St. John's Post Game Thread

[Hey Adrien!]

One silver lining: this game has made our #1 offseason priority crystal clear:

An immediate impact point guard (like Souley Boum at Xavier or Terry Roberts at Georgia).

Also, in a way, I'm exciting that our next game is against another physical team. We need to regroup and show we can win against not very skilled, but tough as nails teams.

 

[Mike Honcho]

AJ gets his 5th foul with five minutes and change to go, and Sanogo gets ejected. These are our leaders?

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

One silver lining: this game has made our #1 offseason priority crystal clear:

An immediate impact point guard (like Souley Boum at Xavier or Terry Roberts at Georgia).

That’s what Newton was suppose to be.

If Hurley can’t coach them it won’t matter who we bring in.

 

[polycom]

This team is over coached not under coached. It’s not that Hurley doesn’t make enough adjustments he makes too many.

That zone makes no sense, if a play breaks down we don’t know what to do next. As soon as the going gets tough we have no identity. It’s fine though we’ll figure it out someday we are a very good fatally flawed team. As soon as we accept that it makes everything better.

At some point we need a bit of a coach we will say just go play basketball do what makes sense. Don’t over think, so many of our TOs was because of people not doing the natural basketball thing. How are people setting themselves up to be out of bounds when the ball comes to them…lol

 

[Conndog]

Not sure St. John's is mediocre, but this is 4 losses in a row, and this is probably the worst looking one. Again, time and time again, St. John's players just breezed by defenders and had close up shots or passed to teammate for good shot or got fouled. I thought Diarra was supposed to be our best defender- he got beat as much as the others. On offense, it is too predictable. Usually, double team Sanogo and smother Hawkins gets it done- today, even with Hawkins scoring a ton, no one else except Karaban could contribute anything. We did have some plays where they took it to the rim more which is an improvement, but very discouraging especially the 2nd half. I do like they are experimenting with zones, maybe some combination will start to work. I wonder how many more games in a row we will lose, since the personnel won't change- we have what we have, they try hard, but they seem lost everywhere. Maybe this will be like Kemba's team in 2011 and suddenly they will catch fire, but we don't have anyone close to bringing what Kemba did back then.

 

[USNavyDog]

Worst game I have seen in over 2 years. Why we didn't play a simple 2 -3 zone against this team when it was obvious we couldn't guard them in the 1st half is unreal. Also it will allow both Sanogo and DC to be on the floor together. Then on offense St. Johns would not have been able to double team either of them. IF so the other would clean up the miss. Let other teams figure out how to adjust to the lineup we wont out there. Hawkins and Jackson up top and Karaban, DC, and Sanogo. Can't start Newton at this point

When Uconn has their rematch later this year against St Johns at Madison Square Garden....they better use the 2-3 zone and have Sanogo and Clingan on the floor together because St. John's is a horrible outside shooting team. They could've used that game plan today and practically guaranteed themselves a win.

 

[HuskyBaggins]

Lots of blame to go around. Clingan played 9 minutes, Sanogo 30. Not for nothing but the blocking and flagrant calls on Clingan were complete b u l l .

The officiating was trash overall, if they called the foul on the rebound grapple between Clingan and Jones, Clingan wouldn't have had to throw the elbows that started the whole thing. But that's irrelevant. This team flat out STUNK today. Officiating had nothing to do with it.

 

[3RingsCT]

AJ gets his 5th foul with five minutes and change to go, and Sanogo gets ejected. These are our leaders?

Coaching. It’s all coaching.

 

[HailUConn]

! about time to have an adult conversation about the state of this team:

How many games in League plays did we out turned over the opponent?

Take care of the damn ball.

Btw our interior defense sucked…

 

[3rdbass]

Lots of blame to go around. Clingan played 9 minutes, Sanogo 30. Not for nothing but the blocking and flagrant calls on Clingan were complete b u l l .

Unfortunately Clingan got into foul trouble and St. John's Physicality threw him off his game.

 

[Hunt for 7]

Zone defense

 

[Lefty2one]

Hurley is such a blah in-game coach. We can't stop dribble penetration, especially with these stupid schemes. We have no guards who can get to the stripe.

I'm still processing just how bad Newton is. Year 5 under Hurley and we still haven't found a real point guard.

38 minutes from Newton & Jackson: 2 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists. That's not going to cut it.

 

[Kolumbo]

The officiating was trash overall, if they called the foul on the rebound grapple between Clingan and Jones, Clingan wouldn't have had to throw the elbows that started the whole thing. But that's irrelevant. This team flat out STUNK today. Officiating had nothing to do with it.

It was tied at the half. Everyone knows Clingan changes the game in a huge way. Yes, they stink without Clingan. With him? maybe it's a game. Maybe.

 

[3rdbass]

When Uconn has their rematch later this year against St Johns at Madison Square Garden....they better use the 2-3 zone and have Sanogo and Clingan on the floor together because St. John's is a horrible outside shooting team. They could've used that game plan today and practically guaranteed themselves a win.

