Xavier post game thread.

[ctchamps]

That's my coach.

He's well aware of this forum no doubt. Probably told Cam to miss the first end of the one and one to insure the close win!

 

[Waquoit]

Olivari seems like a good dude. Truth be told, I've always kinda pulled for Xavier over the years.

 

[gtcam]

The other thing that's maddening about the "dribble off 20 seconds at halfcourt" approach to killing clock is that you have a team that's battered, bruised, behind, and on the ropes. You decide your finishing strategy is to let them catch their collective breaths for 20sec, then tell them they have to play concentrated good D for only 10 sec.

Make them work their arses off for the full 30sec...they will be less likely to be able to run their offense at 100% capacity...even if you miss your shot.

Agree 100000000%
Somehow that hasn't sunk in to the coaches.
You can work time off the clock at a rapid pace as well as a slow pace - its called effective ball movement

 

[cohenzone]

Thank god for Diarra. He was a one man show on offense and played great D on their guards. Without him I think we might lose with Karaban hurt during that stretch. We need to work on FTs in next practices. The game should never been this close.

I’d guess they always work on FT. Every shot is its own little world. One thing i noticed seeing Newton in person several games ago. He’s a decent foul shooter but shoots a relatively low trajectory shot. If he’s not straight in he has very room for error.

 

[Leebo]

I see you watched the game! Is Diarra that hard to pronounce?

That's one way to pronounce it. But I don't think it's how he does, so for that reason it's weird.

 

[Jaydumo20]

I see you watched the game! Is Diarra that hard to pronounce?

I don't know why he was saying it that way but I was dying everytime he did. And lucky for us, he said his name a bunch.

 

[Hey Adrien!]

 

[Beak7774]

Love the win but man that was a stressful ending. It wasn’t so much the draining clock on offense that drove me crazy, it was fouling on defense. Time is your friend, the one critical thing you don’t want to do is stop the clock for them and we did that feels like 3-4 times in the last 3 minutes, giving them chances to score without the clock moving.

 

[REB1094]

How on earth are there teenagers who can learn and run this stuff???

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

How on earth are there teenagers who can learn and run this stuff???

Sort of makes you realize how funny some of the coaching suggestions the Yard offers are.

 

[alexd]

I don't think this has been mentioned..but...

27 assists on 31 baskets. That's 87%.

 

[Edward Sargent]

I don't think this has been mentioned..but...

27 assists on 31 baskets. That's 87%.

There is definite room for improvement

 

[uconnfan68]

Samson is not a 4. He never was--he was just sharing the court with Adama in high school. The second Adama left, he went right back into the post. We're asking him to play in the post because he's freakishly athletic, long, tall, has enough weight now... and has absolutely 0 perimeter skills worth mentioning.

He has more than enough size and post-skill to be a successful high-major big. He's not going to average 17/10 like Donovan could, but there's a 10/6 player in there who doesn't get in foul trouble 50% of the time. It's the IQ and feel for the game stuff that is preventing him from being better right now.

^^^ this… but… another 20# would help him if it didn’t cut into his gifts.

 

[Leebo]

I don't think this has been mentioned..but...

27 assists on 31 baskets. That's 87%.

Genuinely not meant as a gotcha, but if anyone wanted to discuss specifically

31 Buckets, 27 Assists

Incredible ball movement. Also, indicative no one other than Castle can take his man off the dribble.

the-boneyard.com

 

[Deepster]

Olivari seems like a good dude. Truth be told, I've always kinda pulled for Xavier over the years.

They were always a strong A-10 team and solid tourney competitor. I respect them. Good crowd and good consistent program. That was a good win for us.

 

[huskiesouth]

And whenever an offensive player falls to ground when driving to basket, 90% of the time the defense is given a foul- the refs' thinking must be "if player is on floor, they must have been pushed or tripped".

Having a certain amount of hands-on Div. 2 coaching experience, one thing that drives coaches crazy is when a ref guesses a foul occurred rather than actually seeing a foul committed.

 

[uconngb]

Missing the foul shots nearly lost us the game. Even so, the plan worked perfectly, we ate the clock, we won. We got exactly what we wanted but even Spenser missed from the line.

I expect Hurley to do the exact same thing up 14 with 3 minutes to go. However, he mentioned in the post game he was not pleased our execution at the end.

We got what we wanted?? Two prayer 3 point hoists by Castle at the shot clock buzzer?? What are you talking about? We got absolutely NOTHING out of our prevent offense other than a heart attack and a result far closer than it had to be.

 

[caw]

How on earth are there teenagers who can learn and run this stuff???

And those plays are the reason a talented kid like Stewart is taking some time to learn the sets. His AAU and high school teams ran nothing close to it. He's really getting better every game too. You can just see it. Now once he learns to catch the bullet passes as he cuts, he'll be much better (I don't really blame him for those two passes, they were both rockets to him).

It is also why even Castle and Ball occasionally look lost (and I do mean occasionally because both have been fantastic).

It has also hurt the freshman a bit because with Clingan out UConn can't run a "simple" post play, so UConn runs more complicated sets more often.

Finally, it shows how darn impressive Karaban was last year and Cam is this year, but even Karaban had the added semester to learn it the year before and Cam being a fifth year helped a lot.

 

[Palatine]

We got what we wanted?? Two prayer 3 point hoists by Castle at the shot clock buzzer?? What are you talking about? We got absolutely NOTHING out of our prevent offense other than a heart attack and a result far closer than it had to be.

We got what we wanted, we won. Yes, I stand by that.

I never said that Castle's shots were what we wanted. You made that up in your mind. According to Dan Hurley. We ran our offense at the end. We just ran it poorly. A much bigger issue was the missed front ends of one and one's by Samsom and Spenser.

If you watch basketball and a team is up by 14 points with three minutes to play. You will see coaches run down the shot clock before shooting. This often results in a poor shot. However, virtually every college coach understands that with that time and score, bleeding seconds is more important than adding points.

 

[AllHusky]

We got what we wanted, we won. Yes, I stand by that.

I never said that Castle's shots were what we wanted. You made that up in your mind. According to Dan Hurley. We ran our offense at the end. We just ran it poorly. A much bigger issue was the missed front ends of one and one's by Samsom and Spenser.

If you watch basketball and a team is up by 14 points with three minutes to play. You will see coaches run down the shot clock before shooting. This often results in a poor shot. However, virtually every college coach understands that with that time and score, bleeding seconds is more important than adding points

Moneyball

Works if you make the plays.

So does going up 16 with 2:45 to play

We got the win

 

[HooperScooper]

I never said that Castle's shots were what we wanted. You made that up in your mind. According to Dan Hurley. We ran our offense at the end. We just ran it poorly. A much bigger issue was the missed front ends of one and one's by Samsom and Spenser Spencer.

 

[Icehawk]

Nothing to see here either.