UConn vs Texas Post Game Thread...

[UCTitleTown]

DH really shortened the bench today. I missed the game, but just read the stats. 5-6 minutes each for AM, JS, and JR and that's with AN not playing.

 

[BGesus4]

That Texas team is, um, not well coached to put it nicely

 

[Candyman]

Solo shooting has been so great. I just wish he would rebound more. He has it in him to do it. 2 rebounds in 2 games ain’t it. We didn’t need him to today as AK and McNeeley boarded. Next game we will need it.

 

[upstater]

DH really shortened the bench today. I missed the game, but just read the stats. 5-6 minutes each for AM, JS, and JR and that's with AN not playing.

They came in and lost their defensive assignments and then turned the ball over. It wasn't a good look. Bad passes, etc.

Only Stewart looked decent out there, made a 3, a good pass, but he looked like he lost his mind when it came to defending. Didn't know who he had and was confused.

Mahaney and Ross committed turnovers, bad passes, etc.

Reed played well with the exception of really dumb fouls.

All our starting players were real assets tonight in a way they haven't been all year, so it made sense to let them play together as long as possible.

I suspect the others will be integrated more, especially Mahaney and Stewart. I don't know what happens to Ross, especially since I expect Nowell will eat into Mahaney's minutes as Mahaney becomes more of a scoring guard for us.

MINUTES:
Samson 20/Reed 20
Karaban 34/Stewart 15
McNeeley 32
Ball 26/Mahaney 15
Diarra 25/Nowell 10

 

[Candyman]

Tre Johnson has "Bad/Mediocre Team Superstar" written all over him. He is ferociously selfish, and he thinks nothing of running down a shot clock on breakdown attempts and then dumping the ball to a teammate to attempt a stat-killing contested shot-clock beater that Johnson caused by burning the shot clock on selfish play. He might get better, but right now he is the kind of player that makes all his teammates worse.

Kaluma has more self-control than I would in that situation where Tre Johnson got in his face.

Tre Johnson is one of the best offensive players in the country if not best scorer. He led their team with 4 assists. It’s not his fault their coach doesn’t run any sets. 2nd half he almost brought them back. Their guards are terrible.

Hes there for a year and will be 2nd pick in the draft. He’s a mini KD. The handle and shooting. You’re acting like he was missing those bad shots. Missed like 2 threes late. If his team could stop us when they were scoring then it would have been a game. They were 8-9 to start the half. We happen to almost match them at 8-12.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

Kinda odd the Tre Johnson hate. He shot/is shooting efficiently, he’s not just a chucker. He trash talked, who cares? I like that part of the game, I like when Solo hits and 3 and gets up in his guy’s face and lets him know. He also was trying to pump up/bring some energy to his team. Kid is a huge talent, weird comments.

 

[uh-no]

I suspect the others will be integrated more, especially Mahaney and Stewart. I don't know what happens to Ross, especially since I expect Nowell will eat into Mahaney's minutes as Mahaney becomes more of a scoring guard for us.

It was a really interesting minutes breakdown...perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes of the game (the best outcome of the game was the defense overall...but this is certainly the most interesting IMO).

We saw promise last week with the win the other day over baylor without karaban, and we realized a lot of potential in the first half tonight vs texas.

IMO the 6 on the court are the 6 who picked up what Hurley was laying down, and the other 4/5 gotta earn their minutes now. That means

• Ross
• Stewart
• Nowell
• Mahaney
• yes, Singare (holy cow...here of the game...what was his +/- in his minutes in the 1h???)

Solo showed something tonight....he has his thing...shooting the lights out, but also got to the line and showed that he can play a bit of D. Ross and Stewart gotta step up to get those minutes back...what are they going to do to do that? Stopper? another ball handler against the press?

Ball's in their court (to drop like a triple entendre)

 

[ddent68]

Great road win. Offensive grade: A

The euro offense seemed to be at its best today with the ball movement which gave us a lot of good shots.
The slipping of screens for lobs ( Samson) and layups, good cutting and double high picks that opened up layups or three’s. The execution looked more like last years team than any other game did so far this year.

Best execution of our offense so far this year.

 

[mjmoney23]

Not only the production but the commentary seemed to be pro Texas. Wonder if it has something to do with them owning the SEC network. Either way glad we don’t have more ESPN games.

The game was presented as a SEC game multiple times. When going to a commercial, "This is SEC basketball on ESPN".

