Providence Post Game Thread

[REB1094]

What is there to say? 5-22 from 3, 10-44 shooting from non-bigs, 35-19 FT difference (they had 31 when we started intentionally fouling, and we had 7 FTA in the last 2 minutes of garbage time so the disparity doesn't look as bad as it actually was)

Easy to blame the refs, because the entire first half and 10-12 minutes of the second half was some of the worst officiating I've ever seen. Someone has got to talk to BE leadership about that, especially after what Goodman said. It was clear from the start that UConn was not going to get a fair whistle. But you'll never consistently win games when you shoot 5-22 from 3, your starting backcourt shoots 9-32, and your spark plugs off the bench score 2 points on 1-8

In crunch time, Providence won EVERY 50/50 ball. Yeah there were foul calls missed to help, but we didn't even pretend to box out or go for rebounds. We got outworked and outhustled.

Honestly not many good things to say about this game. We know exactly what Creighton is going to throw at us, because they threw it at us twice last year. We have a few days to prepare and pull out a statement win on Saturday.

 

[uconntoatl]

Lack of hustle/lucky providence shots/poor defense/missing wide open shots/need more dribble penetration/be stronger with ball on the offense/learn how not to foul

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Providence is a "meh" team that flailed and flopped its way to a win.

 

[geordi]

There was just no intensity. Looks to me like the team has been reading its newspaper articles about how good they are and figure they just have to show up. Danny needs to install some urgency to the way they are playing. Too many missed foul shots. Too many missed bunnies. Too many missed opportunities.

 

[Punkbo]

This one was hard to watch. Second half was absolutely brutal. On to the next one. Need to win at home.

 

[shizzle787]

Providence is a "meh" team that flailed and flopped its way to a win.

You are going to keep this up the whole year aren't you. It's ok. You predicted them to be 5-15 in conference play. It's more likely they go 15-5.

 

[JoCo]

Poor game management tonight, poor use of timeouts! Coach needs to tell Andre not to take threes but take to hoop hard like that dunk he had! UConn needs to be more creative with changing defenses at teams, traps, presses, Box & 1, some zone work!
Hurley needs to keep his mouth closed, his reputation with referee organization not good, Jim got away with much but only after he was seasoned and a national figure! Dan, learn from that! Rest my case!

 

[AdamaNation]

What is there to say? 5-22 from 3, 10-44 shooting from non-bigs, 35-19 FT difference (they had 31 when we started intentionally fouling, and we had 7 FTA in the last 2 minutes of garbage time so the disparity doesn't look as bad as it actually was)

Easy to blame the refs, because the entire first half and 10-12 minutes of the second half was some of the worst officiating I've ever seen. Someone has got to talk to BE leadership about that, especially after what Goodman said. It was clear from the start that UConn was not going to get a fair whistle. But you'll never consistently win games when you shoot 5-22 from 3, your starting backcourt shoots 9-32, and your spark plugs off the bench score 2 points on 1-8

In crunch time, Providence won EVERY 50/50 ball. Yeah there were foul calls missed to help, but we didn't even pretend to box out or go for rebounds. We got outworked and outhustled.

Honestly not many good things to say about this game. We know exactly what Creighton is going to throw at us, because they threw it at us twice last year. We have a few days to prepare and pull out a statement win on Saturday.

It’s hard to shoot well when your being tackled and held through every screen. I’m not talking rubs but if that is the way the game is gonna flow let flow. Not a whistle on one side of the floor every 25 seconds.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

You are going to keep this up the whole year aren't you. It's ok. You predicted them to be 5-15 in conference play. It's more likely they go 15-5.

I clearly got my UConn prediction wrong too.

 

[UConnSwag11]

Can you merge the we are flaw thread with this one?

 

[uconnfan68]

Providence is a "meh" team that flailed and flopped its way to a win.

They kicked our butts. What does that make us?

 

[JustbrewitMan]

We had two 4+ min stretches in the 2nd half where we didn’t score a single point. Nearly half of the 2nd half we were scoreless. Oof.

 

[Billy Jack]

The difference in intensity between the 2 teams was palpable tonight. Anyone who didn’t see that wasn’t paying attention.

It was the refs’ fault? Sure, losers. You’re enabling Hurley.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

Genuine question, what was your opinion on the refs tonight?

PS, I don’t blame the refs for the loss by any stretch.

 

[Hi-Low]

We had two 4+ min stretches in the 2nd half where we didn’t score a single point. Nearly half of the 2nd half we were scoreless. Oof.

Just brutal.

 

[LoyalFanCT]

One loss I understand. Two in a row is troubling.

 

[Beowulf]

idk if this is the thread for this, but def worth mentioning:

the amp was amazing tonight. I graduated UConn in 2014, have seen my fair share of big ones. this was a Wednesday night game in January and I would have thought providence hit 18 buzzer beaters tonight. was a lot of fun to be at outside of losing.

 

[Northbound]

Cooley is a very good coach, he’s done a very good job building that program since he arrived and he’s got kids that are tough and fit his system. They seemed tougher and the aggressor all game - very good defensive pressure and intensity by them.

DH has a penchant for being slow to deploy defensive adjustment when an opposing player is having a big night. We’ve seen it with Kadary, Allen, Hopkins, Reeves, Hawkins, etc. at some point do anything even if its a goofy junk defense to make someone else beat you.

As stated many times by others Big Din need more run. He’s too effective on both ends to have him grabbing wood for long stretches. There were a few times this wvening where there was very poor recognition by the guards when he had mismatches - toss it up to the big man and let him go get it.

