Memphis Post Game Thread

[Gurleyman]

We kinda got punched in the mouth at Kansas last year. We hung in and had a chance, but it felt like this one where facing a higher level of athleticism caught us off guard and took us out of what we wanted to do. And we had already played Indiana and Texas. Indiana came after 3 cupcakes - perhaps Indiana was a better matchup than Memphis was, but the formula was pretty similar.

Two years ago we played 5 cupcakes before Oregon and beat them pretty easily (and then Alabama and Iowa State).

So the run of cupcakes building into the exempt tournament where we open with an unranked opponent and then build into bigger challenges has been the way we’ve scheduled. This Memphis team was maybe too good this year to be the intermediate step … but those things are unknown in the portal era.

 

[Sphinx]

Lord knows I haven't read the whole thread, but I'm surprised I haven't seen much about Dan Hurley's inability to win the close ones. Monday was yet another example -- and the reason is not new. Games that come down to the wire are largely decided by the refs, and the refs aren't ever gonna decide in favor of Dan Hurley.

 

[DRBackup]

Hey, if you don't like Hurley. You have to give back the nattys because that's what makes Hurley Hurley.

Same thing I used to say about Calhoun when people would complain about the yelling and the swearing. That was part of who Calhoun was. Its a package deal.

 

[willie99]

“The whistle favored Memphis the entire game…”
Every losing team’s fans always think the refs had it in for them

The box score don't lie

And it took Two T's to win that game, 4 free throws on top of their yuuuuuge advantage to begin with

 

[DRBackup]

Lord knows I haven't read the whole thread, but I'm surprised I haven't seen much about Dan Hurley's inability to win the close ones. Monday was yet another example -- and the reason is not new. Games that come down to the wire are largely decided by the refs, and the refs aren't ever gonna decide in favor of Dan Hurley.

Goes without saying that they should do their job without favoring either team, regardless.

 

[willie99]

Same thing I used to say about Calhoun when people would complain about the yelling and the swearing. That was part of who Calhoun was. Its a package deal.

And I still have a man crush on my Avatar

He made UConn

 

[TheHorde]

Same thing I used to say about Calhoun when people would complain about the yelling and the swearing. That was part of who Calhoun was. Its a package deal.

And notice that over the past two years we didn’t really see many questionable officiating calls. Granted the teams were so talented that it likely wouldn’t have mattered much if there were. But is it possible that the seeds Hurley planted about being treated fairly stuck?

 

[superjohn]

I agree 100%. When he decided to come here I never imagined he's be anything but a SG. Then Ball evidently made a leap and Hurley tried to work Mahaney into the starting lineup. I don't think that will continue much longer. He's the backup SG on this team. The microwave off the bench. We got lucky with Cam being able to facilitate despite not being a PG.

Diarra needs to start and they need to try a lot harder to run offense through McNeeley up top, as they did Castle last year. I have more faith in McNeeley learning that role. Use him like the Celtics use Tatum to some extent. When Nowell is healthy they need to get him some minutes and see if he can run the team at PG.

It's a challenge for Hurley to figure out. From a talent perspective I think I'd rank our guys
McNeeley, Alex, Stewart, Ball, Ross, Reed. Not sure who's next. There's not a true facilitator among our top 6 players. Last year we had 3. So he has to try to get Liam, Solo and/or Ross to own that. Ross should be practicing at PG right now.

I agree with you. We always talk about positionless basketball and it seems like we have players on this team who fit that mold. I'm not convinced we need a tradional point guard, obviously it would be ideal to have one but we're sacrificing so much if Mahaney can't pull it off and it's a bit hard to envision it all clicking for Mahaney in that role. I think he will eventually play better but he's going to be at a real disadvantage against athletic teams like Memphis, Marquette, Johnnies it just is what it is.

Back to positionless basketball. I don't see why Liam, Solo, and Jaylin can't bring the ball up. Teams hardly full court press anymore and if they do it's just an occasional thing, long gone are the days of 40 minutes of hell Arkansas and Louisville.

Since Mahaney and Diarra aren't really dribble drive guys I don't see why we can't get the ball up court with our 5 best players and then initiate offense through Alex, Liam, and Jaylin in the halfcourt. They all have the size to see over defenses, they're all good decision makers and passers. It makes us a lot bigger and more athletic.

If Hurley is deadset on Hass being our energy, change of pace guy off the bench and he doesn't have plans of handing the reins over to Nowell this seems like something that should be explored a lot more.

29 minutes for Hass and 24 minutes for Mahaney is too much when they're both struggling mightily and we're having so much trouble guarding more athletic players.

 

[DRBackup]

The way we schedule has shown to work. Back to back national championships. 19 straight neutral straight wins. 43-3 in our last 46 games and 1 loss proves that it’s flawed?

Totally true. Still, there is a difference between weaker teams and the bottom of the barrel. The 4 teams we played before Memphis were some of the worst teams in the entire country.

 

[KingAG]

Totally true. Still, there is a difference between weaker teams and the bottom of the barrel. The 4 teams we played before Memphis were some of the worst teams in the entire country.

As they were last year. Some are only making this an issue because we lost a game. Totally reactionary

 

[Iluvsuebird]

But he wasn't wrong.

Yes he was. The game was on the line. The one you don't do in that spot is lose your damn mind.

 

[Iluvsuebird]

The loss is on Danny, but not for the T. Everyone in the world could see that Mahaney and Samson weren’t working, but Danny played them way too much to start the second half.

This.

 

[DogMania]

The cupcake complaint is silly. UConn pretty much always starts with cupcakes, as do many if not most top teams.

I don't think it's silly. These prior teams weren't cupcakes, but more like bonbons. Yes, most play these types of programs early, but they should have added at least one solid program before the tournament to get them ready for what they faced.

