It's going to be the 4th year in a row...

[McLovin]

...where we struggle to have a consistent offense.

We failed to get out in transition and I didn't understand why we kept running the same half court set yesterday, giving Carlton the ball 25 feet from the basket, handing it off to Akok / Polley , passing to CV/ AG who then lobbed a pass back to Carlton at the free throw line (which kept getting stolen). We ran that like 10 times and not sure any resulted in a baskets and most ended in a turnover. Our half court offense remains terrible and at this point regardless who is on the floor (old blood or new blood) that won't be changing any time soon. There will be plenty of turnovers and lots of missed shots against power conference caliber teams.

With that said, I would love to see more lineups with Akok, Sid and Bouk in it. Yes, the half court offense would still be stagnant, but that is a unit who can get out and run and put up points in transition. Until Akok and Bouk, our 2 most talented players, can get comfortable creating their own offense I'm not sure things will get much better offensively this season. Sid will probably never be an offensive weapon, but I'd give up the shooting ability of Polly at the 3 to have a spark plug guy who can leap and get some boards / push the tempo up the floor.

But hey, I'm probably wrong.

 

[boog204]

The first 10ish minutes the offense looked excellent. Moving the bigs away from the hoop creates spacing. The hand offs allowed back screens to get the bigs good positioning. When we were up 10, nobody was complaining about our half-court sets. Then AG went out for a bit, Vital resorted to hero-ball, the other guards gave us nothing, and we never adjusted.

 

[McLovin]

The first 10ish minutes the offense looked excellent. Moving the bigs away from the hoop creates spacing. The hand offs allowed back screens to get the bigs good positioning. When we were up 10, nobody was complaining about our half-court sets. Then AG went out for a bit, Vital resorted to hero-ball, the other guards gave us nothing, and we never adjusted.

You're definitely right - without AG things took a turn. That has been a consistent theme this entire year.

And I'm not opposed to spacing the floor, but Indiana adjusted to our scheme and we never went away from it, even after AG was back in for most of the second half.

 

[Shine33]

...where we struggle to have a consistent offense.

We failed to get out in transition and I didn't understand why we kept running the same half court set yesterday, giving Carlton the ball 25 feet from the basket, handing it off to Akok / Polley , passing to CV/ AG who then lobbed a pass back to Carlton at the free throw line (which kept getting stolen). We ran that like 10 times and not sure any resulted in a baskets and most ended in a turnover. Our half court offense remains terrible and at this point regardless who is on the floor (old blood or new blood) that won't be changing any time soon. There will be plenty of turnovers and lots of missed shots against power conference caliber teams.

With that said, I would love to see more lineups with Akok, Sid and Bouk in it. Yes, the half court offense would still be stagnant, but that is a unit who can get out and run and put up points in transition. Until Akok and Bouk, our 2 most talented players, can get comfortable creating their own offense I'm not sure things will get much better offensively this season. Sid will probably never be an offensive weapon, but I'd give up the shooting ability of Polly at the 3 to have a spark plug guy who can leap and get some boards / push the tempo up the floor.

But hey, I'm probably wrong.

Sidney Wilson brought great energy last night. Thought he deserved a few minutes than what he got.

Also would like to add that every time I’ve watched him he looks physically a bit bigger and stronger with more muscle.
You can tell he’s working hard in the weight room. Guy is going to be a stud by his senior year.

 

[boog204]

You're definitely right - without AG things took a turn. That has been a consistent theme this entire year.

And I'm not opposed to spacing the floor, but Indiana adjusted to our scheme and we never went away from it, even after AG was back in for most of the second half.

One of our biggest issues is that our guards are just not good distributors. While AG can get in the lane, he over penetrates and gets himself into trouble. CV's handle is just too inconsistent to make things happen. So it looks to me that DH is using Akok in particular to space the floor b/c he is a threat so that there is a bit more room to roam. The problem became, though, that our guards were so bad with their entry passing and handle and on DH, he never really changed things up. At the same time though, we are severely limited by AG and CV.

I really like CV. I think he has played as hard as any player who has ever been here and there are times where he is an outstanding contributor. Unfortunately, it is in his DNA (and maybe out of team necessity) that when he is off, he just tries to do more and that becomes a net negative. AG on the other hand, is just a shell of whatever he was coming in. He cannot shoot, he over penetrates/over dribbles, and his passing is very loose. We will only go as far as these two guys can take us because as good as Bouk is, he is not ready to be the guy and Carlton and Akok cannot create anything on their own. They need to get the ball in good positioning or they (primarily Carlton) are a turnover machine.

