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Nobody likes finishing in second place. I'm disappointed, and I'm sure the players are crushed. For all the posturing on here last night about how we were playing with house money, the reality is that this program doesn't compete in tournaments to finish in second place. Everybody on that team boarded the flight to Memphis thinking they were going to win the tournament, and to come home without the trophy I'm sure is a tough pill to swallow. What is even tougher to concede is the fact that Louisville is just a much better basketball team than we are this season. We can talk about match-ups, officiating, psycho-analytic's and everything else, but Louisville just has more size, more speed, and more depth. That's a tough combination to overcome. They also have a better coach, but that's to be expected - Pitino might be the best coach in the country right now.
What Louisville really does better than anyone is exacerbate our weaknesses. If you were constructing a team solely to beat the 2013-14 Connecticut Huskies, the roster would closely resemble what Louisville's looks like: a grown man in the middle that we can't keep off the boards or the paint, a trio of guards with the speed and quickness to disrupt our back court, and ball-handlers who are savvy enough to exploit the inexperience of our big men in pick and roll situations (Pitino basically said as much at halftime). It also doesn't hurt that they can spread the floor with shooters, protect the rim, and exhaust your guards with their relentless pressure. The match-up zone that they play is basically just a mechanism to funnel the ball to guys like Daniels, Calhoun, and Giffey in the middle of the floor, players who are uncomfortable handling the ball under pressure. In other words, Napier and Boatright have significantly less control over the game against Louisville than they normally do because Louisville forces to give them to give it up.
If UConn and Louisville play ten times on a neutral court, it isn't an under-estimate to say the Cards probably win nine of them. If this UConn team was ever going to beat Louisville, it probably would happen on a night where we were hitting at least 50% of our threes. Unfortunately, 4-16 won't cut it, and neither will the 13 turnovers. The 16 offensive rebounds? Well, Louisville has plastered us on the glass three times now. Either Louisville is just bigger and stronger than us, or UConn isn't trying hard enough. I think most rationale people would say it's the former.
Thankfully, there was more than one game that took place in Memphis this weekend, and while watching those games, I drew a couple of conclusions:
Conclusion #1: Josh Pastner is a horrible coach - I like the guy, I really do. He exudes passion for the game, and he's one of those guys who's never had a bad word to say about anybody. If it was up to him, 80% of D-1 coaches would be in the Hall of Fame. But the guy is just inept when it comes to x's and o's. For this UConn team, scoring the basketball is an excruciating chore that has only become more and more difficult as the scouting report on this team grew in depth. South Florida held this team to 61 points, Rutgers held us to 69, and cracking 50 is always a war against Cincinnati. Yet, every time UConn sees Memphis jerseys, their eyes light up like a Christmas tree. Everybody knows the book on this team by now: blitz every ball screen involving Napier and Boatright, don't let Giffey get a sniff from outside, and send help every time Daniels gets the ball because he's probably not going to make the correct read. Pastner, though, seems to be the only coach on the planet content to slide under ball screens and allow Napier to jack up open threes whenever he damn pleases, and even when they play it correctly, the big man is always woefully mis-positioned on the hedge. They also have no concept of rotating out to shooters off drivers, as was evidenced by the thirty six open threes Giffey took. No pun intended, but there isn't a bigger paper tiger in the country than Memphis. They're 46th overall in kenpom and sub-50 in offensive and defensive efficiency. Don't be the sucker that glances at their roster and pencils them into the sweet 16 - if this team survives the first weekend, I'll be shocked.
Conclusion #2: The end of conference play might be a breath of fresh air for this team - Per kenpom, the AAC is home to four of the best 12 defenses in the country (Louisville #6, Cincinnati #9, UConn #11, SMU #12). This conference might not be called the Big East any longer, but it has certainly inherited a similar identity of physicality and hard-nosed defense. When UConn lit up Memphis on Thursday, my hopes were tempered due to how pedestrian their defense is. But, the fact is, we're going to be playing more teams of similar caliber in dance. Even among the higher seeds (i.e., top 25), there are some pretty ordinary defensive rankings: Kentucky (41), Kansas (44), Michigan State (45), UCLA (49), Iowa State (54), Wisconsin (59), Oklahoma (81), Oregon (90), Duke (96), Michigan (102), Creighton (128), etc. Granted, these teams also possess more offensive fire power than clubs like SMU and Cincinnati, but given the choice, I'd rather play play a defense I know we can score on and take my chances on the other end than vice versa.
