No more excuses for Boat

[CTBasketball]

He was playing great.

Then he got injured.

Then he wasn't playing great.

What else should we conclude?

Bazz hurt his hand last year.

And had 10 games of sub 40% shooting from the floor.

What I'm saying is that if Boat has a bad game vs. Houston, some will say he's injured and that's why he played poorly. Even though he got his head over the rim on a block last night.

 

[Deleted at users request]

I'm honestly with the Boat excuses anymore. TOs is the biggest problem on the team and as a leader Boat should lead by example especially with this problem. He is guilty of making many lazy passes himself and it allows his teammates around him to feel more comfortable. As a senior that is frustrating to still see him make those lazy passes like the one Clark picked off for an easy breakaway dunk. There is plenty of talent on this team so I don't want to hear that. They just need to be pushed and set up in the right spots which Boat isn't doing right now. I said at the beginning of the season if this team wants to be successful Boat has to be more of a distributor and show he can be an NBA PG. He has not shown that.

At the beginning of the season he was killing it but nobody was showing up and now he IS getting some help. Maybe not last night but in previous games we have had other guys step out without a good performance from Boat. I'm done making excuses for him. He's the leader and PG he needs to start playing like it more.

 

[Gurleyman]

The only thing I hate seeing on here about Boat is that once he has a great game everyone's like, "Oh that's one of the best PG's in the nation. Why was he left off ESPN's top PG list? He deserves that mid-season Wooden Award watchlist." And then once he has a bad game, "Boat is injured. Dude c'mon stop bashing Boat he's playing on one leg." It's the oddest thing I've ever seen. Boat is a hell of a player, but he's not invincible to the point where he only has bad games because of his past injuries...

His injuries (ankle sprain, deep thigh bruise) have been the sort of things that limit you athletically - speed off the bounce, lift on the J, explosiveness to the rim. At his height and with his type of skills, it reduces what he can do. He's played hurt for the team, but been less effective in doing so, where the selfish thing to do would be to sit it out and make sure you don't look exposed or have bad days in front of scouts. His shot looked way off on the Tulsa/Stanford trip - mid range pull ups that were not even close. I can't crawl inside Boat's brain, but I imagine that still being within two weeks of his thigh bruise meant he didn't have his legs under him or his mechanics back. Rip slumped for a couple weeks after his in 1999, and I think we understood that then he wasn't himself yet.

Yesterday that's not an issue - Boat seems back to 100 percent (or darn close) and just didn't play well or assertively yesterday until late. He turned up the intensity to level 5 with 10 minutes to go - the play where he got spiked from behind on the fast break was actually when where he showed high level athleticism to get the ball and escape from the pack and the guy made a great play coming from behind. He was trying to take the game over - we just didn't get enough stops in the last 10 minutes, and the guys he passed to wide open in the last 10 minutes (RP in the corner, OC in the corner, Dan Hurley at the elbow, AB underneath) didn't make the shots or maybe we'd have really made a run at it. His bad pass that was stolen was a lapse in concentration that can't happen, true.

He's clearly trying to follow the Bazz model and facilitate early and then turn it up, but I think he has a harder time flipping the switch than Bazz did. It isn't necessarily easy to crank it up and play well on cue. I'm not sure he should play that way, especially now that we are 11-8. He should maybe come out aggressively, establish his offense and get in a good rhythm, then look to facilitate.