Duke didn't play in a true MTE. Neither did Kansas. They both played in two one-off neutral games and a few high profile home and homes.
Don't opposing teams have to scout and prep for our offense with no days inbetween? Shouldn't that be an advantage?
Yes and no. It’s a different format than you play at any other time during the season. Conference tournament you play in consecutive days, but against teams you’ve already played twice and done full scouting reports on. In the NCAA tournament, there‘s a day off in between for a full practice to implement a game plan and scouting report. A four team tourney with a day off in between simulates an NCAA weekend a lot better.
There are a few of those that have on-campus games coupled with a neutral site. All the ones that involve P5s feature two decent teams and two patsies. I don't really know what UConn gains by doing that as we've had success in MTEs prior, but if that's what Dan Hurley wants to do fine. Less fun for fans, IMO.
what a baby…
I also like the big MTEs. I think it's a prestige/money thing and Dan Hurley is passing it off as a competitive advantage thing, which I don't buy.
It's not that he's great yet, it's that he seems to be one of the few players on this team that can stay ahead of his defender. He does need to clean his defense up a bit (although two of those "fouls" yesterday were anticipatory BS calls against a freshman), but he seems to have a nose for defending.
I know you're trolling, but I don't totally disagree. I don't mind his antics on the floor, but I haven't liked some of his rather petulant comments and reactions after games lately.
I think they’re fading. And I also think fans for the most part just want big matchups. I could care less if it’s in a island or not
Most of his fouls were literally from not being able to maintain legal guarding position in front of his man. He has the tools to become a better defender and I think he had some nice offensive moves, but it seems like a lot of the talk in this thread is wishful thinking based on his measurables.
Staff knows better than any of us but weirdly I feel like opponents do better when they have more time to scout this offense. How can you scout all these actions in 24 hours? Answer: you can’t. Last two tourneys the most difficult games they played were the ones on 5 days rest. The second game of weekend was generally less contested imo.
Yeah but Colorado and Dayton certainly had no problems scouting us on a 24 hour turnaround.
I think these tournaments are fine for older more established teams. A young inexperienced team like this probably doesn’t benefit much from this tournament especially when they’re reeling. This team needed practice time
No excuses. They were sloppy and the defense was soft as lambskin. And when they had the lead at the end of games.......
Unfortunately that may be the case. More so because the BE teams OOC play won't allow a gelling UConn team to overcome the poor start. This is your cue to rag about the BE.
My two cents is if you don't start him (against a cupcake) the tiny shred of confidence he might have left is vaporized. We're going to need him to back up the only obvious choice we have for a starting big man. Big Hoss is the guy, work in progress to be sure, but a much bigger upside. Samson was valuable as DC's backup maybe he can be again.
Soft was not the problem with the defense. They played hard and physical. It was dumb and poorly executing.