Yeah no idea why we didn't do that and play the bigs together. That was the only way were gong to beat St. John's today. Having Samson Johnson as an extra big on the bench will help play bigger. Sanogo really isn't much of a defensive presence when in there at Center.

 

[QDOG5]

Everyone and their brother knew SJU can't shoot but drives the ball relentlessly. The answer from the tip was NOT to drape ourselves all over 25% 3 point shooters.

It was worse that we decided to keep draping ourselves all over crappy 3 point shooters for the first 30 minutes of the game without an adjustment.

Perhaps even worse, a 1-3-1 zone. Not running a pack of some kind. Not a 2-3 zone. We played literally the only zone that DOESN'T defend the rim.

It was pathetic. I'm sitting here with an old AAU buddy from my eybl days and he's laughing at just how bad our coach was today.

Our players did not step up to the play today, of that there is no doubt. But I can't expect perfection from flawed 20-year-olds. I DO expect a much better effort from our coaching being paid 4 million a year to coach a stupid game.

I said at the beginning of the season, the only thing that matters to me is the BET and the NCAAT, and I'm sticking by that. But I'm not feeling very good right now.

You are spot on @husky429. I think UConn should incorporate a 2-3 zone for parts of the game going forward. How long can we keep getting beat off the dribble and then fouling until we realize we are not a good perimeter defensive team. Hurley's too stubborn to it so I won't hold my breath.

 

[uconntoatl]

Many of the turnovers are unforced

 

[Scott2Tate]

No defense, couldn’t buy a basket, and for the love of god…does ANYONE know how to drive to the rim outside of Hawkins?

 

[3rdbass]

Hurley is such a blah in-game coach. We can't stop dribble penetration, especially with these stupid schemes. We have no guards who can get to the stripe.

I'm still processing just how bad Newton is. Year 5 under Hurley and we still haven't found a real point guard.

38 minutes from Newton & Jackson: 2 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists. That's not going to cut it.

We had one for the last 2 years and he was a first team All big east.

 

[UConnSwag11]

Diarra, Hawkins, Jackson, Karaban/Sanogo, Clingan

For offense, starting lineup, and any lineup with Sanogo at the 5, is the easiest to scout for multiple reasons.

Our starting lineup, and any lineup with Sanogo at the 5, is the worst on the defensive end.

Sanogo is not a defender, and since our guards can’t keep their guy in front of them, we need Clingan to patrol the paint and clean everyone’s mess up. Similarly like Thabeet did in ‘09, granted that was a defensive style.

 

[freescooter]

At this point, can’t see us beating a first round matchup. Were gonna end up a 4 seed AT BEST.

LOL. 4 seed.

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.

It's not like we brought in Newton, a star at ECU, and Hurley coached him to become what he is here. Bad take, IMO.

He just isn't the right fit for what we need at the point guard position. We need dogs. He's not a dog.

Then why did we bring him in?

Under Hurley we’ve seen the worst PG play since the 90s and it’s year 5. At some point it’s not the players, it’s him.

 

[REB1094]

Great game Hawkins and Karaban. The only guys that wanted to play basketball today. Hawkins 30 piece (despite 7TO) and Karaban with 16 and great effort every play

Sanogo’s box score was good (14/10 on 66%) but was again lost on defense far too often and made bad decisions when the double came. At one point the crowd was BOOING him when he held the ball in the post without making a move while SJU walked into their double team

Everybody else that I didn’t name had 13 points on 3-20 shooting and 19 fouls. And that includes 2 garbage time threes from Joey in the last 90 seconds when we went down 16.

The only thing St Johns is good at is scoring near the hoop, and they are horrible shooters. This game they shot 15% from three and 62% from the line. I’m trying really hard to think of any reason why we let them keep walking to the hoop for layups with no defensive adjustments, but I can’t.

Sure, bench Newton. Certainly deserved it this game. But for who? Diarra 4pts, 4ast, 3TO on 1-4. Calcaterra was 0-6 before his garbage time shots. AJax 2pts, 1ast on 0-2 and fouled out. Alleyne 0-4.

Just got punked and ran off our home floor against a bottom 3 BE team. If there was any time for some soul searching and major adjustments from Hurley, now is the time. The BE has UConn figured out. Time to make the changes to utilize our talent to force other teams to play our game instead of the other way around.

 

[shizzle787]

Who can ? Joey C missed wide open jumpers, Newton had an open three with no defender within 12 feet and missed EVERYTHING

Newton can at least drive, and Calcaterra is a solid passer.

 

[Candyman]

Was Creighton good or did they just play really bad and stupid?

Stupid. They didn’t double sanogo.

 

[SwingDog]

Strangely, our season is looking more and more like Kentucky's. The Wildcats were beaten at home by South Carolina the other day but did bounce back to beat Tennessee on the road.