This year’s record may rival the worst year records of Cooper and Owens. Owens first year he was 9-22. Cooper’s worst year was 13-19. We are currently 7-12.
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Wonder if Eli will start getting some of Smith’s minutes?
That comment was partly a shot at our shooters, but also a shot at letting a guy who has been knocking down open 3’s all year wide open. We started out double teaming everything and that left BG easy shots for good shooters at home. Sure you don’t want to defend that defense too?
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Anderson is always there with quality points. Without he, Lairy and Safford, we would be in a world of hurt. Losing stinks but we are under ten points every game lately when we do lose so not far off.
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I hope our new recruits can play a little defense. By now, we should be talking about our ability to see some portions of the pack line defense and I don’t think we can. We give up the baseline, we give up the middle of the floor, we’re late on shooters. Then, defensive transition is still a mess. And our matchup zone is terrible. If we’re going to play zone, a 1-3-1 might be a better fit with our length that we can put at the point of the zone and on the wings and lack of mobility in the middle.
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Let’s be honest mz343-what you are saying is we are a bad defensive team. And that certainly is reflected in the eye test for even a casual team. I don’t think we are a very good offensive team either. It seems like we have less crisp ball movement than we did earlier in the year.
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MZ and Cool, you are both right. Our D is killing us. Sometimes I wonder if we have the personnel, but I’ve seen flashes, especially early in the year, where we look decent. If we’re scratching our heads, the staff must be shopping for the Costco-size Rogaine.
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The roster is likely missing a few pieces for what we need to run the defense optimally. And despite that, we are still keeping games close. Had any of our sharp shooters been on, we would have been in another NIU game.
I think they’re pretty confident on the issue, and you hit on it. Our best on-ball defender might be Tatum. That’s an issue because he’s a liability on offense. We only have one player who can get their own shot, and they need to be setting others up and have struggled in the defensive side. Lewis hasn’t looked the same since his ankle injury. The freshmen have improved since the start of the season, but defenses have made adjustments for them. Now they need to take the next step in their game.
Frankly, we’re not a very athletic team and we’re getting pushed and run around by teams who are. We don’t play teams who have 5 guys who can run well.
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We are not quick enough or athletic enough to play man defense- teams will keeping driving hard to the basket and we either give up easy lay up or foul ( or both ! ). I know Travis wants to play man D but he needs to go more zone this year. On offense we need to do more isolation /clear out for Anderson, Stafford and Lairy - if D doubles kick back for some hopefully better 3 shooting. Rebounding has to improve even though we are an undersized for D 1 - often only on 1 Miami player in a position to rebound esp re offensive rebounds. Finally for any chance to win we are going to have to play more full court pressure. Hoping for at least 6 Conference wins ( which is very disappointing ).
Yesterday we spent a lot of time running around and double teaming. That resulted in 18 turnovers by BG, a pretty high number. However, all those open looks led to BG shooting 64% in the first half and around 56% for the game. As I pointed out in the pregame, we are 11th out of 12 in FG% defense. What we are doing is not working well.
The one MAC game we have won was when Mabry shot the lights out and hit 5 treys, which gave us a 4th scoring threat to go with Mirambeaux, Lairy, and Safford. We can continue to wait for Mabry/Smith to have big shooting nights or we can play Williams/Lewis more. Neither has been playing up to their ability lately, but they are both more physically ready and more experienced and give us better matchups. Maybe Tatum.
I guess it is more about are we going with our best options now or are we more interested in developing our freshmen. I think we would be better this year by playing the older guys as much as possible, but we still are not going to be great. Things to think about.
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Question, is Harrison still on the team? It would seem he would have gotten some time yesterday if healthy. Someone mentioned that they did not see him on the bench at the last home game.
I don’t think he was on the bench yesterday. Medical/injury ending playing career? If so, he may have been put on an medical/injury scholarship. Don’t think that counts against the 13 max.
He was at the NIU game.
Is the goal to develop players or win a couple more games this year? I would argue it’s the former, so why not give as much time in your primary defense? Morris has come a long way on defense. So has Mabrey. IMO, every decision should be for next year and the following.
They said they didn’t see Etzler. But Harrison hasn’t dressed since the last game he played.
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So he is injured? Or maybe he is redshirting since he is not in the rotation?
Honestly if he is healthy and cant make a dent in this rotation do we really want him red shirting
Redshirting might not help us, but it would save him a year of eligibility . It would be good for his future. Here are our scholarship numbers for next season: Right now we have 8 guys who have been playing every game. Only Lairy will use up his eligibility. Barring transfer, that is 7 returnees. We have already signed 5 incoming freshmen for next year. That put us at 12 for next year. Then I have heard from several sources that the staff plans to add a combo guard from the transfer portal. That would take care of our 13 scholarships for next year.
Beyond that, we have 4 other guys on scholarship right now. Now things may not play out exactly as I laid it out, but there are going to be some guys leaving because we have 16 or 17 guys and only 13 scholarships to give out. So in Harrison’ s case, injuries have slowed him down and he has not had much of a chance to show what he can do. If he is redshirting, he would still have 3 years of eligibility left and he would be very attractive to some lower level programs. So it might be a very good move for his future.
Jive, I agree: Making coaching decisions now for strategic vice tactical reasons is the right move, and will pay dividends. Unfortunately, those dividends won’t be seen for a while.
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I think that is a tough call. A big part of turning a losing program around is learning how to win. Winning breeds winning, losing breeds losing. Experiencing success brings buy in from the players, losing brings questioning what you are doing. Finishing in last place in the MAC is not going to help turn things around… Just presenting the other side of this issue.
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