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As I said to my father as we pulled out of the parking garage on Sunday, there aren't many games where there are no positive take-away's, but that was one of them. It was, for my money, the second worst game we played all season, with Wagner being the first. Even though we're a grossly under-manned team playing down one starter - in addition to all the carnage from earlier in the season - with another returning from a concussion and another playing 50% at best, we still under-performed the spread by 15 points and it seemed like it could have been worse.
I'm a little more hopeful after watching the tape, because a lot of that game can be condensed to UConn missing shots. Please don't take any of this as me picking them to win the conference tournament, as this is a team that is prone to missing shots and a lot of them. This might have been rock bottom in that regard, but it was not an anomaly and Cincinnati deserves a lot of credit. The same could well happen at whatever point in Hartford and it would surprise nobody.
That being said, I trust Ollie. He's 15-3 in the postseason for a reason. The guy knows how to coach x's and o's. Maybe it doesn't seem that way sometimes, but there is a very discreet plan to every game and to the extent that that plan is butchered is a function of recruiting and/or player development. There is a reason he won a title with Calhoun's good but not great leftovers - and that is not to say he didn't play a huge role in recruiting and developing them - and there is a reason I firmly believe that he could take over an NBA team tomorrow. My biggest concern is that he is not enough of an to be a college coach, but I think that's mostly unfounded. I have no problems with expectations and I have no problem highlighting some of his flaws. I'm just not ready to even think about looking elsewhere yet. Maybe the operative word in that sentence is yet, but it's still true. I think we're crazy to even whisper about it at this point (admittedly I might not have said that after Sunday).
Speaking of those flaws, though. His last three years has been full of them. I have beaten the match-up zone drum to death, but the moment of truth will arrive on that one this week. If my theory is correct and Ollie has saved it for the conference tournament, it would be quite the stroke of genius. I suspect that's not the case, though, which brings me to my next point:
The mismanagement of Amida Brimah is the single greatest stain on the Ollie era to date. This guy is a far better player than you have been led to belief. He does all the little things to carve out leverage on the glass, he serves an unheralded purpose offensively, he's gotten a lot better as a post defender and out of zone rebounder, and teams don't convert squat in the restricted area (NBA term) with him in the game. You can win with him and you can win because of him, and I say that with not a shred of doubt. I don't want to pull the "I've watched more tape than you" card, but here it goes: lay off him. He's a good player. I would possibly even go as far as to say he's been our best player, all things considered. Him being depicted as a guy who hasn't learned or gotten better is grossly unfair. He does everything that is asked of him and hasn't been placed in a scheme - or with the players - to maximize his ability. That's on Ollie.
He's far from a perfect player. There have been plenty of games where he's let us down. Sunday wasn't one of them. The carnage on the glass can be traced back to one Kentan Facey. He got abused all game and he's given up a lot of them all season. But hey, dude gets rebounds, right? That must mean he's a better player than Brimah? Yeah, not so much.
It wasn't all Facey, though (the guards yielded their fair share from the perimeter), and Facey does plenty of things really well that benefit this team. He didn't do any of them Sunday, though, in what had to have been one of the worst games of his career. In addition to getting worked on the glass, he shot 1 for 9 and did all of his damage in garbage time. Big net negative on both ends, but ultimately nobody will care because we have another game.
Cincinnati tried to iso against Brimah more than any team I have seen, and even though the shiftier Clark/Washington duo posed problems, he more than held his own. Cincinnati scored 1 point per possession in roughly 12 isolation attempts, per my database. In all other possessions, they scored 1.08 points per possession.
The problem was obviously the other end, where we were ice cold. There is no way around the fact that this team is bad offensively, and on nights where Facey and Adams are both cold, we have virtually no chance. But there does exist a world in which we are able to parlay an elite defense into just enough one on one points on the other end. For all of our faults, Facey and Adams can get their shot whenever they want, and as I looked at the tape, I noticed a way in which our size advantage can pay dividends despite our lack of skill:
Even if you don't enter the ball into the post, you can wall off driving lanes. On this play, Vital misses, but the staff should be diagramming plays that get Adams the ball on an empty strong side like this. His free throw rate is in the dumps for somebody with his size and athleticism, and this is one way to remedy that. All of this is a moot point if Adams isn't healthy, but at this point, I'd rather Adams try to score 30 than dish out 10 assists.
You also can't talk about Adams without talking about Enoch. The two have chemistry in the screen and roll game, and when you spread the floor with shooters, it's pretty much guaranteed to yield either an open jumper or a switch. Enoch has developed a fairly reputable mid-range game (he even fed Brimah with a nice high/low feed at the beginning of the game) and he was born to set screens.
