St. John's Post Game Thread

[F101Voodoo]

The way things are going we will end up a 7 seed

If we are lucky.

 

[MexicoHusky]

Very bizarre year. Tough for me to grasp how easy it was for us in the early season. Vs how exposed we've been in conference play. Also... another year where guard play is just not good enough.

 

[Ratso]

I thought that they blew their load too early. l ‘d love a BE tourney but I’d rather take a sweet 16, and don’t get me wrong final 4 is still the plan

 

[Doctor Hoop]

Again, it took 3-4 years to make UConn even relevant again, let alone bringing in 4 and 5 star recruits.

It shouldn't have taken 3-4 years. Other coaches have done the turn around in much less time. And still there are inexplicable lapses like today. Bum Phillips said of Don Shula, "he can take your'n and beat hizz'n, and take hizz'n and beat your'n." We may be seeing kind of the reverse. When Hurley has a huge talent advantage, fine. But when it's close it comes down to defense, rebounding, offensive execution, shooting. And, oh yeah, game planning for the opposition and then team discipline to execute the game plan. Gotta see more from him on that.

Oh, I know, AAC and all that. But we weren't running away with the AAC either.

 

[huskiesNhoos]

Some of us have been saying that for a while. You can get as many guys as you want. You still need to figure out what to do with them. And you know what? His great recruiting is highly over rated. In five years he hasn’t landed a big time point guard. At some point you need to accent that either he can’t do it or he doesn’t know how to evaluate them. And please don’t say Cole. He was an undersized midmajor combo whe sort of played point for us. This year our big upgrade was to steal the pg from East Carolina. The boneyard went all Gaga over a transfer from a program we consider it embarrassing to be associated with.

I guess this argument is valid for another 5-6 months until some kid named Castle steps on campus...

 

[runner11]

Hurley is a bad in game coach. We haven’t done anything to respond to the way we have been scouted. Fortunately Castle will cover up a lot of his flaws next year.

 

[UConnSwag11]

I guess this argument is valid for another 5-6 months until some kid named Castle steps on campus...

can we hope that Hurley will play him or not cool him off? Can we hope our offense will be creative?

 

[Rico444]

We should hire Ollie to do the game planning. He beat Martelli, Jay Wright, Fred Hoiberg, Tom Izzo, Billy Donovan and John Calipari back to back with a roster that looks like scrubs compared to this one.

Ollie could be an assistant coach again. It's not like he needs the money after the settlement.

Good luck luring him away from the Oyster bar.

 

[uconngb]

Down by 6 in the middle of the second half and the guys gave up. They crack under pressure.

The beginning of the season all shots fell and our ball movement was intentional and surgical (now not seen in the last 5 games). With the made shots we ran the score up so we never were truly worried, guys played with confidence. We were stopping runs by the other teams by making smart plays and hitting shots. We never had our backs truly up against the wall.

We become desperate when only down by a possession or two. It feels like we miss our open shots we freak out and turn to sloppy passes and quick out of rhythm shots. When they don’t drop, our team gives up. You can see it on their faces.

It did seem like Jordan had a look in his eyes, that I haven’t seen yet. He took smart shots and when he came off the screen and didn’t have the space he took it to the basket.

Our “big three” need to play smart and lead by example, sanogo needs to pass out of doubles and Jackson needs to slow down and limit turnovers like when we were undefeated. It feels like two of the three have played poorly in all of our losses

Great analysis and I totally agree

 

[1999GoodSon]

When you're regressing like this it means your process/system is breaking down. Losing badly to Providence was a symptom. Losing even more badly to SJ even with home cooking is a broken system in chaos that needs wholesale changes

Did anyone else feel like "what the hell are they even doing?". Only two ways to go from here. Let's see what happens in Jersey.

 

[Derucky]

I would say Karaban came to play. 16/5/1 with no TOs.

Hawkins came to play other than the 7 TOs. Needs to clean that up.

You have to be physical in the Big East, especially when you start losing. Stop shooting and go strong to the hole. Most of them aren't that type of kid. So don't start a 7'2" kid who is like that - smart.

 

[Derucky]

Can’t help but see the parallels to the Yankees season last year

Amazing start, every player contributing and playing above their averages. National praise and talks of historically good teams….. then….Regress to the mean. Pain in the middle of the season and flaws exposed. The hopeless sunken feeling in the stomach as the dream slowly slips away as the memory of the good times is still so fresh in your mind.

Let’s hope we don’t flame out and look overmatched in the second game of the Tournament like the Yankees.

You have to be physical in the Big East, especially when you start losing. Stop shooting and go strong to the hole. Most of them aren't that type of kid. So don't start a 7'2" kid who is like that - smart.

 

[REB1094]

maybe already addressed in the above posts but honestly it’s too much for me to read. Was there any explanation for David Jones’ elbow to Clingan only getting a flagrant 1 and not a flagrant 2?

