There's no way the staff is telling Andre to turn down taking it to the rim, taking it to the basket and finishing is still the major deficiency in his game and the staff worked on it all summer with him. Unfortunately it has yet to translate in games.
Yeah, to add to this, if he shows that more in games, teams are going to have to respect it more, which will draw help defense and open up more easy looks for Sanogo/Clingan.
theathletic.com
To be fair, Castleton was pretty good last night. Especially that stretch to start the second half. He was probably the third best player on the court. He was one of the main reasons our offense looked kind of weird at times, guards were afraid to drive into the paint, and he kept reading the lobs and picking them off. Their defense kept him on an island to stay on shooters though, and eventually we just had enough reps to get done. And he did struggle finishing over Clingan, but so has everyone else.College basketball’s top 20 bigs for 2022-23: Oscar Tshiebwe, Drew Timme and more
So many elite big men returned to college hoops that it made life difficult for Sam Vecenie.
Before the season started, The Athletic ranked Colin Castleton as the 7th best big man in all of college basketball (Adama Sanogo at #12 - bulletin board material???)
In last night's game, he was the third best big man on his own home court. Dominated.
It was because AJ kept giving it back to Newton I made my statement. Glad you pointed it out. Game looked far more disjointed than it had to but UConn still wins big. The coaches won't sacrifice wins for March but otherwise they're using opponents to work out kinks and improve. Games won't look as pretty during this stage as they could if we just let players play to their strengths instead of trying to balance out their games. Every good team will do it but we have such depth doing will be less likely to be at the expense of Ws and we can do it for much longer periods in games.
I get your point. My opinion is time will come when we'll get this from Andre and people will be questioning why he didn't do it sooner. Watch the game closely and look at Andre's twitch reaction to drive to the basket and do exactly as you mention only to immediately stop. I maintain coaches are working on our players to fine tune the ability to get the ball to Sonogo or Clingan.
Yeah, that's definitely fair. I didn't mean to downplay Castleton too much, he's a player I have enjoyed watching in the past. Moreso just speaks to how good our guys are, and how well they played in that game in particular. It's no secret that Sanogo takes those sorts of big-time center matchups personally, so I'm not surprised he had a big game.
Florida was totally demoralized with about 6 minutes left.
Don’t get me wrong I like the “get others involved scheme” but to be more effective he needs to attack the basket some not so in the “score 1st mentality” but to actually use himself to as a threat to even better his set up man ability especially with his knack for drawing fouls it would go a long way for this team
The funny part to me is that superjohn literally wrote "Sanogo got torched a couple times. Clingan had them just throwing the ball up towards the backboard."
The funny part to me is that superjohn literally wrote "Sanogo got torched a couple times. Clingan had them just throwing the ball up towards the backboard."
That's only half true. Sanogo did get torched a couple times. So did Clingan. So I mention, the few times Clingan also got torched (with receipts), and I'm being too critical of Clingan?
It's pretty simple. Clingan was clearly the player of the game. I pointed out how Clingan controlled everything in the paint. HuskyHawk and you decided to talk about the times he was "torched" defensively. Anyone paying attention could see that Clingan was more impactful down low than Sanogo was that game and Sanogo had a very good game.
It is very simple when you are free to make up your own version of reality.
I said Clingan was the best player on the court. HuskyHawk later posted that Sanogo followed by Jackson were the best players on the court. I replied that they couldn't do anything near the basket when Clingan was in there and then HuskyHawk and you came in to talk about him getting torched. If you want a breakdown of who was the most impactful player in the game and who was shutting down the paint Auror created a great thread on it.
The areas where Clingan was better are FG % and blocks. But the bigger question is why? Is he just better? Or does he benefit from following Sanogo, who stresses the opposing big, causes foul trouble etc.? I think it's the latter. Not that he hasn't been really good, better than expected, but the situation benefits him, and by extension, UConn. He comes in to face a big that probably needs a break or a sub, and he's just too much for them.
Castleton missed his first 5 (I think) shots against Sanogo. You can't pretend they are playing the same defense. Dan has Donovan playing exclusively drop coverage, and deeper drop coverage. So he's defending the lane and doesn't have to recover from the perimeter. Naturally he will get a lot of blocks. Sanogo is asked to go further out and cover more ground.
I quoted the part of the post i was addressing. If i disagreed with this quote, i would have quoted it and said why. You're arguing with yourself.
You're incredibly boring, you can continue playing with yourself.
Very on-brand way of throwing in the towel, and probably the best way to close out this stalemate.