 

[7774]

That Texas team is, um, not well coached to put it nicely

Yeah Texas isn‘t good. Syracuse was competitive with them on a neutral court. They are going to play an insane SEC schedule with so many quad 1 games, we just need them to pull out a few to stay in the top 75. Yesterday dropped them from 41 to 64.

 

[willie99]

Kinda odd the Tre Johnson hate. He shot/is shooting efficiently, he’s not just a chucker. He trash talked, who cares? I like that part of the game, I like when Solo hits and 3 and gets up in his guy’s face and lets him know. He also was trying to pump up/bring some energy to his team. Kid is a huge talent, weird comments.

Very talented, can't be denied

Also a one on one player. Not the way we tend to run our offense. Most of the game he was only looking to create his own shot, although he did get a couple of assists in desperation time

Jim, Geno and Dan all run an offense and all distribute the basketball


PS: Might just be bad coaching

 

[QuickDraw]

Is this a big Johnson contest?

 

[ThetaZoo]

bilas tries hard to be neutral. he's just insufferable. complaining about whatever his thing du-jour is...refs, rules, the NCAA, scheduling...who knows.

Insufferable is Donny Marshall

 

[caw]

Tre Johnson is one of the best offensive players in the country if not best scorer. He led their team with 4 assists. It’s not his fault their coach doesn’t run any sets. 2nd half he almost brought them back. Their guards are terrible.

Hes there for a year and will be 2nd pick in the draft. He’s a mini KD. The handle and shooting. You’re acting like he was missing those bad shots. Missed like 2 threes late. If his team could stop us when they were scoring then it would have been a game. They were 8-9 to start the half. We happen to almost match them at 8-12.

Second pick? Top six, sure, but #2 is going to be contested this year.


Assuming Flagg is #1, Bailey, Harper, Demin and Traore (is he eligible?) are all guys I’d consider over Johnson depending on the team.

 

[cp176]

Kinda odd the Tre Johnson hate. He shot/is shooting efficiently, he’s not just a chucker. He trash talked, who cares? I like that part of the game, I like when Solo hits and 3 and gets up in his guy’s face and lets him know. He also was trying to pump up/bring some energy to his team. Kid is a huge talent, weird comments.

The kid is an outstanding player who looks to be doing what everyone expects of him. A good interaction between dh and him up the sideline.

 

[cp176]

It was a really interesting minutes breakdown...perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes of the game (the best outcome of the game was the defense overall...but this is certainly the most interesting IMO).

We saw promise last week with the win the other day over baylor without karaban, and we realized a lot of potential in the first half tonight vs texas.

IMO the 6 on the court are the 6 who picked up what Hurley was laying down, and the other 4/5 gotta earn their minutes now. That means

• Ross
• Stewart
• Nowell
• Mahaney
• yes, Singare (holy cow...here of the game...what was his +/- in his minutes in the 1h???)

Solo showed something tonight....he has his thing...shooting the lights out, but also got to the line and showed that he can play a bit of D. Ross and Stewart gotta step up to get those minutes back...what are they going to do to do that? Stopper? another ball handler against the press?

Ball's in their court (to drop like a triple entendre)

I agree. Unless these kids coming off the bench can figure out to not immediately turn the ball over when they come in, as the season moves along, they just will have to live with limited minutes. I think Stewart is ahead of Ross but it would be nice if Ross could maybe accept a roll more focused on his defense as opposed to offense. He is quick and tall. His speed and strength says that he should be able to guard a kid like Johnson.

 

[freshler40]

Best execution of our offense so far this year.

Some concern about running down the clock. Didn't we have several turnovers when the clock ran out? Sometimes a quick possession can really hurt a defensive team that expects you to run down the clock. I understand long possessions with our lead in the second half. They were necessary and worked.
Darria did a masterful job of setting up Johnson for dunks as does Karaban at times with Reed. Those feeds are a thing of beauty. Occasional fake or real drives by Ball would add to his arsenal.

 

[Edward Sargent]

Tre Johnson is one of the best offensive players in the country if not best scorer. He led their team with 4 assists. It’s not his fault their coach doesn’t run any sets. 2nd half he almost brought them back. Their guards are terrible.

Hes there for a year and will be 2nd pick in the draft. He’s a mini KD. The handle and shooting. You’re acting like he was missing those bad shots. Missed like 2 threes late. If his team could stop us when they were scoring then it would have been a game. They were 8-9 to start the half. We happen to almost match them at 8-12.

