Ugly Pattern

[tennmike]

There has been much conversation about skills assessments, but after thinking about the season thus far as a whole, it seems we are acting out a familiar script: start sluggish, get behind, ramp up defensive intensity and then hope for the best. The outcome becomes a flip of the coin.

Our offensive woes are evident, but our defensive strength needs to kick in at the start.

At the 7:00 minute mark of the first half of our games thus far, we were down by 7 to Temple, down 6 to Columbia, down 5 to Duke, down 12 to Yale, down 5 to Texas, down 10 to WV, down 2 to Bryant and down 1 to SCSU. We are constantly fighting an uphill battle leaving little room for error. The only outlier is Coppin State where we jumped on them and were up 16 at that point.

You can conclude that we are not a very good shooting team and that is an obvious result, but the eye test reveals that our defensive pressure only perks up when we are digging out of a hole.

The conclusion…get after them early; that is everyone but Brimah.

 

[mauconnfan]

They do seem to take their time to get passionate on D. The one that concerns me the most in that regard is our leader, Boat. He should be the one playing from the tip and he hasn't been. Obviously he has some concerns physically but if you did notice he suddenly got really aggressive after about 10 minutes or so and made a steal and almost made 1 or 2 more in a few possessions by the Owls, almost as if the light went off. They will follow their leader for sure, he's the catalyst and so far he hasn't come out guns a blazing' early too often.

But no matter how they start defensively, there can be little to complain about on that end. They make life very difficult for some very good teams. But they do need to realize this is something that will always be there unlike shooting the ball, so it needs to be that way from the beginning I agree.

 

[Palatine]

The other team makes some shots, we go 1-7. Want it to stop, make some shots.

Holding teams to 45 points is not a real option. The offense has to go at some point.