I doubt anyone here would say they were ready and prepared for the size, athleticism, quickness and tanacity they faced. Memphis just about completely disrupted their motion offense and they seemed lost as to how to exploit their aggressive perimeter D and double teams throughout much of the game. Yes, they had some success taking it inside or finding the open man, but not enough.

And as for their D, they struggled to keep them from driving to the basket and closing out on their 3 Pt shooters.

Lots to work on, and I'm confident they'll get much better. Their early weak schedule didn't prepare them enough. I know they have pretty much a team where most of the players are taking on new roles, and the staff needed to see who would fill these roles and try to build some chemistry. With that said, they simply need to add at least one team that was close to their level of size and athleticism to prepare for yesterday's game. I wasn't surprised by the outcome, and proud how they fought back and almost won a game that exposed many of their current weaknesses.

 

[DRBackup]

There is not evidence for this. At all. The evidence actually suggest that the way we’ve been scheduling works. One loss is not enough to challenge that. Memphis didn’t win tonight because they played San Francisco. They won because we couldn’t guard. Nothing would have changed that tonight except a personnel change

Yeah, I'm not sure there's any evidence either way. To say that playing a few teams in the #325 - #360 somehow correlates to great success later in the year is nonsense. What is hard to argue is that playing better competition wouldn't be beneficial to the team. It would. How much is the only open question.

 

[alphasigko]

Johnson will should spend a lot of time “riding the pine”.

FIFY - Not sure he will though. If not "riding the pine", he should certainly not start over Reed.

 

[HuskyHawk]

UConn too advantage of this. Karaban killed when the big guy was on him.

Biggest issue for team was defense and defensive rebounding .

Alex had 9 points on 9 threes until middle of the second half. He didn't do much of it.

 

[temery]

Tough I am lol

You better start eating your spinach. ;-) Or use a coma. Or a comma. I can't remember which is which and I'm not gonna look it up.

 

[Conndog]

Well, if Mahaney so far isn’t satisfactory playing point, then either he needs more time to improve, or someone else needs to play that position. Diarra is experienced, but he can’t play whole game, plus he is shorter than ideal. Also, it would improve things if point guard can take it inside more. I haven’t seen enough of Nowell but a lot of people are high on him, so I’d like to see him get more minutes. But he too is short. What about experimenting with Ross at the point? Didn’t he play some point prior to college? I thought he had a growth spurt- his height is fantastic and he certainly is athletic. Would love to see him do to his opponent what the Memphis guards did against UConn yesterday.

 

[TheHorde]

You better start eating your spinach. ;-) Or use a coma. Or a comma. I can't remember which is which and I'm not gonna look it up.

Touché.

 

[uconnfan68]

Well, if Mahaney so far isn’t satisfactory playing point, then either he needs more time to improve, or someone else needs to play that position. Diarra is experienced, but he can’t play whole game, plus he is shorter than ideal. Also, it would improve things if point guard can take it inside more. I haven’t seen enough of Nowell but a lot of people are high on him, so I’d like to see him get more minutes. But he too is short. What about experimenting with Ross at the point? Didn’t he play some point prior to college? I thought he had a growth spurt- his height is fantastic and he certainly is athletic. Would love to see him do to his opponent what the Memphis guards did against UConn yesterday.

He did nothing yesterday... only non-zero was minutes played.

 

[temery]

When he picked up his 1st foul 18 seconds into the game, I knew it was gonna be a rough one for him.

In Samson's defense, he only played 14 minutes according to the box score. His foul troubles allowed Reed to have a monster night. Credit Samson ;-) jk.

I totally get the frustration about Samson's mind boggling fouls. But I'll take undisciplined aggressive defense over allowing uncontested shots, free passes, etc.

And the OT technical - the kid he pushed ran into him from behind. It was a reflex reaction. No excuse for pushing the player, but it wasn't simply blind aggression. My guess is the refs saw this when considering the follow-up technical, which was a little lame.

I love Samson. It's not easy to be the best you can be, after three seasons of Helter Skelter playing time. I'm glad Hurley seems to be giving him a chance to settle in to a stronger role.

Samson will be a big part of this year's success.

 

[RuffRuff]

Haven’t really seem anything out of Ross that exhibits the kind of bounce you need to play the 1 or 2, and to fill that much needed void. He’s a 3, who is clearly still developing and towards what feels more like the Swiss Army knife profile. What this team is dying for right now is great ball handlers that can create, and defend. He got beat twice yesterday on plays Memphis cleared the floor to take him one on one. Not really sure what he brought to the floor yesterday, being a Reggie Lewis clone and all.

 

[Steve UConn72]

The reality is that many teams RIGHT NOW are pretty much equal to us, especially after losing NBAer's Cam, Clingan and Castle and our All American Newton. We are still under construction with freshman, new starters with our All American Karaban.

Memphis was ready and we seemed rusty and out of synch. Typical of new players learning to play with each other facing a talented D1 team. I did not see failure, just uncertainty and executional mistakes (both fixable).

Just saying, this is not our February Team. I just hope fans didn't miss the preview late in the game. Championship DNA was still on display tonight.

"new players learning to play with each other," yes. But didn't I hear that Memphis has 13 new players this year? Granted, they are mostly older, but still, they have to learn to play together. At this point, they seem to be ahead of our efforts to do so.

Speaking of new players, anybody ready for a rule that you can't go into the portal more than twice?

 

[UCONNFAN179]

The sophomore leap NBA talent hype was 100% bonafide hot air.

To be fair, he's probably guarded by Solo and Mahaney in practice so he probably does look like an NBA all star there

 

[Greedo]

Does anyone have a link to a video of the foul on Liam that got Hurley the T? I DVRed the game but it cut off after regular time so I couldn’t see OT.