They didn’t call anything when it happened. It took 10 seconds and the entire arena screaming before the refs even stopped play to look at a replay.

But then they immediately hit Posh and Diarra with a double T because Diarra was getting in Posh’s face.

And threw Sanogo out of the game at the end for talking to a ref. Then T’d up Anderson for…something??

Very sensitive officiating crew today (not saying that’s a top 10 reason we lost)

 

[huskiesNhoos]

can we hope that Hurley will play him or not cool him off? Can we hope our offense will be creative?

you can hope for whatever you want, I'm not stopping ya

I'm merely addressing that Hurley hasn't landed a big time pg

 

[Derucky]

We can nix any talk about members of this team being ready for the NBA. Only one somewhat close is Hawk and he has no driving game.

He has it, BUT HE WON'T USE IT!

 

[UCan3]

It may be that we are playing as well as we can and that earlier in the season we just got on a roll.

We are playing much like the experts predicated pre-season. Not a top 25 team.

My biggest complaint Hurley is he can’t coach a tight game. He let’s all the little thing go - the lazy passes, the dumb technicals, the lazy reaches and then look befuddled on how we, UConn could possibly lose?

He needs to rethink how he not only coaches the players but to perhaps stop flooding their brains that we are top 5 team when clearly we are not.

 

[Derucky]

Can’t help but see the parallels to the Yankees season last year

Amazing start, every player contributing and playing above their averages. National praise and talks of historically good teams….. then….Regress to the mean. Pain in the middle of the season and flaws exposed. The hopeless sunken feeling in the stomach as the dream slowly slips away as the memory of the good times is still so fresh in your mind.

Let’s hope we don’t flame out and look overmatched in the second game of the Tournament like the Yankees.

Getting outhustled for loose balls says it out. Calhoun would give someone the automatic hook for that.

 

[FlippinCrazy!]

maybe already addressed in the above posts but honestly it’s too much for me to read. Was there any explanation for David Jones’ elbow to Clingan only getting a flagrant 1 and not a flagrant 2?

Seriously, my thoughts exactly. Clingan’s elbow was a basketball play but a shot to the face, probably fits a flagrant 1 in the end. But Jones elbow I thought clearly should’ve been a flagrant 2, clearly dangerous, intentional, etc. If Clingan wasn’t 10 feet taller and 100 pounds bigger than Jones, that would’ve been called a flagrant 2 any day. The guy should’ve been ejected, but instead refs start calling fouls ever 30 seconds to clean the game up, and everyone on our team ends up in foul trouble.

 

[Derucky]

Getting outhustled for loose balls says it out. Calhoun would give someone the automatic hook for that.

Effort has become an issue - it's time for Hurley to start challenging players' cajones - sit them down and leave them there if they're not up to the challenge.

 

[Bobol]

Change in the head coach, maybe?

Calling Rick Pitino

 

[runner11]

The start of this season was historically good. And now that teams are doubling Sanogo and playing off Jackson we are helpless. Coachin “gmalpractice. There is clearly enough talent in this team, even though we do have 1 big flaw. The team seems to play tight in close games and high leverage situations, really throughout Dan’s tenure. Wonder why.

 

[FlippinCrazy!]

Also for all those saying Hurley isn’t a good coach whatever, remember we were unranked team to start the year. We got hot, then now are having trouble adjusting our defense to the amount of fouls being called (which I would say is half our fault and half the refs). We’re also in a shooting slump, even from the FT line. Also, 3 of the losses are against ranked teams in hostile road environments. Give the team a chance to adjust and maybe then start calling for Hurley’s head or whatever.

 

[giddyup]

So if Hurley got URI into the top 25 and won games in the NCAAT, you’re essentially saying that UConn brings him zero extra capabilities to improve.

It’s unreal how much people like to use Hurley as the scapegoat for absolutely abysmal offensive execution. We look like deer in headlights when playing behind.

We can talk about his defensive rotations, sure.

But the PG passive play and turnovers are not on him.

Hurley hasn’t won a damn thing and it’s year 5, and just got exposed for the incomplete coach he is. He simply can’t manage a game and lacks the emotional maturity to recognize his approach won’t get him over the top.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

It’s hard for me to believe that when we haven’t seen him do it again. It makes me ask if it was just a carry over of KO’s coaching or was it Hurley’s new energy or what. Because he hasn’t been able to replicate it since.

Moved the goal post again.

Adams had horrible teams every year except for his freshman year. He never had a chance at showing how good he actually was.

I said as much.

 

[August_West]

I would say Karaban came to play. 16/5/1 with no TOs.

Hawkins came to play other than the 7 TOs. Needs to clean that up.

He can’t. He has no handle. If he dribbled in traffic we are done.