Player notes:
Bazz - He played solidly for the most part, but it wasn't the type of performance that is going to etch him a spot in UConn lore, either. Many have been commenting that his shot appears off, and really, it's been off for a while. In his last nine games, he's shot 3 of 11, 5 of 16, 6 of 13, 4 of 13, 8 of 13, 2 of 13, 4 of 9, 5 of 13, and 4 of 12. That's one game in his last nine where he's been 50 or above. I'm not exactly sure what's changed, or if it's just a slump, but I can't help but think the workload he's been forced to carry all season is having an effect. Yes, other point guards are forced to carry similar workloads, but Napier hasn't exactly proven to be incredibly durable over his UConn career, playing through an injury in 2012 and sitting out a few games last year. He's hesitant to pull the trigger from deep, his play defensively has dropped off a little bit, and the mid-range game that was so deadly earlier in the year has all but disappeared from his repertoire. It isn't a coincidence that his slump has coincided with a major drop-off in our overall offensive production. In the last nine games, we haven't scored over 80 once. In the ten games before that, we did it seven times. It's overly-simplistic in some ways, but in other ways it's true: this team is going as far as Shabazz takes them, and if he's not consistently in the 20's starting next week, we're in big trouble.
Boat - As a whole, he played well in that tournament. With Napier losing a little bit of his pep, Samuel still learning the game, and Calhoun still struggling to fight through screens, Boatright is probably our best defensive guard right now. He did the best job on Smith today out of all our guards, and he's just so much more fundamentally sound in his stance than he was last year. Offensively, he's still a bit maddening at times. He's as good as anybody when it comes to creating separation off the dribble, but then instead of taking the shot he created, he'll proceed to dribble back into traffic and end up taking a worse shot. It's as sure an indicator of somebody who doesn't have confidence in his shot as any. He is progressing, though, in terms of splitting the seams in the defense and kicking the ball out, and we even saw a couple floaters that I've been clamoring for. Overall it was a step in the right direction for Boatright in that tournament.
T-Sam - While I wish Ollie would give him a little more leeway, these last couple games aren't going ton Samuel's highlight reel. Even though he wasn't credited with a turnover in the game today, he was extremely tentative and uneasy with the ball in the minutes he was out there. I kept yelling at my TV for him to blow by Hancock, and instead he got the ball tipped away and was lucky to recover it. He's going to be a really good player, but it's safe to say he's not at the same level Kemba, Bazz, and even Boat were at this stage.
Omar - I'll keep it short so not to belabor what everybody else has said already: he needs to dribble the ball this summer until he can't feel his hands anymore. On the positive side, his shot looks better than it did earlier in the season - instead of missing badly, I actually kind of think the ball is going in when it leaves his hands. It's very evident, though, that he missed an entire off-season of weight and agility training. He has more difficulty than anybody when it comes to fighting through screens, and he's just so deliberate off the bounce. The explosion to the rim he had last season just isn't there.
Lasan - The Lasan Kromah mid-range jump shot is probably my least favorite shot in the entire offense. It's just too low-reward a shot to be hoisting up unless you're near automatic with it, and it just doesn't go in nearly enough for him. He was generally pretty solid defensively, and he did a great job on Kilpatrick for the third time, but he just couldn't get out of his own way offensively in that tournament.
Giffey - There is a strong argument to be made that Niels was our MVP in that tournament. Any overly-aggressive ball chasing he was doing earlier in the year has been eliminated from his game, and although Kromah had a hand in holding Kilpatrick in check, I thought he did the best job on him. Even more importantly, he's been attacking the rim with far more assertiveness, growing more comfortable as a complementary ball-handler, and quickening his release on his jump shot. I'm going to miss him a lot next year.
DeAndre - Whenever Daniels catches the ball at the foul line, faces up, and knocks down a mid-range jumper, I don't know whether to be happy, or frustrated something he makes look so easy isn't a more reliable facet of our attack. He was instrumental on the glass in all three games, he protected the rim, and he displayed flashes of his offensive versatility. When he is able to catch the ball with optimal maneuvering room, he becomes one of the deadliest stretch fours in the country. When the defense is able to crowd his line of vision, contest hotly at the rim, and force him into dribbling through narrow gaps and passing through a sea of arms, he becomes very mistake-prone. Regardless, he looked far more mobile and athletic in that tournament than he did towards the end of the regular season, and I have to think that can be attributed to the ankle injury. If he plays the rest of the year like he played in that tournament, our chances of making a run increase drastically.
