Stay and watch second half or go into the office

[DogMania]

As I sat in my seat at the XL Center the thought crossed my mind if I should stay and watch the second half or should I simply go into work. What made this thought particularly troubling is that I am off all week on vacation.

This team has gone from being a tough watch to a complete train wreck. Now I realize we're done our best offensive player, Lanier, our only true point guard, Gilbert, and for the time being our best remaining scorer and serviceable point guard in Adams. The team doesn't have a true point guard. They're playing with just seven scholarship players, but with that said they simply played, IMO, below their capability.

I'm really having a hard time putting on a silver lining to this year's team. It would be a boost if they could land Diallo. At least it would give us something new and unknown to watch. That's a big if to hang one's hat on.

I realized these are just College athletes. I generally don't like when fans criticize them. They're not paid professionals. But it's just flat out a bad product to watch. Like it or not we spend time and money to watch the team. A big part is to support them as fans but we do it as a form of entertainment. In what we're watching really hasn't been very entertaining. Hopefully when Adams returns, the team will be more competitive and a tad more entertaining. They're just really hard to watch right now.

I often joke about talking folks off the ledge, but I feel like I it's me this time, and I simply didn't bother climbing the stairs, but instead simply checked myself into the asylum for the time being. Am I alone, or has the UConn Hoops Home for the Mentally Anguished gotten a tad crowded?

 

[Chief00]

As I sat in my seat at the XL Center the thought crossed my mind if I should stay and watch the second half or should I simply go into work. What made this thought particularly troubling is that I am off all week on vacation.

This team has gone from being a tough watch to a complete train wreck. Now I realize we're done our best offensive player, Lanier, our only true point guard, Gilbert, and for the time being our best remaining scorer and serviceable point guard in Adams. The team doesn't have a true point guard. They're playing with just seven scholarship players, but with that said they simply played, IMO, below their capability.

I'm really having a hard time putting on a silver lining to this year's team. It would be a boost if they could land Diallo. At least it would give us something new and unknown to watch. That's a big if to hang one's hat on.

I realized these are just College athletes. I generally don't like when fans criticize them. They're not paid professionals. But it's just flat out a bad product to watch. Like it or not we spend time and money to watch the team. A big part is to support them as fans but we do it as a form of entertainment. In what we're watching really hasn't been very entertaining. Hopefully when Adams returns, the team will be more competitive and a tad more entertaining. They're just really hard to watch right now.

I often joke about talking folks off the ledge, but I feel like I it's me this time, and I simply didn't bother climbing the stairs, but instead simply checked myself into the asylum for the time being. Am I alone, or has the UConn Hoops Home for the Mentally Anguished gotten a tad crowded?

Not being able to shoot is a big liability. We need to incorporate that skill much more into our recruiting. Keep in mind we lost DHam too.

Additionally, our senior class lacks leadership and the ability to play under pressure. Our two best players today were Vitale and Jackson.

I really thought before the injuries that we were about to put it together led by Gilbert with Adams and Larrier as our scorers. I still thought we had some huge vulnerabilities but in my opinion we would have beaten Houston and Auburn this past week.

As I posted in another thread - Despite the obvious (undermanned, fouls & tired) focusing so much energy in both practices and games on zone defenses is walking down the wrong path. It carries over to offense - - we play way too passive and their seems to be no individual accountability or energy.

 

[DogMania]

Not being able to shoot is a big liability. We need to incorporate that skill much more into our recruiting. Keep in mind we lost DHam too.

Additionally, our senior class lacks leadership and the ability to play under pressure. Our two best players today were Vitale and Jackson.

I really thought before the injuries that we were about to put it together led by Gilbert with Adams and Larrier as our scorers. I still thought we had some huge vulnerabilities but in my opinion we would have beaten Houston and Auburn this past week.

As I posted in another thread - Despite the obvious (undermanned, fouls & tired) focusing so much energy in both practices and games on zone defenses is walking down the wrong path. It carries over to offense - - we play way too passive and their seems to be no individual accountability or energy.

They had to play some zone to protect themselves from foul trouble. With just seven available scholarship players, they would run the risk of fouling out and having to play walk-ons.

This is clearly the worst injury-riddled UConn team I can ever remember since I followed them in the late eighties. With that said, they seem to have some chemistry issues even when they were close to full strength at the beginning of the season. Now I'm sure they would have gotten better and figured some things out, but at this point that's all a moot point. You have to play with the players you have.

What hurts any team most is not having a true point guard or at least a combo who knows how to make those around them better. We simply don't have that type of player on the team. Gilbert looks like that kind of player, so something to look forward to next season.

As for this season, I just don't know what it will take for them to be able to play more competitively. Teams are going to zone them as frequent as possible and our team simply looks incapable of breaking the zone with any type of proficiency. I think they need to work at getting more good 3-point shots and making a fair amount of them. It's sort of a catch-22. If you make some outside shots, the zone gets extended and then you can drive the lane. If you're able to drive the lane and score inside, it can open some good 3-point looks at the perimeter. When you can't do either...well...it looks like what we saw the other night.

They are simply a really hard team to watch these days. I'm certainly going to keep on going to the games and rooting for them but at this stage it's hard to really get excited to see what's happening out on the floor. At some point, Ollie needs to decide to focus on certain things that might not result in wins this season, but that has next season in mind. I know this doesn't sound right, but maybe they should start working on feeding the ball to Enoch more often and seeing if he can begin to learn to score more effectively inside, as well as improve in other areas of his game. I'd also think that letting some of the young players like Vital, Jackson and Durham take more shots, though they are taking a lot of shots by necessity already, to gain confidence even when they're not falling at times. I'd like to see the team improve their offensive rebounding, which hasn't been very good all season.

At some point, which was probably weeks ago, we all need to realize that the team has too many flaws to compete most nights, and to look for those subtle areas of improvement that will translate to a competitive and successful season next year.