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Message: [QUOTE="DogMania, post: 5097089, member: 21"] Excellent assessment. They don't have the same roster construction as the last two seasons. My guess is they'll make teams expend a lot of energy trying to defend our motion O and trying to get into their own sets as UConn applies a lot of 3/4 and half court pressure. We might not have Castle, but we have a lot of players, a few pesty athletes in Ball, Diarra, Stewart, Ross and Nowell, who can apply a lot of on the ball pressure that should wear teams down as you well noted. What will be important is for them to improve their team defense rebounding, which is more positioning, technique and effort. I'm sure Danny is already having them work at it, and we'll see improvements in the next game. This exhibition was so helpful for the staff and players to see what areas they need a little more focus on. If I were to guess it would be interior D, team rebounding and sustaining their multi-action motion offense for longer stretches to create better scoring opportunities and to wear out the opponent, and not abort the sequences for some of the drives into traffic, early shots and attempted dribble drives. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes taking an early shot or drive to the basket before the D gets set is a good thing, but I thought there were times, especially in the first half where I felt they abandoned their motion offense too early. Also note, that it takes time for all the players to learn how to move quickly through the sequences where they create great scoring opportunities. It simply takes time. They'll be executing at a higher level as the season goes, but learning to stick with it for longer stretches prepares them for it. I got a sense that Hurley got frustrated a few times that they weren't running them as long as he wanted where they took some early shots or dribbled into traffic. This team has a lot of players who can flat out score, more than most collage teams. They'll learn how to maximize that by creating good scoring opportunities in both transition and in the half court. For their first sort of real action after a shaky early stretch, they looked pretty darn good. [/QUOTE]

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