Point Guard Situaton
- Thread starter Stinger92860
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Or Deveion Smith, Tyrese Hunter, Milos Uzan, Lamont Butler, Chucky Hepburn, Elijah Hawkins, Tony Perkins…
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Hurley is betting that just getting healthy gives him enough ammunition to be dominant but we have seen early in the season that was not the case. Mahaney was not capable and Diarra wasn’t enough. He’s gonna have to reach into his magic bag of tricks. The 3 peat fans here are wizzing in the wind.
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We
The team hasn't been dominant once this season. Foolish if he thinks this team can ever be dominant. The pieces haven't gelled, still tinkering with the lineup as March approaches, and there are glaring deficiencies. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. If people accept that this is lost season, they'll have a happier life the next two months.
I made that same point in another post. Big, athletic and can get to the hoop. My guess is Hurley didn’t want to go after someone at his alma mater…
There must have been other athletic PG in the portal. Hopefully he learns that he can’t mold everyone to what he thinks they can be. By soph year, you kind of are what u are as an athlete. How u are used can change, but I doubt your skill change that much
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What is everyone's thought about going small. Diarra, Ball, Stew, AK, and McNeeley?
Pass
Problem is unlike the last 2 years, our guards cant effectively create their own shots off the dribble or attack the zone. So, it allows an athletic team like St. Johns to cheat and play aggressive perimeter defense with a small ball lineup. I think we're most effective with Reed/Sampson in the game to space things out more for our perimeter game by playing more high-low. BTW, our women's team has a very similar problem, despite the "great" perimeter shooters.
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Ugh, then you literally have one competent ballhandler and he's a freshman coming off a month-long injury.
Agreed. I think it’s got to be Solo, let Diarra recover, give Mahaney 5 min each game to see if he’s serviceable based on that matchup (otherwise keep him at the 2 for the rest of his minutes), and start getting Nowell more reps once he’s healthy.
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Nowell is a 5-11 point guard. He will be eaten alive by the bigger guys unless he is MUCH better than he has looked. We need to be looking for a bigger guy who can take over as the primary ball handler.
There is a reason that nobody has won 3 in a row in college in 60 years. Teams change year to year. Players come and go. Sometimes the new ones don’t quite work out. Key guys get hurt. This feels like one of those years when the replacements didn’t fit and guys got hurt.
Assuming we don’t fall apart the rest of the way, we will probably make the tournament with a 7-10 ish seed. I originally thought 5-8 but have RE-thought that. We have 7 games left. We will be underdogs in 3 and Villanova already beat us so that’s a concern too. We have little depth and our top guys are playing with injuries. It will be tough to do much.
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I’d like to find more minutes for Reed myself.
Diarra needs rest, but assuming he was close to 100% going small against Creighton is not a good idea. They would be giving up 2s to Kalkbrenner as he would back down and score against anyone in that lineup unless UConn double teams him on the catch and that would mean leaving open 3 point shooters. Plus, going small would mean UConn would have to outscore Creighton by hitting 3s and they would have more pressure to do so as Creighton would score with ease. It basically would boil down to, can UConn score with more ease than Creighton would if UConn goes small. I don't think so.
Reed needs to put his big boy pants on and play well. He did nothing in the first game at Gampel. He has to do something on offense and force Kalk to play defense. Reed's defense on the pick and roll is terrible and that is what Ashworth and Kalkbrenner love to run.
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I'd rather go large: McNeeley, Ball, Stewie, Alex, and Tarris.
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The miss on Mahaney as a PG was big, but I feel like the injuries to Diarra and Nowell have really exasperated the PG issue. Post Maui the team was really finding it's groove, Mahaney was showing some flashes playing off ball a little bit more, Nowell was shaky but showing flashes too. And Diarra was playing unbelievable.
Now Diarra is fighting through his injury and still playing 30+ minutes a night, Nowell hasn't gotten any consistent playing time because of his injuries, and Mahaney has been forced to go back to his pure PG spot because of the above.
That said, I still see a world where Nowell gets enough confidence over the next month to let Diarra move to a 25 minute role and we're rolling come Big East tourney time. There's a March run hiding in this team
Now Diarra is fighting through his injury and still playing 30+ minutes a night, Nowell hasn't gotten any consistent playing time because of his injuries, and Mahaney has been forced to go back to his pure PG spot because of the above.
That said, I still see a world where Nowell gets enough confidence over the next month to let Diarra move to a 25 minute role and we're rolling come Big East tourney time. There's a March run hiding in this team
HuskyWarrior611
Mid range white knight
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Solo possibly being forced to play PG for the rest of the year while also developing and prepping him for next year would be such an accidentally fortunate development.
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Marat
The Champ Is Here.
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Worth a try , why not ? Use whoever can play and be productive and not be forced into a system.
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Great minds... I've been thinking this for about a week now/when Hurley said Hass was going to have to fight through this all season. Gotta reduce his minutes so he can at least give us 15 minutes a night down the stretch. Liam provides the Tristen/Steph ability to penetrate and see over the defense. And with Liam pushing with pace in half court sets and having physical mismatches in his favor, he should be able to live at the free throw line. And that will get us back to even/close to even FT-wise against more opponents. (My dream scenario?).
Marat
The Champ Is Here.
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Even the 25 min role for Diarra may be too much. I would think 20 min would be better, with some time for Nowell and the remaining time positionless with Liam.
As with many technical, engineering and software jobs, you have to consider failures of systems and hardware and how to effectively minimize down time and improve recovery. Hurley needs to consider himself as the engineer of the UConn team more so going forward. Injuries stink, but his plan has to consider how injuries to players should not put the team into a bad state where they cannot figure out what to do next. Players can be replaceable only if there are adequate backups.