we lost a basketball game to a pretty good team

[willie99]

lots of overreaction around here.

Bazz played very good, and he is running the offense. While he's dribbling, the kids are running different plays down low. They may not execute their offense perfectly in Jan (JC's teams rarely do), they will be doing so in March.

We missed Boat

AD did what every freshman does, had a bad game. Remember Lamb's slump last year?

The crowd was great, Giff was great, Roscoe brought some energy

The only person I was a little disappointed in was Alex, he should be more consistent by now

We're fine

 

[hungry husky]

Crowd wasn't great til UConn was down 12. Need 40 minutes of effort from Lamb and AD and this team will be dangerous.

 

[sparky]

AO was fools gold last game. He is in a funk and may never recover. I am concerned that JL is not getting the ball enough in scoring opportunities, Seems he is working too hard. Bazz played well, but over handles the ball and we get too low in the shot clock to execute efficiently. Giff did fine and we need his shot in march, but he should get the ball more.

 

[caw]

Yes, let's not act like Cincy isn't a good team (great, maybe not, but pretty good).

Second, UConn lost this game on a last second (OK 2.5 seconds) 3 that was well defended. You could say UConn played poorly, but UConn outrebounded Cincy by 9, shot the ball well, got good production from the bench and did a good job defensively in the second half.

There were some fluky things that happened in this game:

• Drummond missed an alley-opp
• Cincy made two lucky bank shots
• There were some players not available/healthy for UConn that may have gotten more run if available/healthy.

There was also some good/interesting shooting going on:

• Cincy made at least four 3s that were well defended (including the game winner)
• Napier made 3 straight threes at the end of the game (well 3 of 4)

It sucks UConn lost, but in the grand scheme of the season, it's not a huge deal to lose to Cincy on a last second 3 mid-season.
As to Drummond, UConn is a much better team with Drummond than without. They are also a much better team when Olander and Boatright are fully available. Drummond has serious issues with senior citizens of the BE. He has had issues with Gates (23), Pope (23), and Gilchrist (23). I had hoped after playing Jones well he wouldn't have these types of games, but Jones floats more on the perimeter than those three.
There were some good from last night:
1) Napier was a leader and he has a set of stones
2) Giffey is a pretty dead-eye shooter this year from 3, he just doesn't take a lot. I hope he can keep this up and truly emerge as a threat offensively at the 3. I also hope that they work on the drive and kick to him at the 3-PT line, because he only seems to shoot when open and he is mostly open in those situations.
3) Rebounding was a plus
This isn't last season and yes Kemba isn't around. Shocking but UConn may not win a NC this year (I mean it's not exactly the easiest thing to win every year) but it's not like there isn't enough talent to win any game.
There are things that need to be worked on but they have already improved on some of their weaknesses from early in the year. I mean think about how poorly this team started the year (based on how it played the previous year).
The offense looks like it's running a bit better - it's not perfect but it's about 1000% better than early in the year. There was a lot less of Napier pounding the ball against Cincy than normal (esp in the second half). 15 of 26 made FGs assisted.
Rebounding has been pretty good the past few games (considering where this team was rebounding at early in the year). UConn was +9 overall and +1 offensively according to ESPN.
Interior defense is still solid. They shot 41.7% inside the arc.
Heck, even the second half 3PT defense was good 3-10 before the final shot (which was contested).
UConn clearly needs to work on things but the list has gotten shorter than it was at the beginning of the season.
In particular, Napier needs to cut down his unforced errors even more and the 3PT defense needs to be there from the first half.

 

[UCweCONN]

......and lost two games to two 'eeehhh' teams.

 

[willie99]

......and lost two games to two 'eeehhh' teams.

we always do

 

[Waquoit]

Crowd wasn't great til UConn was down 12.

Actually, the crowd wasn't great until Giffey's three. Losing sucks but I'm not worried.

 

[champs99and04]

Actually, the crowd was pretty f'in pathetic. For some reason they stopped being loud when UConn went up by two with like eight minutes left. And in the first half they were completely dead..even the students weren't all that energetic. I look at this team, and I notice over the last three years and counting, they have lost ten (10) home games. Compare that to schools like Duke, Kansas, K-State, Kentucky, etc., and it really makes you wonder if the crowd is providing an adequate home court advantage for a program on the verge of blue blood status. The difference between those schools and UConn, is that those crowds pump up their team, where as our crowd counts on the team to pump them up. If the crowd was consistently loud from start to finish, I have to believe it would go a long way towards eliminating some of these lethargic starts we've witnessed in the last couple games.

