Xavier Post Game Thread | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Xavier Post Game Thread

REB1094 said:
This should be a fun one.

I could fill a novel with my thoughts on this one but I'll try to limit them to 3 -
  1. Sanogo was unstoppable. Whoever Sanogo was guarding was also unstoppable. Hurley needs to immediately figure out pick and roll defense with Sanogo. DC doesn't have this problem (yes I know he's 7'2)
  2. Our roster is meant to wear teams out and we have a super deep bench. Diarra, Clingan, and Alleyne were playing very well while Newton and Karaban were playing very poorly. The adjustments that had to be made were not made
  3. Karaban is getting very tired. He needs to be a situational PF because he gets abused on defense against big or strong 4s. When he's a traffic cone on defense and is being used as a spot up shooter but cant make a shot, he's got no business being out there. I get that this isn't his fault because Samson is injured, but he was a net negative after the first few minutes
Credit to Xavier, they played a great game. 54% shooting and 23-28 from the line. In the last 5-7 minutes I saw some questionable calls. But before that, I thought it was fine. We took 37 threes tonight, 55% of all FGs. Hard to get to the line when you take 37 threes
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Right on with all of this!
 
One loss. No big whoop. It's a marathon. Not a sprint. The team is solid. Has a slight hole at PG, but not as much as years past in my opinion.

Glad Xavier is playing well. League was looking suspect. We need their support.
 
There were some positives but overall Xavier is a very well coached team who was getting the calls and making every tough shot. It happens, move on to the next game.

Don’t blame Hurley for the T, the refs were not calling it both ways.

The bad though, sloppy turnovers.

Something seemed off with Hawkins, lot less action off the ball than normal.

Newton needs to drive with a plan. Even if he gets his shot stuffed it’s better than his random passes. He gets in the lane fine but he needs to take the shot.

Karaban was playing against a senior version of what he can be, learn from it and move on.

High hedge is a bad plan against a good passing team like Xavier (probably second best passing team I’ve seen this year).

On the plus side, Jackson was great. Alleyne also played well. Sanogo played well. Clingan played well but not enough.
 
NC_Uconn_Fan said:
Its 1 loss, not the end of the world. I'm sure this place will overreact though.
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Exactly, 1 loss and the refs hosed us and we still had our chances to win the game. This will light a fire in us
 
I’ll take full blame for this game. All of my guys, except for AJ, were terrible: AK, Hawk, Newton, etc. I apologize for my poor effort. I’ll try to do better next time. Happy New Year!
 
MervthePurvis said:
Just commented on Tristan in another chat. But do we hand diarra the keys? Risk his spark? Will newton be able to provide a lift if our 2nd line which is based on speed and mayhem (sans dc)? Bring alleyne back?
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Depending on how Tristan responds, you have to continue riding with him as the starting PG.

When Samson returns, depending on the opponents starters you could shift AJ to the starting PG and Karaban to SF.

Tristan needs to wake up and play with more urgency.
 
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Hurley has done a fantastic job with this team and it’s reasonable to have some lapses. Also fair to criticize the leader of the team for compromising them down the stretch. Both can be true
 
InKembaITrust said:
Depending on how Tristan responds, you have to continue riding with him as the starting PG.

When Samson returns, depending on the opponents starters you could shift AJ to the starting PG and Karaban to SF.

Tristan needs to wake up and play with more urgency.
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This was a Johnson game. If he is what we expected him to be pre-season, he's the difference maker here. Have to play Sanogo, but you don't necessarily have to play Karaban in a game like this.
 
WhereistheDove? said:
I had A LOT of issues with the refs today but that T was on Hurley and it was stupid. He’s the coach. He’s got to know the situation and keep it together.

At the end of the day, we weren’t going undefeated and this was the most likely loss. On to the next one.
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Agree we take the punch, get up and fight smarter as we go along.
 
caw said:
There were some positives but overall Xavier is a very well coached team who was getting the calls and making every tough shot. It happens, move on to the next game.

Don’t blame Hurley for the T, the refs were not calling it both ways.

The bad though, sloppy turnovers.

Something seemed off with Hawkins, lot less action off the ball than normal.