 

[superjohn]

We will only go as far as these two guys can take us because as good as Bouk is, he is not ready to be the guy and Carlton and Akok cannot create anything on their own. They need to get the ball in good positioning or they (primarily Carlton) are a turnover machine.

This is wrong and I'm scared as hell Hurley won't fix it. Having one player play low basketball IQ hero ball is bad enough but having your two guards do it is just too much to overcome. If we continue to let it happen, we don't have a chance at the NCAA's. Gilbert has to play for his dribbling, and breakdown/passing abilities. Vital's role has to be reduced. Hurley needs to trust more in Bouknight.
Sure there will be mistakes but the upside is so much greater, Vital isn't ever changing his stripes.

 

[MDHuskFan]

Unfortunately a lot of the bad we get from AG & CV come from them doing thing outside their skill sets, but things that are necessary in order to run an offense.
With AG out, it seemed our offense had zero ability to penetrate and get the defense off guard where we could find good shots. AG just struggles to finish among the trees, but he does occasionally have to put it up to keep the D honest.
CV had the confidence to try and penetrate, but the skill set to do something don’t match.
JG backing his defender down at half court versus staying square seem to indicate his handle may not be as desired(I believe other posters said in scouting him his handle was a little off) and he may not need confidence in it.

Jackson as a freshman, without significant progress from the rest of the roster, may be our “drive and dish” guy.

 

[buddy]

This is wrong and I'm scared as hell Hurley won't fix it. Having one player play low basketball IQ hero ball is bad enough but having your two guards do it is just too much to overcome. If we continue to let it happen, we don't have a chance at the NCAA's. Gilbert has to play for his dribbling, and breakdown/passing abilities. Vital's role has to be reduced. Hurley needs to trust more in Bouknight.
Sure there will be mistakes but the upside is so much greater, Vital isn't ever changing his stripes.

Add Gilbert to that too.

 

[KodiacKemba]

I’m trying to figure out who’s the offensive guy Hurley’s running the offense through cuz if it’s going to be Carlton he’s going to struggle passing out of doubles, getting tired and worn out , force shots with his weak left hand , his total efficiency will go down drastically.... looks like we have a team to get the tournament but if Hurley don’t put guys in the right places, and adjust accordingly we will lose every close game and coaching matters tournament time

 

[XLCenterFan]

Carlton needs to not get the ball anywhere near the 3-point line.

He's huge. He should be posting up and putting his elbow through the defenders chest and going to the rim.

 

[boog204]

This is wrong and I'm scared as hell Hurley won't fix it. Having one player play low basketball IQ hero ball is bad enough but having your two guards do it is just too much to overcome. If we continue to let it happen, we don't have a chance at the NCAA's. Gilbert has to play for his dribbling, and breakdown/passing abilities. Vital's role has to be reduced. Hurley needs to trust more in Bouknight.
Sure there will be mistakes but the upside is so much greater, Vital isn't ever changing his stripes.

Neither is AG... He's been putrid this year. Our guards have to play better or we will be a .500 team again. Bouk can help and I would like to see him get more time, but he has to figure out how to play within the team concept, too and bring something else to the table if he's not playing well offensively.

 

[uchusky32]

Hard to have a consistent offense when you have 22 turnovers and most of them were unforced. We struggle getting the ball in the post. When Jish gets the ball are the top.of the key and the guards run away from him he's aturnober ready to happen. He can't drive to the hoop that far out.

Secondly when CV thinks he's Jordan we can't be consistent.

 

[AdamaNation]

The first 10ish minutes the offense looked excellent. Moving the bigs away from the hoop creates spacing. The hand offs allowed back screens to get the bigs good positioning. When we were up 10, nobody was complaining about our half-court sets. Then AG went out for a bit, Vital resorted to hero-ball, the other guards gave us nothing, and we never adjusted.

Our bench has disappeared since Miami.

 

[intlzncster]

...where we struggle to have a consistent offense.

We failed to get out in transition and I didn't understand why we kept running the same half court set yesterday, giving Carlton the ball 25 feet from the basket, handing it off to Akok / Polley , passing to CV/ AG who then lobbed a pass back to Carlton at the free throw line (which kept getting stolen). We ran that like 10 times and not sure any resulted in a baskets and most ended in a turnover. Our half court offense remains terrible and at this point regardless who is on the floor (old blood or new blood) that won't be changing any time soon. There will be plenty of turnovers and lots of missed shots against power conference caliber teams.

