Memphis Post Game Thread | Page 22 | The Boneyard

Memphis Post Game Thread

DRBackup said:
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.
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And I still have a man crush on my Avatar

He made UConn
 
DRBackup said:
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.
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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?
 
HuskyHawk said:
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.
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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.
 
AntG168 said:
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?
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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.
 
DRBackup said:
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.
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As they were last year. Some are only making this an issue because we lost a game. Totally reactionary
 
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temery said:
The cupcake complaint is silly. UConn pretty much always starts with cupcakes, as do many if not most top teams.
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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.
 
AntG168 said:
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
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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.
 
JohnFSilver said:
UConn too advantage of this. Karaban killed when the big guy was on him.

Biggest issue for team was defense and defensive rebounding .
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Alex had 9 points on 9 threes until middle of the second half. He didn't do much of it.
 
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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.
 
Conndog said:
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.
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He did nothing yesterday... only non-zero was minutes played.
 
ctbro1999 said:
When he picked up his 1st foul 18 seconds into the game, I knew it was gonna be a rough one for him.
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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.
 
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.
 
Kitaman said:
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.
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"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?
 
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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.
 
HuskyHawk said:
One thing I neglected to mention. Memphis did something that only one team has done to us previously, they switched on every matchup. Kansas did that last year. Hurley called it out. It takes away our off the ball screen game (which we didn't execute well either). Leaves us with more situations where guys need to attack a mismatch and I think we were often hesitant.

So I'm curious to see whether Colorado attempts to pull that off or not. If they aren't switching we probably get a lot more open looks outside. Still worried about the defense, it's not that good right now.
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You need the right personnel to pull it off, but it doesn’t help we are not as athletic as we were the last two years.
 
RuffRuff said:
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 al
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Nobody here is saying it’s definitely Nowell that would change our guard situation. The only way to do it is actually see him, but Hurley and the staff have seen him a lot in intense practices against starters and so far they don’t believe he can do it I’m guessing. Either that or Shirley’s loyalty to Maheney is to give him more rope. I don’t that’s wrong either but the next 4-5 games will be big for Maheney.
 
Just thinking outside the box a little- you are probably right, Ross might not be a good point guard possibility.
 
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dogpause said:
Love Hurley, but he didn't just cost us the game, he cost us the opportunity to play other higher level teams in this tournament, and the lessons it would have provided. He's lucky he can't/won't be suspended. Could've been a huge victory and building block. It will still be remembered for the great comeback, but it was a cake without icing.

Stewart moves up in the rotation. He gives us some extra muscle too. He needs to hire a PR person, or put his face on a billboard.

Reed is really polished at both ends. Love him. He'll be playing a lot more minutes. Can't believe the Michigan fans weren't more upset about losing him.

Mahaney moves down, but can earn his way back. He needs time to adjust to a higher level of competition, and a more complex system.

Ross needs more minutes so he can develop. He's hardly played.

Liam turned the corner and is an intense competitor.

Ball, like Stewart, has a quiet confidence and takes davantage of every opportunity to shine. They add muscle to our lineup too.

Sampson is better when he come in off the bench. His quickness plays better as a relief pitcher, and his tendency to foul won't put us in a hole. We keep expecting him to be Donovan or Adama, which he's not. Time to invest some minutes in Singare too.

Karaban has displayed more growth than I thought was possible. He's better in every facet of the game. Is he the most mature player we've ever had and maybe the most intelligent too? Coaching material some day.
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Hurley did not cost us the game. The teams play and coaching decisions the previous 40 min did. This fact doesn’t change my feelings about his actions, but to put the cost of losing on a 30 second outburst at the end of the game is confusing disappointment with his behavior and all that went on during the game.
 
lonsharkin51 said:
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.
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It really reminds me of how he kept playing all those minutes w Carlton. I don't care what he did in Houston, he couldn't play here.
 
RuffRuff said:
Death, taxes and the boneyard comparing a UConn player to a great from 30 years ago based on a Hurley quote and one nice play against a tomato can.

Lesson be learned for future years - a breakaway dunk against St Mary’s school for the blind of Oklahoma doesn’t translate to looking a lot like Ray Allen.
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I know you're being hyperbolically funny here, but it is undeniable that the kid has a solid fundamental skillset and has elite athleticism.

He only got 101 minutes of live game time last year, and only 3 games with over 10min. Almost all were garbage-time meaningless minutes

He came out of the gate strong to support the hype, but he's still obviously gonna need game reps to figure things completely out.

I expect him to pay important roles on D and O as we head into Big East play and beyond. And to show more flashes of play that remind us of the best of past UConn greats!
 
temery said:
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.
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Have you seen an optometrist lately? He can't hold his ground. He doesn't have an eye of rebounds. Hope I'm wrong but this is four years later.
 
jimva said:
Hurley did not cost us the game. The teams play and coaching decisions the previous 40 min did. This fact doesn’t change my feelings about his actions, but to put the cost of losing on a 30 second outburst at the end of the game is confusing disappointment with his behavior and all that went on during the game.
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I disagree. The team was in position to win until his outburst. His T put us in a hole that the team could not climb out of.
 
jibsey said:
Nobody here is saying it’s definitely Nowell that would change our guard situation. The only way to do it is actually see him, but Hurley and the staff have seen him a lot in intense practices against starters and so far they don’t believe he can do it I’m guessing. Either that or Shirley’s loyalty to Maheney is to give him more rope. I don’t that’s wrong either but the next 4-5 games will be big for Maheney.
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We desperately need guard penetration on offense and the ability to stop guard penetration against us defensively.
 
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