Villanova Post Game Thread | Page 9 | The Boneyard

Villanova Post Game Thread

Husky Alien said:
Very good bounce back game. Defense was much improved, however the refs let both teams play through contact for the majority of the game. That is key for us since we are a physical team. St John's brings in a whole different scenario than Nova.

Love Silas but he needs to take better care of the ball since the pressure from St John is going to be turned up a notch. We are definitely going to need the bench to come through from now on.

By the way can someone explain why D. Koroma is not playing at all? He is a serviceable back up for about 5 min per game. Can have him in at times with Tarris or Reibe. He did play some during the beginning of the year.
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He is a solid emergency back guy. Doesn’t have the offensive skills to play forward. You saw him when Reed was injured or in blow outs
We have 2 top of the line centers with Reed and Reibe
 
Defense was a thing of beauty, especially Reed. He handled the keyhole hedge work better than even Samson Johnson as a senior. On his toes and seeing things before they developed.

The whole team was on its toes for this one. Bouncing around, switching on time, covering the back end. It was actually thrilling to watch 5 players in perfect motion, reacting in unison to each dribble and pass. We even got a signature Karaban long-armed block. Boy, he was tuned in to every station.

Reibe, while he showed a couple of reasons why he'll be an eventual lottery pick, got picked on a couple of times. He needs more time to work on his hedge vision. This game tape will help, showing both his miscues and Reed's perfection.

Silas enables so much for this offense and looks so maestro-like it's hard to believe his TO troubles. Many of them seem to stem from loss of focus rather than decision making but he does also present the ball to the defender at times. While he does carry a history of TO issues I hope he can be coached up here. I'll give a good defense credit but unforced TOs are tough to swallow.

This team is not built on athleticism so we have to play with that on-your-toes adrenaline to dominate, and we can due to our sky high skill level. It's also the reason why Danny plays it slow - we don't have guys that drive and finish and we don't get a lot of the fast break hoops that athleticism generates. Instead, we'll run into our deep playbook and end up with a good look.
 
Mr. French said:
A 30 something retired millionaire attending a basketball game on a Saturday night might have been high, and you’re not disgusted?
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Ppl are accusing someone of being high based on what? Looking bored while his teammate was being interviewed smh. Did u ever watch his demeanor while he played forward UConn. He looked bored as he torched opponents.
 
Watching the game now on DVR. What a start to this Sunday. Everybody got a fire lit under their azzes.

Tarris ekes the Star of the Game over Alex.
 
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microfich said:
Defense was a thing of beauty, especially Reed. He handled the keyhole hedge work better than even Samson Johnson as a senior. On his toes and seeing things before they developed.
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Reed only played 23 minutes. That allowed him to really play with full energy the entire time on the floor. Reibe needs to play for development and because he has earned the time. But when Eric gets close to 20 minutes like he did last night it really helps Reed.
 
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Smitty made a layup!
We actually hit some free throws.
The defense was tremendous.
I think Silas figured out how to limit the TO‘s in the second half and can bring that into St. John’s.
We actually pushed the ball up court with passes off the bounds
Reibe great
Ross is a disrupter for opposing guards
 
Great win.

Reed was huge. Offense was balanced and shot selection much better. Both solo and Mullins play best within the confines of the offense and not jacking up shots.

I know Hurley dangled changing the starters up but to me that’s pure motivational tactic and not serious. Ross is a good energy guy but still wildly, wildly overhyped on this board. His defense is above average but he’s lost on offense against good teams. Need actual consistency for him. Thought Stewart’s timely threes were just as if not more important than Ross’s defense as that second lineup really struggles for offense.

Another relatively quiet game from Karaban which is great news as he does his best work when the spotlight is on someone else.

Silas was off with the turnovers but a lot of them seemed like weird plays and not stupid mistakes so whatever.

To me your starting lineup now in the middle of February is your highest ceiling group. Play Ross a little more and give Stewart a greener light and they’ll be fine.
 
Just caught a replay, that was a really fun game!

My favorite parts: Reibe was excellent defensively in the first half, he was controlling the entire floor. Solo locked in defensively on Perkins after getting cooked early for 8 points, Perkins was scoreless for the rest of the half minus a fast break dunk (Ross played fantastic defense on him as well). I thought AK played a great game on both ends of the floor. The defense was excellent and the offense was balanced

My absolute favorite part was the run to go up 15. Stewart splashes a three, Reibe with a ballerina catch and finish, Ross blocks a three, Malachi fast break layup. Four huge plays by our four bench players!

Did not enjoy watching so many careless turnovers, but that was mostly a first half problem. Much better in the second half while we went up big. Had the typical sloppy end, but Villanova didn't even crack 50 points until garbage time. A testament to the fantastic defensive performance. Night and day difference from Creighton

Nova will be really good under Willard. They are a pleasure to watch, it will be fun to see UConn and Villanova battle around the top of the BE for the next few years

Great bounce back win. Let's go Huskies!
 