The whole team had 8 assists! Tre Johnson wasn't the problem

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Tre Johnson is one of the best offensive players in the country if not best scorer. He led their team with 4 assists. It’s not his fault their coach doesn’t run any sets. 2nd half he almost brought them back. Their guards are terrible.

Hes there for a year and will be 2nd pick in the draft. He’s a mini KD. The handle and shooting. You’re acting like he was missing those bad shots. Missed like 2 threes late. If his team could stop us when they were scoring then it would have been a game. They were 8-9 to start the half. We happen to almost match them at 8-12.

Tre Johnson = KD? Really, that is what you are going with?

Every good athlete is the best player in the history of all players when they are freshmen. If every player that was anointed the next Lebron/KD/Steph/Chris Paul/Dirk by the fans turned out to be that good, every NBA and G League team would be 3 deep with first ballot Hall of Famers at every position. Back when high school recruiting was more important for roster building, the Boneyard would average anointing 2 freshman a year who were mortal locks to be the next Ray/Rip/Emeka/Kemba/Shabazz because Boneyard posters had watched a highlight video of our commit lighting up a no-defense AAU team at a tournament at some basketball barn in PA or CA. How many of them turned out to be that good? I count one Ray, one Rip, one Emeka...

At a national level, there are 20ish of these "they could be the best of all time" players running around college right now, and another 100-150 that announcers regularly discuss as being locks for the NBA. The math doesn't work. Also, the actual best players of all time are often not anointed. No one thought Curry would be this good, every team in the NBA could have picked Giannis but passed (the Bucks didn't even want the pick), Jokic and Brunson were second rounders, Gilgeous-Alexander was a mid-first rounder, etc. It is highly likely that of the Top 10 players in the NBA in 2030, virtually no one has tagged 3 or 4 of them as even potential future NBA all-stars today. If people like you could predict this stuff, being an NBA GM would be a lot easier.

A good test for how good a kid is going to be is how good is he now. If Tre Johnson was as good as you say he is, he should lay waste to his entire schedule. That is what KD did. Heck, that is what Carmelo did as a Frosh. If that kid was as good as you say, the kid should have had 3/4's of his points on layups and wide open shots, rather than have to hit half a dozen prayers like he did yesterday. If that kid can't shake 2024/2025 UConn's sketchy defense, how is he going to get away from NBA defenders? But you think he is the next KD? Sure.

The kid is a selfish player. He may be athletic or a good shot maker, and maybe he will develop, maybe he won't. Right now, in December 2024, he is making his teammates worse than they would be otherwise.

 

[TroyHall98]

Singare: He had no statistical production to mention, but he enabled the two bigs to sit for nine minutes in the first half without picking up a third foul, and also allowed Karaban to stay at the four and not have to move to the five. His contribution was enormous.

Will need this again from Singare on Saturday night against Ike.

 

[cellocgg]

I don't know if the Moody center was really quiet for most of the game or if ESPN turns down crowd volume but the broadcast felt off

Commentators also felt kind of awkward and quiet

 

[Scottzer]

Singare: He had no statistical production to mention, but he enabled the two bigs to sit for nine minutes in the first half without picking up a third foul, and also allowed Karaban to stay at the four and not have to move to the five. His contribution was enormous.

i give Singare an honorary two points. He got open, but Solo kept it for himself. If we can get two points, a board, a steal, and a block for eight minutes, I’ll take it. And, one of his fouls was a questionable call.

 

[Stinger92860]

Singare fouled 4 times in 8 minutes, but it looked more like inexperience. I liked the way he moved his feet and slid to cover and then recover on drives. It looks like having the two bigs in foul trouble was manageable.

I thought Singare set some nice screens up top and managed the hand-offs well. He gave us a very important 8 minutes.

 

[Lambeau]

I thought the difference on defense was switching, and picking up the ball handler when he escaped his initial defender.
Diarra had to stay in to guard Johnson, but he got help.
Similarly, there was more movement on offense, and with the motion and cutting they looked more like UConn.

 

[HuskyNan]

What network was the game on? My DVR didn't record it. Any replay?

Do you have the ESPN app? For games and replays, search for Watch ESPN on Google

Sun, 12/8 - #25 UConn vs. Texas 12/8/24 - Stream the Game Live - Watch ESPN

Stream the NCAA Men's Basketball Game Sun, 12/8 - #25 UConn vs. Texas live from ESPN on Watch ESPN. Live stream on Sunday, December 8, 2024.

www.espn.com