court shot 81% on 16 shots and the Starting backcourt shot 25% on 40 shots. Tyler was 4 for 4 from 3, but they did not feed him.

 

[auror]

ST Joes easy drives thru the lane. UConn drives into 3 guys and still tries to make a shot. Casual fan here but I don't get how Coach was unable correct this. Did we run one play during the game?

Their defense at many times had 5 guys on the court at once over 6'5". We play with 2 guys 6'1" or less on the court often, and these are our primary drivers of the ball. That makes it both easier for them to help on defense and harder for our guards to score in traffic. With 5 shooters on the court, they had extreme spacing. With 2-3 shooters on the floor at once, we had average spacing. This made it harder for our guys to help on defense, both for fear of the pass getting kicked out since the person they are guarding is always a shooter and the longer distance both to come help and also to recover.

Coach responded by taking out our big, who is the slowest to cover ground and clogs up the paint and brings an extra defender to help on our drives. It's a decent idea, but he replaced him with Brendan Adams, who was very bad in the 1st half, so in a sense we tried to play their game, only it made our team worse in the process.

In the 2nd half, we adjusted by using a press which attacked a weakness of 5 guys over 6'5"... they're not as good ball handlers generally as 6'1" guards.