Newton needs to drive with a plan. Even if he gets his shot stuffed it’s better than his random passes. He gets in the lane fine but he needs to take the shot.

Karaban was playing against a senior version of what he can be, learn from it and move on.

High hedge is a bad plan against a good passing team like Xavier (probably second best passing team I’ve seen this year).

On the plus side, Jackson was great. Alleyne also played well. Sanogo played well. Clingan played well but not enough.
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I couldn’t agree more, my only beef with Hurley today was the lack of minutes for alleyne Diarra and
 
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auror said:
Yes, the officials were bad, yes Hurley got a T to more or less put the game out of reach... but we were already losing.

And that's because our execution was just not good enough in the last 10 minutes of the game.

08:09 - We're just passing the ball on the perimeter and Newton makes a sloppy hospital pass that's picked off and leads directly to a layup and we go down 4.
05:48 - We got a rebound, pushing the pace. Newton lobs a ball into Sanogo on the move. He makes a nice catch. The D swarms, and he looks for open guys but sees nobody. Ends up just kinda losing the ball in an attempt to do something.
04:21 - Newton drives to the lane, has an opening that gets cut off by help. Instead of finding the guy the help was coming from, he throws a pass to nobody into the 2nd row.
03:54 - We get a steal. Defense leads to offense. Hawkins has the ball attacking the rim. Instead of drawing a foul, gets called for an offensive push-off when attacking multiple guys.

Around these plays, Jackson made a few nice plays. We were still in the game. But this was where our run should have been. This was the last 10 min run, but instead we made some bone-headed plays and that's the difference in close games on the road.
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Remember earlier in the year when Newton showed a decent ability to drive and score or draw a foul? We need him to remember that. He's become so unselfish that he's always looking to pass off his drives. Other teams know that and it's hurting us.
 
We lost because Xavier shot 20 more FTs than we did. Whether it’s because the refs or we aren’t very good at driving to the rim is up for debate.

Not a bad first loss to the season. My one worry is, who takes over for us in close games? So far this season everything has been a team effort with going on runs in blowouts to end a game. Can that happen for a whole tournament?
 
I’m going to leave the T by Hurley out of it, as it’s been well discussed, but our larger problem this game not being able to find the right rotation of players to overcome what Xavier was being successful at.

One of the drawbacks of having a “deep team” is when you lose, you don’t necessarily go down with your “best” on the floor.

I thing a greater fault from coaching today was not identifying what worked best and doing what they could to stick with it. We also don’t have a “go-to” guy when we need one. Again, side affects of just rolling with a “deep team”.
 
tzznandrew said:
This was a Johnson game. If he is what we expected him to be pre-season, he's the difference maker here. Have to play Sanogo, but you don't necessarily have to play Karaban in a game like this.
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Yeah we missed johnson today big time. I thought about that about 5 mins into the game
 
We had our chances. Many x
Big time start of 2 Nd half and we gave it back
 
Should’ve given it down low to Sanogo more throughout the game; seemed like a high percentage opportunity each time. Not that difficult.
 
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The game was UConn's to take if played smart and disciplined BB (including Dan Hurley).

If the regular season goal is to win the BE then need to play much better down the stretch in tough road environment.
 
Excalibur said:
If ever there was a game to play both Sanogo and Clingan, it was this one, and I’m not a big proponent of having them on the floor together.
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Yes, it seems pretty clear we're not going to see it utilized this season because this was the game. Free and Nunge got whatever they wanted against Sanogo and Karaban and Clingan just sat there getting splinters. I guess that one driving circus layup Nunge got on Clingan was unacceptable.
 
I couldn’t catch the game here in Florida, so I’m trying to figure out from posts here what happened. I’m seeing two opposing claims: we didn’t take it to the rim and settled for 3s too easily, vs. they packed the paint on us, so we had to shoot from outside. So which was it?

And what happened to all our outside shooters? I thought this was the year when we could finally make 3-point shots.
 
Wow, I guess times are changing…I did not like the timing of the T because it was still a game. But the flop by Nunge where Hawkins got called for the foul was sooo bad. But we had three times more fouls called against us. That it enough to drive any coach into getting a T.
 
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If you’re going to lose, this was the game to do so.