Nolan - Phil was one foul away from posting a 10 trillion tonight, which demonstrates fairly well how far he has to go to be a consistent contributor at this level. I don't know what his +/- was for this tournament, but I'd be willing to bet it was far lower than Brimah's. We just become so much easier to score on when he's in the game, because he's so limited from a rim protection standpoint that he's now resorted to taking charges at all costs, which, while admirable, is kind of a net negative. Much like Olander, he's just over-matched against teams like Louisville. I think he'll develop into a nice player as shortly as next year, but right now he's just not somebody you can count on to give you valuable minutes in tough games. Believe it or not, I'd actually prefer that Olander supplants him on the postseason depth chart, assuming he's healthy. The offense runs more smoothly with him in the game, and he's a little bit better defensively from a positioning standpoint.
Amida - Who among us thought in December that Amida would be putting up 14 and 7 against Louisville in postseason games? When you consider how demonstrable his improvements have been in just a couple months, it's hard not to envision him making a Thabeet like impact by his junior year. I mean, this was a kid, who, at the beginning of the year, couldn't chew gum and walk. Now he's catching the ball in the corner under pressure, locating cutters, and sinking right-handed hooks. His pick and roll defense needs some work, but he certainly makes up for it with his extraordinary recovery speed and instincts. Earlier in the year, I thought we had found a diamond in the rough. Now, it's even obvious to opposing fans how good he is going to be. Assuming he stays healthy, there is just no way this program doesn't seriously contend for championships with him patrolling the middle for the next couple years.
As much as it sucks to get it handed to you by the same team three times in one year, this tournament only re-affirmed how much I love this team. Some folks might suggest that this team isn't tough enough, but all of that is just nonsense. They're a decently talented group that fights hard, and with the right draw, they've got a shot to stick around for a while. Put bluntly, anybody who thinks this is a final four caliber team along the lines of our other four is fooling themselves. They're just way too susceptible in too many crucial facets of the game. That being said, it's certainly conceivable that they could stick around for a while if everything breaks right. I think the chances of us being finished for the year at this time next week far outweigh the chances of us advancing to the elite eight or beyond, but I'm still willing to take my chances with almost anybody. Go Huskies and I can't wait to see where the next journey starts tomorrow night.
What Louisville really does better than anyone is exacerbate our weaknesses. If you were constructing a team solely to beat the 2013-14 Connecticut Huskies, the roster would closely resemble what Louisville's looks like: a grown man in the middle that we can't keep off the boards or the paint, a trio of guards with the speed and quickness to disrupt our back court, and ball-handlers who are savvy enough to exploit the inexperience of our big men in pick and roll situations (Pitino basically said as much at halftime). It also doesn't hurt that they can spread the floor with shooters, protect the rim, and exhaust your guards with their relentless pressure. The match-up zone that they play is basically just a mechanism to funnel the ball to guys like Daniels, Calhoun, and Giffey in the middle of the floor, players who are uncomfortable handling the ball under pressure. In other words, Napier and Boatright have significantly less control over the game against Louisville than they normally do because Louisville forces to give them to give it up.
If UConn and Louisville play ten times on a neutral court, it isn't an under-estimate to say the Cards probably win nine of them. If this UConn team was ever going to beat Louisville, it probably would happen on a night where we were hitting at least 50% of our threes. Unfortunately, 4-16 won't cut it, and neither will the 13 turnovers. The 16 offensive rebounds? Well, Louisville has plastered us on the glass three times now. Either Louisville is just bigger and stronger than us, or UConn isn't trying hard enough. I think most rationale people would say it's the former.