Enoch has also made some considerable strides defensively. He's still bad, but he's not unplayable, especially when we can hide him a little bit in the match-up zone at the four spot. When he's in the game, he needs to touch the ball in the post virtually every possession.
We missed Vance on Sunday more than I anticipated. He's another guy who the match-up zone can hide, which is crucial, because we need all the offense we can get. Kid is a far better one on one player than I anticipated he'd be coming in; he can put the ball on the floor and his composure when his defender is in the air is unbelievable for a freshman. Really great get by Ollie.
Vital makes a lot of freshman mistakes. Some of it was probably shaking off the rust from the concussion. Purvis is not good at putting the ball in the hoop as a high usage player, but on limited attempts - especially from his hot spots - he can be efficient. We just need him to punt the bad shots that have the double effect of leading to run-outs. Defensively, he's indispensable.
I'm just kind of in hope mode at this point. Sometimes I feel stupid getting excited to watch a team that has only disappointed me, and if they're down 30-15 at halftime on Thursday or Friday, I'm going to feel awfully dumb for ever thinking they could make a run. Hope is an expectation, though, in a way. It's an expectation not that things will change but that they can change. That's where I'm at.
I'll admit I found myself getting emotional during the Senior day ceremony on Sunday, not in a sappy way, but in a sentimental way. At some point it doesn't matter whether your players win or lose. It's a lot more fun when they win, but memories are memories, and memories become your language. My life isn't that exciting. I've spent countless hours watching tape and writing about these players and I've spent countless dollars on tickets and travel and hotel money. They're apart of me now and they're apart of everybody. Whether you wish they were doesn't really matter.
And look, you can hardly even call them kids anymore. They're all, to my knowledge, 23, or approaching it. These are grown men. But being a grown man doesn't instill you with an infallibility that prohibits you from compassion. This shot, all of them just having stepped off the Gampel floor for the last time, just felt so symbolic, so emblematic of their careers.
They care, man. We care a lot and they care even more. This is their life. I'm not into moralizing about fanhood. There are about a thousand Brimah, Purvis, and Facey's that look like this every year, and I don't really care about them. If you don't care, if you're already looking ahead to next season...fine. One of these days, I'll join you on that one. Today isn't that day though because there is basketball to be played and even if it isn't played well, we were all watching...and we watched for so long that we had to have been watching for a reason. For as frustrating as they've been, I hope with every bone in my body that they're still playing on Friday.
I'm a little more hopeful after watching the tape, because a lot of that game can be condensed to UConn missing shots. Please don't take any of this as me picking them to win the conference tournament, as this is a team that is prone to missing shots and a lot of them. This might have been rock bottom in that regard, but it was not an anomaly and Cincinnati deserves a lot of credit. The same could well happen at whatever point in Hartford and it would surprise nobody.
That being said, I trust Ollie. He's 15-3 in the postseason for a reason. The guy knows how to coach x's and o's. Maybe it doesn't seem that way sometimes, but there is a very discreet plan to every game and to the extent that that plan is butchered is a function of recruiting and/or player development. There is a reason he won a title with Calhoun's good but not great leftovers - and that is not to say he didn't play a huge role in recruiting and developing them - and there is a reason I firmly believe that he could take over an NBA team tomorrow. My biggest concern is that he is not enough of an to be a college coach, but I think that's mostly unfounded. I have no problems with expectations and I have no problem highlighting some of his flaws. I'm just not ready to even think about looking elsewhere yet. Maybe the operative word in that sentence is yet, but it's still true. I think we're crazy to even whisper about it at this point (admittedly I might not have said that after Sunday).
Speaking of those flaws, though. His last three years has been full of them. I have beaten the match-up zone drum to death, but the moment of truth will arrive on that one this week. If my theory is correct and Ollie has saved it for the conference tournament, it would be quite the stroke of genius. I suspect that's not the case, though, which brings me to my next point:
The mismanagement of Amida Brimah is the single greatest stain on the Ollie era to date. This guy is a far better player than you have been led to belief. He does all the little things to carve out leverage on the glass, he serves an unheralded purpose offensively, he's gotten a lot better as a post defender and out of zone rebounder, and teams don't convert squat in the restricted area (NBA term) with him in the game. You can win with him and you can win because of him, and I say that with not a shred of doubt. I don't want to pull the "I've watched more tape than you" card, but here it goes: lay off him. He's a good player. I would possibly even go as far as to say he's been our best player, all things considered. Him being depicted as a guy who hasn't learned or gotten better is grossly unfair. He does everything that is asked of him and hasn't been placed in a scheme - or with the players - to maximize his ability. That's on Ollie.