 

[UCweCONN]

Gampel will never be a great home court until they get the rich boosters who sit on their hands all game away from the sideline seats and fill the lower level with students. Did you see the recent Michigan State-Michigan game at Michigan? The Michigan students in yellow circled the court and were a real sixth man and helped Michigan pull off the win. The same thing at Duke. Gampel used to be one of the best home courts in the late 90's but it has gone soft.

 

[RuffRuff]

So does that mean with the talent on this roster, we're striving to be a pretty good team? Cinci's playing well, but coming off a nice road win, they're a team you should beat at home. That was a bad loss any way you slice it.

 

[willie99]

So does that mean with the talent on this roster, we're striving to be a pretty good team? Cinci's playing well, but coming off a nice road win, they're a team you should beat at home. That was a bad loss any way you slice it.

yep, that's what I said

evidently, you must think we haven't been here before

 

[bobbygt]

I don't know what to make of Cincy. I wasn't overly impressed with them. In fact, I thought uconn played pretty poorly during key stretches of the game and although you must give Cincy some credit for it, the fact that AD and AO were missing shots that appeared to be makeable makes me think that it was more uconn's weakness on offense than Cincy's interior D.

I know there is just a lot of parity right now, but I don't think any of the teams uconn has lost to are good enough to make it to the 2nd weekend of the tourney.

Cincy is good when they are hitting their 3s, but they will lose to a team in the tournament that plays mistake free ball and Cincy isn't shooting at +40% from 3.

Rutgers: Won't make the tourney; borderline NIT
UCF/Seton Hall: borderline tourney teams
Cincy: Tourney team; might win a game or two.

 

[jibsey]

Hate to break the news here but at this point we are a borderline tourney team.

 

[RoderickSpode]

Hate to break the news here but at this point we are a borderline tourney team.

If the tournament started today we'd probably be a 4 or 5 seed, and our SOS is #2. This team still can play themselves out of the tournament, but it probably would require that we go sub-.500 in league play.

 

[jibsey]

If the tournament started today we'd probably be a 4 or 5 seed, and our SOS is #2. This team still can play themselves out of the tournament, but it probably would require that we go sub-.500 in league play.

You are correct and we just have to make sure we go in the right direction. No one anticipated Seton Hall, Rutgers and to a lesser extent Cincy doing better than Pitt, Nova and the likes. The ship is listing not sinking.

 

[60'sfan]

I don't know what to make of Cincy. I wasn't overly impressed with them. In fact, I thought uconn played pretty poorly during key stretches of the game and although you must give Cincy some credit for it, the fact that AD and AO were missing shots that appeared to be makeable makes me think that it was more uconn's weakness on offense than Cincy's interior D.

I know there is just a lot of parity right now, but I don't think any of the teams uconn has lost to are good enough to make it to the 2nd weekend of the tourney.

Cincy is good when they are hitting their 3s, but they will lose to a team in the tournament that plays mistake free ball and Cincy isn't shooting at +40% from 3.

Rutgers: Won't make the tourney; borderline NIT
UCF/Seton Hall: borderline tourney teams
Cincy: Tourney team; might win a game or two.

I agree, I was not overly impressed with Cincinnati. They showed no inside game at all and were out rebounded. If they only hit their average on three's, Uconn wins.

A real positive from the game was the comeback that we made. The team played extremely well. The problem is that we did not play that well for most of the game. This is typical of Calhoun teams. The percentage of good play tends to go up so that at tournament time we are getting 30-35 minutes of solid play. With our talent, that should allow us to win most of our games.

 

[UC990411]

Yes, we lost to a pretty good team. And we didn't have our 3rd guard. And AD was sick. And Cinci shot lots out from three BUTTTTTTTTTTTT.....a loss is a loss is a loss. We continue to be exposed by teams WE SHOULD BEAT. If we don't get better, SOON, we will play 2 or 3 postseason games top because this crap just won't cut it in the BET and NCAA tournament.