BFieldHusky said:
Another thing that helped us. That was only the 3rd time Nova has played in that building this season. Willard even mentioned this to Katz.
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Meanwhile, UConn is battle tested in arenas. Y'know, the buildings where they play the tournament.
 
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Icehawk said:
Back on program. That's two in a row Braylon fouled out of though, would love to see him clean that up a bit - that last foul was weaksauce.
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There were at least 3 weak sauce fouls on him. I think they were all called by the same ref.
 
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Bench was huge - Ross especially changed the whole vibe with his defense and Stew broke it open with those 3’s.

I still think we do not use Tarris enough. He dominates when he gets the ball in the post and makes a quick move. We spend so much time with him as a high screener or hand off guy.

2nd half defense was outstanding. First half, not so much.

It’s nuts to me how much we depend on Silas as our only ball handler and initiator. Yes he was fouled 412 times, but we do not have anyone else who is a legit triple threat off the dribble. Really wish we had nabbed Lewis.

Bazz looked like a completely different person.

Reibe has crazy good hands. It’s going to be fun having him as our main 5.
 
Umami Zen said:
Silas was getting mugged all day. Part of the Pitino scout to promote TOs-- copied by Willard
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I sometimes struggle to understand the amount of contact that is allowed in the big east because clearly there’s just a whole lot of fouling going on. I had to laugh out loud when our guys actually pushed back and the guy from Villanova fell over but the referees knew that they couldn’t call it. It was a laugh out loud moment that reminded me of some bad pick up games that I used to play in.

I mean at the end of the day I don’t really care in the sense like maybe it just toughens us up for the NCAA tournament. But we cannot play that same way I mean, play aggressive, but don’t rely on that type of play because it results in losing in the tournament like most of the other Big East teams do fairly early on.
 
Probably said 1000 different ways so far in this thread, but that was a big big win last night against a quality opponent on the road. I mean they have over 20 wins and we’re playing on their home court and we were up by 20 in the second half.

For me, the biggest issue were unnecessary turnovers. Head scratching turnovers. Those are the kind that against a better opponent they will make you pay for it and we just cannot have those.

For me, the worst part is that there’s a carelessness about it versus just not being aware of a situation that you get caught up in.

They have to lock that down because no team that I know of has made it to the final four without being exceptional at protecting the ball. You have 4 to 6 turnovers in a game that are careless and you’re just not going to win anything past a sweet 16 game in the tournament.

And again, I’m not talking about turnovers that are result of facing great defense, but rather just careless plays.
 
willstafa24 said:
It's how Hurley does it. He plays the prevent offense. Playing open and free with a 21 point lead can lead to strange things. Killing 25 seconds on each possession with 5 minutes left guarantees a win. That's it and that's all he cares about.
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Not only that, but I’m pretty sure nova had a 7-0 run in the final 45 seconds. It was the definition of garbage time.
 
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Tdaley said:
I love our coach. He can act a little nuts at times but he never stops coaching and trying to figure out how he can do a better job coaching his players.
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It was good to hear him say it right after the game. Everybody was involved last night and they clicked. Just dial back the careless turnovers, keep up the team focus on D, stop jacking long distance 3s and we should get back to a higher level of play that makes us tough to beat.
 
3rdbass said:
I think Hurley knows he has to play his bench and let them play through their mistakes. They become hesitant if they have no idea if they will be hooked after one or two mistakes. I'm glad Hurley mentioned that in post game interview referring to Stewie. But it applies to all our bench players.
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I wish he did that all season. I would rather him play the long game to develop the bench guys at the expense of a few bumps in the road during the season.
 
Mr. French said:
I’m not one of them, but I’ll answer this anyway: they played like they did earlier in the season and looked the way we expect.

When they play like this, there should be many less “we’re not good” comments.
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The point is, they WERE good for a substantial part of the season. Making a one game setback impossible to mean they're "not good". Did they just win all the other games by flippin luck or something ?!!?! Good lord.

Good teams DO play badly from time to time.
 
Conndog said:
Silas often was past his defender and then would stop thus losing his advantage- I wish he would just veer into his defender for an easy foul. Malachi does the same thing a lot. They could get a lot of foul calls if they wanted
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I've said it many times, when defenders are rushing at them they should quickly drive right into them drawing a foul instead of trying to dribble away or ward them off. Now the one caveat to all that is if the refs aren't calling anything then you might just end up turning it over with the ref's not blowing the whistle. With that said, I think there were opportunities where he could have drove right at the defender who was aggressively closing in.
 
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navery12 said:
Respectfully there is not a single poster who would accept multiple losses during the season to "develop the bench". And anyone who says they would is lying
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No way - not in today’s game. Back in the day when you had rebuild years, sure. The top 20 programs aspire to win titles annually these days.
 
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