Thankfully, there was more than one game that took place in Memphis this weekend, and while watching those games, I drew a couple of conclusions:
Conclusion #1: Josh Pastner is a horrible coach - I like the guy, I really do. He exudes passion for the game, and he's one of those guys who's never had a bad word to say about anybody. If it was up to him, 80% of D-1 coaches would be in the Hall of Fame. But the guy is just inept when it comes to x's and o's. For this UConn team, scoring the basketball is an excruciating chore that has only become more and more difficult as the scouting report on this team grew in depth. South Florida held this team to 61 points, Rutgers held us to 69, and cracking 50 is always a war against Cincinnati. Yet, every time UConn sees Memphis jerseys, their eyes light up like a Christmas tree. Everybody knows the book on this team by now: blitz every ball screen involving Napier and Boatright, don't let Giffey get a sniff from outside, and send help every time Daniels gets the ball because he's probably not going to make the correct read. Pastner, though, seems to be the only coach on the planet content to slide under ball screens and allow Napier to jack up open threes whenever he damn pleases, and even when they play it correctly, the big man is always woefully mis-positioned on the hedge. They also have no concept of rotating out to shooters off drivers, as was evidenced by the thirty six open threes Giffey took. No pun intended, but there isn't a bigger paper tiger in the country than Memphis. They're 46th overall in kenpom and sub-50 in offensive and defensive efficiency. Don't be the sucker that glances at their roster and pencils them into the sweet 16 - if this team survives the first weekend, I'll be shocked.
Conclusion #2: The end of conference play might be a breath of fresh air for this team - Per kenpom, the AAC is home to four of the best 12 defenses in the country (Louisville #6, Cincinnati #9, UConn #11, SMU #12). This conference might not be called the Big East any longer, but it has certainly inherited a similar identity of physicality and hard-nosed defense. When UConn lit up Memphis on Thursday, my hopes were tempered due to how pedestrian their defense is. But, the fact is, we're going to be playing more teams of similar caliber in dance. Even among the higher seeds (i.e., top 25), there are some pretty ordinary defensive rankings: Kentucky (41), Kansas (44), Michigan State (45), UCLA (49), Iowa State (54), Wisconsin (59), Oklahoma (81), Oregon (90), Duke (96), Michigan (102), Creighton (128), etc. Granted, these teams also possess more offensive fire power than clubs like SMU and Cincinnati, but given the choice, I'd rather play play a defense I know we can score on and take my chances on the other end than vice versa.
Player notes:
Bazz - He played solidly for the most part, but it wasn't the type of performance that is going to etch him a spot in UConn lore, either. Many have been commenting that his shot appears off, and really, it's been off for a while. In his last nine games, he's shot 3 of 11, 5 of 16, 6 of 13, 4 of 13, 8 of 13, 2 of 13, 4 of 9, 5 of 13, and 4 of 12. That's one game in his last nine where he's been 50 or above. I'm not exactly sure what's changed, or if it's just a slump, but I can't help but think the workload he's been forced to carry all season is having an effect. Yes, other point guards are forced to carry similar workloads, but Napier hasn't exactly proven to be incredibly durable over his UConn career, playing through an injury in 2012 and sitting out a few games last year. He's hesitant to pull the trigger from deep, his play defensively has dropped off a little bit, and the mid-range game that was so deadly earlier in the year has all but disappeared from his repertoire. It isn't a coincidence that his slump has coincided with a major drop-off in our overall offensive production. In the last nine games, we haven't scored over 80 once. In the ten games before that, we did it seven times. It's overly-simplistic in some ways, but in other ways it's true: this team is going as far as Shabazz takes them, and if he's not consistently in the 20's starting next week, we're in big trouble.
Boat - As a whole, he played well in that tournament. With Napier losing a little bit of his pep, Samuel still learning the game, and Calhoun still struggling to fight through screens, Boatright is probably our best defensive guard right now. He did the best job on Smith today out of all our guards, and he's just so much more fundamentally sound in his stance than he was last year. Offensively, he's still a bit maddening at times. He's as good as anybody when it comes to creating separation off the dribble, but then instead of taking the shot he created, he'll proceed to dribble back into traffic and end up taking a worse shot. It's as sure an indicator of somebody who doesn't have confidence in his shot as any. He is progressing, though, in terms of splitting the seams in the defense and kicking the ball out, and we even saw a couple floaters that I've been clamoring for. Overall it was a step in the right direction for Boatright in that tournament.
T-Sam - While I wish Ollie would give him a little more leeway, these last couple games aren't going ton Samuel's highlight reel. Even though he wasn't credited with a turnover in the game today, he was extremely tentative and uneasy with the ball in the minutes he was out there. I kept yelling at my TV for him to blow by Hancock, and instead he got the ball tipped away and was lucky to recover it. He's going to be a really good player, but it's safe to say he's not at the same level Kemba, Bazz, and even Boat were at this stage.