He's far from a perfect player. There have been plenty of games where he's let us down. Sunday wasn't one of them. The carnage on the glass can be traced back to one Kentan Facey. He got abused all game and he's given up a lot of them all season. But hey, dude gets rebounds, right? That must mean he's a better player than Brimah? Yeah, not so much.
It wasn't all Facey, though (the guards yielded their fair share from the perimeter), and Facey does plenty of things really well that benefit this team. He didn't do any of them Sunday, though, in what had to have been one of the worst games of his career. In addition to getting worked on the glass, he shot 1 for 9 and did all of his damage in garbage time. Big net negative on both ends, but ultimately nobody will care because we have another game.
Cincinnati tried to iso against Brimah more than any team I have seen, and even though the shiftier Clark/Washington duo posed problems, he more than held his own. Cincinnati scored 1 point per possession in roughly 12 isolation attempts, per my database. In all other possessions, they scored 1.08 points per possession.
The problem was obviously the other end, where we were ice cold. There is no way around the fact that this team is bad offensively, and on nights where Facey and Adams are both cold, we have virtually no chance. But there does exist a world in which we are able to parlay an elite defense into just enough one on one points on the other end. For all of our faults, Facey and Adams can get their shot whenever they want, and as I looked at the tape, I noticed a way in which our size advantage can pay dividends despite our lack of skill:
Even if you don't enter the ball into the post, you can wall off driving lanes. On this play, Vital misses, but the staff should be diagramming plays that get Adams the ball on an empty strong side like this. His free throw rate is in the dumps for somebody with his size and athleticism, and this is one way to remedy that. All of this is a moot point if Adams isn't healthy, but at this point, I'd rather Adams try to score 30 than dish out 10 assists.
You also can't talk about Adams without talking about Enoch. The two have chemistry in the screen and roll game, and when you spread the floor with shooters, it's pretty much guaranteed to yield either an open jumper or a switch. Enoch has developed a fairly reputable mid-range game (he even fed Brimah with a nice high/low feed at the beginning of the game) and he was born to set screens.
Enoch has also made some considerable strides defensively. He's still bad, but he's not unplayable, especially when we can hide him a little bit in the match-up zone at the four spot. When he's in the game, he needs to touch the ball in the post virtually every possession.
We missed Vance on Sunday more than I anticipated. He's another guy who the match-up zone can hide, which is crucial, because we need all the offense we can get. Kid is a far better one on one player than I anticipated he'd be coming in; he can put the ball on the floor and his composure when his defender is in the air is unbelievable for a freshman. Really great get by Ollie.
Vital makes a lot of freshman mistakes. Some of it was probably shaking off the rust from the concussion. Purvis is not good at putting the ball in the hoop as a high usage player, but on limited attempts - especially from his hot spots - he can be efficient. We just need him to punt the bad shots that have the double effect of leading to run-outs. Defensively, he's indispensable.
I'm just kind of in hope mode at this point. Sometimes I feel stupid getting excited to watch a team that has only disappointed me, and if they're down 30-15 at halftime on Thursday or Friday, I'm going to feel awfully dumb for ever thinking they could make a run. Hope is an expectation, though, in a way. It's an expectation not that things will change but that they can change. That's where I'm at.
I'll admit I found myself getting emotional during the Senior day ceremony on Sunday, not in a sappy way, but in a sentimental way. At some point it doesn't matter whether your players win or lose. It's a lot more fun when they win, but memories are memories, and memories become your language. My life isn't that exciting. I've spent countless hours watching tape and writing about these players and I've spent countless dollars on tickets and travel and hotel money. They're apart of me now and they're apart of everybody. Whether you wish they were doesn't really matter.
And look, you can hardly even call them kids anymore. They're all, to my knowledge, 23, or approaching it. These are grown men. But being a grown man doesn't instill you with an infallibility that prohibits you from compassion. This shot, all of them just having stepped off the Gampel floor for the last time, just felt so symbolic, so emblematic of their careers.
They care, man. We care a lot and they care even more. This is their life. I'm not into moralizing about fanhood. There are about a thousand Brimah, Purvis, and Facey's that look like this every year, and I don't really care about them. If you don't care, if you're already looking ahead to next season...fine. One of these days, I'll join you on that one. Today isn't that day though because there is basketball to be played and even if it isn't played well, we were all watching...and we watched for so long that we had to have been watching for a reason. For as frustrating as they've been, I hope with every bone in my body that they're still playing on Friday.