With that said, I would love to see more lineups with Akok, Sid and Bouk in it. Yes, the half court offense would still be stagnant, but that is a unit who can get out and run and put up points in transition. Until Akok and Bouk, our 2 most talented players, can get comfortable creating their own offense I'm not sure things will get much better offensively this season. Sid will probably never be an offensive weapon, but I'd give up the shooting ability of Polly at the 3 to have a spark plug guy who can leap and get some boards / push the tempo up the floor.

But hey, I'm probably wrong.

It's quite simple. We have the same/similar personnel. New personnel has arrived but is too green.

We struggle to rebound, and we have 1.5 guys* who can get their own shot**. You're going to struggle big time under those 2 conditions no matter what you do.

*Bouk is the 1. Gilbert is the .5; he can break guys down but gets stuffed too often to get full marks
**And because we can't handle, we turn it over a lot, which exacerbates things

And on top of that, we don't pass well.

 

[Hurleyman216]

A lot of over reactions to this loss. We played an awful game (even worse than St. Joes) and still had a chance to win. I don’t think we’ll have another game this season where Vital, Gilbert, Adams and Bouknight all play as poorly as they did last night in the same night. If even one of those guys shows up and plays average last night we win that game going away. I’m not going to blame the refs, but we had the chance to put that game away in the first half and the combination of ticky tack foul calls and having Akok sit broke our momentum and allows Indiana to hang around. I agree with others that the hockey subs need to stop. Having Bouknight sit for the first 6-8 minutes of each half is also not working. These things will get fixed and you guys can all blame Hurley, but it was the team (especially the guards) that lost this game. Our defense has come a long way, the offense seems to be 2 steps forward and 1 step back. When we share the ball and run through our sets and guys make hard cuts and move without the ball our offense looks great, when we chuck up 3’s or drive into traffic and turn the ball over we look terrible. It will improve or we won’t be dancing this year, but we’re going to win a lot of games just on defense alone. The offense will come with time.

 

[superjohn]

A lot of over reactions to this loss. We played an awful game (even worse than St. Joes) and still had a chance to win. I don’t think we’ll have another game this season where Vital, Gilbert, Adams and Bouknight all play as poorly as they did last night in the same night. If even one of those guys shows up and plays average last night we win that game going away. I’m not going to blame the refs, but we had the chance to put that game away in the first half and the combination of ticky tack foul calls and having Akok sit broke our momentum and allows Indiana to hang around. I agree with others that the hockey subs need to stop. Having Bouknight sit for the first 6-8 minutes of each half is also not working. These things will get fixed and you guys can all blame Hurley, but it was the team (especially the guards) that lost this game. Our defense has come a long way, the offense seems to be 2 steps forward and 1 step back. When we share the ball and run through our sets and guys make hard cuts and move without the ball our offense looks great, when we chuck up 3’s or drive into traffic and turn the ball over we look terrible. It will improve or we won’t be dancing this year, but we’re going to win a lot of games just on defense alone. The offense will come with time.

Vital and Gilbert have both played that terribly in all three losses, they've been allowed to make the same boneheaded losing plays over and over. If it's not fixed the results will be the same.

 

[fgbrault]

...where we struggle to have a consistent offense.

We failed to get out in transition and I didn't understand why we kept running the same half court set yesterday, giving Carlton the ball 25 feet from the basket, handing it off to Akok / Polley , passing to CV/ AG who then lobbed a pass back to Carlton at the free throw line (which kept getting stolen). We ran that like 10 times and not sure any resulted in a baskets and most ended in a turnover. Our half court offense remains terrible and at this point regardless who is on the floor (old blood or new blood) that won't be changing any time soon. There will be plenty of turnovers and lots of missed shots against power conference caliber teams.

With that said, I would love to see more lineups with Akok, Sid and Bouk in it. Yes, the half court offense would still be stagnant, but that is a unit who can get out and run and put up points in transition. Until Akok and Bouk, our 2 most talented players, can get comfortable creating their own offense I'm not sure things will get much better offensively this season. Sid will probably never be an offensive weapon, but I'd give up the shooting ability of Polly at the 3 to have a spark plug guy who can leap and get some boards / push the tempo up the floor.

But hey, I'm probably wrong.

Growing pains. Hopefully, by the end of the season we will be much better and more consistent and be in "the big dance" or at at least the NIT. I would be very happy with making the "Big Dance" and consider it a real bonus winning the first game. If in the NIT I would be very happy if they could win their 1st and 2nd games.

 

[Hurleyman216]

Vital and Gilbert have both played that terribly in all three losses, they've been allowed to make the same boneheaded losing plays over and over. If it's not fixed the results will be the same.