Omar - I'll keep it short so not to belabor what everybody else has said already: he needs to dribble the ball this summer until he can't feel his hands anymore. On the positive side, his shot looks better than it did earlier in the season - instead of missing badly, I actually kind of think the ball is going in when it leaves his hands. It's very evident, though, that he missed an entire off-season of weight and agility training. He has more difficulty than anybody when it comes to fighting through screens, and he's just so deliberate off the bounce. The explosion to the rim he had last season just isn't there.
Lasan - The Lasan Kromah mid-range jump shot is probably my least favorite shot in the entire offense. It's just too low-reward a shot to be hoisting up unless you're near automatic with it, and it just doesn't go in nearly enough for him. He was generally pretty solid defensively, and he did a great job on Kilpatrick for the third time, but he just couldn't get out of his own way offensively in that tournament.
Giffey - There is a strong argument to be made that Niels was our MVP in that tournament. Any overly-aggressive ball chasing he was doing earlier in the year has been eliminated from his game, and although Kromah had a hand in holding Kilpatrick in check, I thought he did the best job on him. Even more importantly, he's been attacking the rim with far more assertiveness, growing more comfortable as a complementary ball-handler, and quickening his release on his jump shot. I'm going to miss him a lot next year.
DeAndre - Whenever Daniels catches the ball at the foul line, faces up, and knocks down a mid-range jumper, I don't know whether to be happy, or frustrated something he makes look so easy isn't a more reliable facet of our attack. He was instrumental on the glass in all three games, he protected the rim, and he displayed flashes of his offensive versatility. When he is able to catch the ball with optimal maneuvering room, he becomes one of the deadliest stretch fours in the country. When the defense is able to crowd his line of vision, contest hotly at the rim, and force him into dribbling through narrow gaps and passing through a sea of arms, he becomes very mistake-prone. Regardless, he looked far more mobile and athletic in that tournament than he did towards the end of the regular season, and I have to think that can be attributed to the ankle injury. If he plays the rest of the year like he played in that tournament, our chances of making a run increase drastically.
Nolan - Phil was one foul away from posting a 10 trillion tonight, which demonstrates fairly well how far he has to go to be a consistent contributor at this level. I don't know what his +/- was for this tournament, but I'd be willing to bet it was far lower than Brimah's. We just become so much easier to score on when he's in the game, because he's so limited from a rim protection standpoint that he's now resorted to taking charges at all costs, which, while admirable, is kind of a net negative. Much like Olander, he's just over-matched against teams like Louisville. I think he'll develop into a nice player as shortly as next year, but right now he's just not somebody you can count on to give you valuable minutes in tough games. Believe it or not, I'd actually prefer that Olander supplants him on the postseason depth chart, assuming he's healthy. The offense runs more smoothly with him in the game, and he's a little bit better defensively from a positioning standpoint.
Amida - Who among us thought in December that Amida would be putting up 14 and 7 against Louisville in postseason games? When you consider how demonstrable his improvements have been in just a couple months, it's hard not to envision him making a Thabeet like impact by his junior year. I mean, this was a kid, who, at the beginning of the year, couldn't chew gum and walk. Now he's catching the ball in the corner under pressure, locating cutters, and sinking right-handed hooks. His pick and roll defense needs some work, but he certainly makes up for it with his extraordinary recovery speed and instincts. Earlier in the year, I thought we had found a diamond in the rough. Now, it's even obvious to opposing fans how good he is going to be. Assuming he stays healthy, there is just no way this program doesn't seriously contend for championships with him patrolling the middle for the next couple years.
As much as it sucks to get it handed to you by the same team three times in one year, this tournament only re-affirmed how much I love this team. Some folks might suggest that this team isn't tough enough, but all of that is just nonsense. They're a decently talented group that fights hard, and with the right draw, they've got a shot to stick around for a while. Put bluntly, anybody who thinks this is a final four caliber team along the lines of our other four is fooling themselves. They're just way too susceptible in too many crucial facets of the game. That being said, it's certainly conceivable that they could stick around for a while if everything breaks right. I think the chances of us being finished for the year at this time next week far outweigh the chances of us advancing to the elite eight or beyond, but I'm still willing to take my chances with almost anybody. Go Huskies and I can't wait to see where the next journey starts tomorrow night.