Way way to much reliance in the three. We all get the data on shooting percentages 3’s v. 2’s. This issue is that is can limit FT’s and misses have a tendency to create long rebounds that can negate some of our inside presence - hard to crash the boards when the rebound is clanging 15 feet from the hoop. It was inevitable that the threes were going to come back down to earth, it was fantasy to think otherwise.

We have to find a driver off the bounce - I don’t even care if they make it. It can force their bigs to slide allowing for a dump to our bigs if they don’t rotate quickly it help create fouls on opponents, and allows guys to gang rebound with one rotating back to prevent the break. I think Newton did it once or twice tonight - keep pushing it to the hole young fella.

Will be interesting for AS - BE coaches and players have seen him and can scheme foe him so we have to adjust - DH and crew - i’m sure there’s a rule when your man turns to help on AS cut to X or Y, but I’ve not seen it- stranding AS in the post with three dudes around him and saying find the open man is a bad plan.

Where is the movement going towards the hoop without the ball? Lots of perimeter touches and ball movement with a lot of effort this evening, but when we getit to the bigs and your defender turns to sag or double where at the hard cuts to the hoop - even jab or V cuts - could be happening and im just missing it.

They were tougher from the jump and never for flustered - their defensive pressure was outstanding.

This is said with the admission that im not a basketball coach.

 

[Harhod]

Andre Jackson needs to stop fighting to be the last player holding the ball after the refs blow the whistle to call a held ball. Especially in garbage time, down 11 on the road. And then running his mouth to other player. I would say, "Lead by Example" and stop the constant chipping and chirping, but perhaps Andre has taken that advice too much to heart himself, and simply follows in the footsteps of his Coach, whose bark is certainly louder than his bite.

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

Will be interesting for AS - BE coaches and players have seen him and can scheme foe him so we have to adjust - DH and crew - i’m sure there’s a rule when your man turns to help on AS cut to X or Y, but I’ve not seen it- stranding AS in the post with three dudes around him and saying find the open man is a bad plan.

Where is the movement going towards the hoop without the ball? Lots of perimeter touches and ball movement with a lot of effort this evening, but when we getit to the bigs and your defender turns to sag or double where at the hard cuts to the hoop - even jab or V cuts - could be happening and im just missing it.

The cuts would be great and work well if AS was a better passer.

 

[SubbaBub]

Film has caught up. Play is too sloppy. We panic late in close games.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

Back when we we undefeated, we debated what it would take for a team to beat us.

The minimalist summary was: Us having a horrible shooting night & the other team shooting the lights out.

That’s essentially what happened last night.

We shot awful from everywhere.

PC made a bunch of end-of-shot clock low-percentage prayer 3s (and some wide open looks too).. Made the most of a generous whistle by shooting 29/35 from the charity stripe.

Most points wins the game.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Putting aside Goodman's public comments about Hurley, maybe the Big East officiating is not just a UConn problem. Biased and poor officiating is often homecourt based. Conventional wisdom is that poor officials either consciously or subconsciously hand the home team more than its share of 50/50 calls. An easy way to test this (without watching hours of game film) is to look at home records in a conference. Less biased officiating should result in a less extreme home court W/L record within conference games, particularly of games between teams of similar caliber.

The Big East home record is 16-10, which is not great, not terrible, and could simply be a function of better teams winning on the road. But when you break the Big East into tiers, it looks a little different:

1) UConn, PC, Xavier, Marquette, Creighton - Home record of 11-0
2) Villanova, Butler, Seton Hall, SJU - home record of 4-6
3) Depaul, GTown - Home record of 1-4

The two uncompetitive teams are 40% of the home losses for the entire conference.

There is not a single road win over a higher or same tier team so far this season. In games within the same tier, the home team is 7-0. Of those 7 games (PC/UConn, PC/Marq, Xav/UConn, Marq/Creighton, Vill/SJU, SHU/SJU, Dep/GTown), only 2 of them (PC/Marq and Dep/Gtown) were decided by less than 10 points. Basically, if you go on the road in the Big East, you aren't just going to lose, but you are going to lose big, even against a similar level of competition.

It is early in the season, but that is an interesting record of dominance by the home team in games that should be 50/50, or maybe 60/40 (providing for some home court advantage beyond the officiating). But 100/0? That could be a sign that the conference has an officiating problem. This weekend, there are two games that fall into this category: UConn/Creighton and SHU/Butler. Next week, there is Butler/SJU, UConn/Marq, Creighton/Xavier, Villanova/Butler, Prov/Creighton, Marq/Xavier. Will the Big East revert to the mean, or will the home team continue to dominate what should be competitive games? Let's see what happens over the next week or so and revisit.

If you want to do a quick test of this theory, look at the Big 12. It is hard to tier that conference since there have only been 10 conference games played and all the teams except maybe Kansas seem really close, but the home teams' record is 5-5 in those games and almost every game has been competitive. The two games decided by 10+ points were Kansas State at Texas and Baylor at Iowa State, and in one case (Kstate at Texas) the road team won comfortably. I think there is some evidence that the Big 12's officiating is better and less biased than the Big East's.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

Something that really startled me last night was actually a flurry of calls IN our favor. Once PC was up double figures with 2 or so minutes left the refs made 3 random calls I think all on the guy guarding DC in about a 20 second span? Almost like they realized the foul differential was 12-4 or whatever it was and they had to try to somehow even it out.

How did we do from essentially the best defensive team in the country vs Bama, Ok State, ISU, Florida to foul machines who can’t guard anyone once league play started?