Unfortunately Hurley is a sort of old school guy when it comes to leadership and roles. Like it or not he is entrusting Gilbert and Vital as his senior leaders. Will we lose some games because of this? Absolutely (especially if they play as poorly as last night). He’s still establishing a culture and like it or not CV has been a big part of that. The guy busts his every game. He’s not perfect and when he tries to win games by himself he is quickly in over his head, but if you’re saying there are 5 guys on our roster you’d want out on the floor with under 1 minute to go that aren’t CV them I would say that’s just plain crazy. Hurley did bench CV for a decent stretch last night after he took an ill advised 3. He just gives us so much with his defense and rebounding that it hurts to not have him in there. When he plays within the team and under control he’s a great player. He’s going to win more games for us this year than he’ll lose. This process of reversing old (bad) habits doesn’t just fix itself overnight.

 

[Hankster]

...where we struggle to have a consistent offense.

We failed to get out in transition and I didn't understand why we kept running the same half court set yesterday, giving Carlton the ball 25 feet from the basket, handing it off to Akok / Polley , passing to CV/ AG who then lobbed a pass back to Carlton at the free throw line (which kept getting stolen). We ran that like 10 times and not sure any resulted in a baskets and most ended in a turnover. Our half court offense remains terrible and at this point regardless who is on the floor (old blood or new blood) that won't be changing any time soon. There will be plenty of turnovers and lots of missed shots against power conference caliber teams.

With that said, I would love to see more lineups with Akok, Sid and Bouk in it. Yes, the half court offense would still be stagnant, but that is a unit who can get out and run and put up points in transition. Until Akok and Bouk, our 2 most talented players, can get comfortable creating their own offense I'm not sure things will get much better offensively this season. Sid will probably never be an offensive weapon, but I'd give up the shooting ability of Polly at the 3 to have a spark plug guy who can leap and get some boards / push the tempo up the floor.

But hey, I'm probably wrong.

Your right. For some reason we love to move ball around weaving around the top of the key just past three point line. Of course it changes with 5 second left.

 

[TheChamps990411]

The first 10ish minutes the offense looked excellent. Moving the bigs away from the hoop creates spacing. The hand offs allowed back screens to get the bigs good positioning. When we were up 10, nobody was complaining about our half-court sets. Then AG went out for a bit, Vital resorted to hero-ball, the other guards gave us nothing, and we never adjusted.

id like to see Akok take advantage of that spacing and drive by his man more. I just don't think hes confident enough in his handle yet and doesn't. When he does he doesnt seem to have trouble getting by his defender. Hes really quick.

 

[superjohn]

Unfortunately Hurley is a sort of old school guy when it comes to leadership and roles. Like it or not he is entrusting Gilbert and Vital as his senior leaders. Will we lose some games because of this? Absolutely (especially if they play as poorly as last night). He’s still establishing a culture and like it or not CV has been a big part of that. The guy busts his every game. He’s not perfect and when he tries to win games by himself he is quickly in over his head, but if you’re saying there are 5 guys on our roster you’d want out on the floor with under 1 minute to go that aren’t CV them I would say that’s just plain crazy. Hurley did bench CV for a decent stretch last night after he took an ill advised 3. He just gives us so much with his defense and rebounding that it hurts to not have him in there. When he plays within the team and under control he’s a great player. He’s going to win more games for us this year than he’ll lose. This process of reversing old (bad) habits doesn’t just fix itself overnight.

There are 5 guys I want on the court over CV with one minute to go.

Could he be a useful player to have on the court with the game on the line, yes but he never adheres to what his proper role should be. We all knew if the IU player missed the ft, CV was going to get the ball and race up the sideline right into a trap before turning it over or forcing up a contested terrible shot, why? Because it's the same script we've been watching for four years.

I know Hurley talks about the seniors and how we need them to lead and they are the ones who will carry us to postseason play. Sadly I think he's going to let it be our ondoing this year. The process of fixing bad habits won't fix itself when you keep allowing the guys with bad habits to lose games for you. CV always gives his all and we all applaud him for that but I don't see how he's a big part of the culture change when he keeps making the same low bball IQ plays over and over, that's the exact culture we're trying to get away from. A guy like Akok plays hard every second and he also plays smart, it's something CV has never figured out.

 

[superjohn]

id like to see Akok take advantage of that spacing and drive by his man more. I just don't think hes confident enough in his handle yet and doesn't. When he does he doesnt seem to have trouble getting by his defender. Hes really quick.

He did that one time last night where he had the beautiful banker on the run.