Xavier Post Game Thread

[nomar]

Wow Malachi Smith is averaging less than both Stewart and Ross. I know he has been very inconsistent but we need a little more scoring from him.

Fun fact: Smith is 16/56 from inside the arc. That's crazy.

 

[freescooter]

Much like the refs, I didn't see any flagrant… Until I watch the replay a couple of times, then I saw that Smith clearly pushed him. The exact same thing the refs saw.
When I heard them call the flagrant I said to my wife "what? That's ridiculous!" Then they showed the replay, and I said "oh they're right, that was a shove."

I kind of agree though I thought when the whistle first blew that they were calling a block on Smith. He clearly fouled the Xavier guy though I think it shouldn’t have been called flagrant. What I thought happened was once they reviewed it the saw Smith clearly committed a foul and they missed it. So given that UConn had the game in hand and they couldn’t call a common foul they basically called the flagrant to get around the problem. I’m guessing if it was 65-63 they don’t make that call.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

Try not to - love the kids stroke. But last night he had a lot of open looks and missed pretty badly on them. He's shooting 28% - that is a really bad number.

I think it’s another case where if you watch the games, you can see how he has gotten to where he is. Early season, it seemed like he was taking a high volume of low-percentage 3’s, plus it seemed like he was always trying to draw fouls on his 3s. Likely a function of teams hawking him this year as the team’s best 3pt shooter based on last year’s phenomenal shooting on a large sample size. A decent sample of less-than-quality shots put him below 30%.

Then, he clearly got hurt in the Butler game. And has probably aggravated it here-and-there. I think he’s been taking better quality looks, but who knows what effect his wrist is having on ability on those looks. So he’s still below 40%.

Honestly, I’d love if we could just rest him after STJ for the Butler, GTown, Creighton stretch to try and get him healthy and straightened out for the stretch run into the post season.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

At this point we need to treat last season as Solo's fluke 3pt shooting year. He's had 20+ games to get it going, shot allocation needs to be dialed back.

There is a quantifiable chance that his 3pt shooting last year was a total fluke. It’s more than 0%, but I don’t think the “true” story on Solo is that he is really a sub-30% 3pt shooter

 

[RuffRuff]

Impressive

 

[aceboon]

There is a quantifiable chance that his 3pt shooting last year was a total fluke. It’s more than 0%, but I don’t think the “true” story on Solo is that he is really a sub-30% 3pt shooter

32% as a freshman without using arbitrary cutoff points(that 45% figure that was thrown out in this thread isn't even factual), now 29% as a junior on a 3ball that has been broke since October(unless the new BY narrative is that he's had a wrist issue all year). I would love to see him go nuclear to cap off the season but this is probably a topic we'll have to re-visit next season.

 

[KingAG]

32% as a freshman without using arbitrary cutoff points(that 45% figure that was thrown out in this thread isn't even factual), now 29% as a junior on a 3ball that has been broke since October(unless the new BY narrative is that he's had a wrist issue all year). I would love to see him go nuclear to cap off the season but this is probably a topic we'll have to re-visit next season.

You don’t shoot how he shot last season and be a bad shooter. I think that close to impossible. Something is off, but if you recall he was arguably the best shooter in CBB last season. Fluky would be if he shot around 35-36%. He was undeniably a dominant elite shooter last season. And the year before you could clearly see that potential as well. He didn’t get many opportunities after the OOC schedule.