With that said, there have been some concerning trends over the past 4-5 games that need to be corrected. The offense seems incredibly rushed right now, to the point where they take the first semi-open shot that comes their way - and that typically means a long 3-pointer. It’s one thing if running the offense results in quality 3-point looks, but that hasn’t really been the case since the Florida game.

And the defense…yikes. This coaching staff needs to realize that Georgetown, Villanova, and now Xavier have been burning them on the same plays and make adjustments accordingly.

All in all, a midseason loss like this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’ll be curious to see how they come out for their next game.
 
Hi-Low said:
The game was UConn's to take if played smart and disciplined BB (including Dan Hurley).

If the regular season goal is to win the BE then need to play much better down the stretch in tough road environment.
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Agreed. And sometimes they don't, especially on the road in a raucous environment. Everybody made some mistakes. But it's 1 game. The game we had the least odds of winning come in of every game remaining. And it was a 1 point game with 2:30 left, and then we missed 7 straight 3 pointers.
 
Excalibur said:
With Sanogo struggling so much defending the ball screen, better to have someone else that can defend the rim.
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I’m with you on having Clingan in there more but Sanogo at the four would have led to them running the pick and roll off Freemantle (against Sanogo) with probably even greater effect and handicapping our offense with two bigs and big defenders stationed in the paint.

Freemantle bullied AK down low because that was the advantage. If Sanogo is in there, they’re playing him out on the perimeter because that’s the advantage.
 
Robo03 said:
I agree with the foul disparity, but it was also somewhat of a product of all the threes being shot.

I feel like BE play started we are not getting downhill as much as we need to. I am fine with the open shots, even Jackson’s, but we need to drive more to create fouls.
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100% agree. Just looked at the stats. 55% of our shots were beyond the 3 point line. We need to attack the basket more. TN does it but too often gets caught in the air leading to a TO. Has AJAX 's game changed? He is so hesitant to attack the hoop.
 
Damn.

I'll admit it, I was dreaming of a perfect season. I'm still thrilled with the year and acknowledge losses were probable and if we're going to lose, at least it's to a quality team. I'm still all in on the Kool-Aid folks.

Xavier's crowd was LOUD. They showed out for sure.

I hope folks don't forget Alleyne's 3 to close out the half, it didn't carry us to the end but those are plays that win games. It seems like he's a better clutch player than his uneven play might suggest - and his previous history supports that.


Where were the cuts and slashes tonight? It seemed like there was a lot more standing around than normal from the Huskies, still plenty of passing but it seemed like a lot less movement. I thought Xavier looked more like us at times with their play.

Fouls. Xavier shot TRIPLE the number of free throws we did. What the everloving? Let's not comment on the terrible % made by UConn since it barely mattered, we didn't take enough for it to even matter. I know the #s are inflated by the last few minutes but it was noticeable even at the half. The part that gets me, I saw a ton of fouls that didn't get called on us... and then Hurley drew another of his patented, worthless, Ts.

Did the T cost the game? I don't know but it did nothing positive whatsoever. I love the passion, it's what's gotten us here today but... arg. Head > Desk. I'm still behind Coach Hurley, I just wish he could rein himself that little bit. The refs are tight on him and tight in general this season and, honestly, there just wasn't a reason to draw one here. No benefit and the situation wasn't so dire as to call for a T worthy tantrum. Realistically he isn't going to change and I don't think it was the cause of the complete breakdown of play by the team at the 3m or so mark but a 4pt swing certainly isn't going to help your guys' mindset.

What was going on with the 3s from Andre at the end? Take the extra few seconds, this is clutch time and make smart decisions. I am not sure the rotation was what I'd call for at the end either but I also don't get paid to make those calls. The last 3 minutes was some of the worst play we've seen and is exactly what I think we've all feared could happen under pressure. I think they'll be watching that tape for quite some time and I have faith they will take the hard lesson here. Also some lazy/sloppy passes all; game that need cleaning up, like just bad ones.

I still think we're going to go the season with just a handful of losses at worst, this loss should hurt the team and put some fire under them. Let's have this be the only loss of the season! :) 2022 has been pretty darn good.

On to 2023 y'all!
 
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