- Joined
- Aug 30, 2023
- Messages
- 242
- Reaction Score
- 2,127
I woke up this morning and was about to throw myself out the bedroom window (it's only on the 2nd floor) till I read these comments. All outstanding observations. Agree, face-in-the-cylinder is not a foul.Some positives from this game, in no particular order:
-I think we have 3 guys who are ready and willing to take & make big shots, maybe even 4: Alex, Solo, Liam, and Hass
-All of Hass's 3s looked pure...even the crunch time ones. His 9/10 FTs and perfect during crunch time can't be discounted. We don't even have a chance to tie or win that game without his performance in crunch time
-We saw some of the past 2 years' beautiful offense here-n-there. It was mostly with Alex finding cutters or drive/kicking, but its there. Even Samson had a great high/low dish to a cutter.
-Reed needs to be our starter. Guy is just a force on offense and had some ridiculous post moves against a quality 5. What a felonious coaching job Howard did at Michigan
-Stewart looked absolutely fabulous in the 1st half in a long run forced by most of the starters getting into foul trouble. I need to rewatch the 2nd to really try and figure it out but he should have gotten more minutes.
-Our press was very very effective and disruptive. Hopefully we throw it at a team every now and then as a different look and not just when we are behind and desperate.
Some general observations:
-Memphis definitely played like a team of dudes with dozens (for some, hundreds) of CBB games of experience. Even though they don't have a lot of team experience, their gameplan/offense (lots of iso-driving, iso-creating 3's) didn't demand a lot of cohesiveness
-I thought Bilas did a real nice job announcing and commenting on players and refs. He thought the Tarris offensive foul was lame and should've been a play-on, the Liam OTB was a trash call, didn't like the foul calls on Solo (when his face got in the way of a Memphis elbow), and Liam's strip-steal at the end of the game (but understood why the called it). He likes us and gives us a pretty fair shake. Rightly pointed out how Memphis was just absolutely abusing Mahaney as the weak link on the defense whenever he was on the floor.
-The Memphis Centers (Cisse in particular, I think) were really chippy & chirpy. They were constantly slapping away Reeds/Samson's hands, trying to instigate sheisse, talking tons of trash. On more than one occasion, it drew the refs over, who every time seemed to let them continue their antics and gave warnings to our dudes. It's gamesmanship, I know, but still kinda lame, and it finally culminated in Samson's T. Thankfully, it got bailed out by the dumb Memphis dude running over and bumping Samson after he pushed Cisse (?), who, although he couldn't be budged by SJ all game in the paint, reacted as if Samson hit him with a classic Street Fighter Hadouken blast...
I would like to read JustbrewitMan's Brief's more often.