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Rebel10 wrote:Ray has some good solid post moves. The score he made down low was a strong veteran score.

That was my impression too.

Looking at the box score, I was a bit [deleted] whitt in my earlier comments. He had a quietly productive night, though will have to penetrate more for this offense really to go.

Really surprised how Whitt was so quick to almost always want to pass the ball and never look for his shot til the end of the game. When we get everyone ready to play in January then this team will be so much better. Cannot judge the freshmen off the bench after a few minutes of play tonight. Always going to be nerves to deal with. Bet UMBC gets clobbered at Arizona on Sunday. They had one good player and no down low play at all and one of their other guys had a career game last night.

jimhagle wrote:Really surprised how Whitt was so quick to almost always want to pass the ball and never look for his shot til the end of the game. When we get everyone ready to play in January then this team will be so much better. Cannot judge the freshmen off the bench after a few minutes of play tonight. Always going to be nerves to deal with. Bet UMBC gets clobbered at Arizona on Sunday. They had one good player and no down low play at all and one of their other guys had a career game last night.

If we play well in the tournament we may see Zona too.

jimhagle wrote:Really surprised how Whitt was so quick to almost always want to pass the ball and never look for his shot til the end of the game. When we get everyone ready to play in January then this team will be so much better. Cannot judge the freshmen off the bench after a few minutes of play tonight. Always going to be nerves to deal with. Bet UMBC gets clobbered at Arizona on Sunday. They had one good player and no down low play at all and one of their other guys had a career game last night.

Disagree completely. They will lose to AZ by a large margin, but so will we if we play them. UMBC is better than a number of teams in our own conference and I would not be surprised to see them in the top couple of America East teams with a chance to make a run at NCAA tourney. They have invested in their coaching staff and are building a 90 Million new arena. Both #33 and #10 were solid and could start or play on half of the teams in the AAC. 10 was recruited by Shaka Smart to VCU when they were a perennial NCAA tourney team.

Great gritty win for the ponies. I will be a UMBC fan for the rest of the year.

PonyTime wrote:

jimhagle wrote:Bet UMBC gets clobbered at Arizona on Sunday.

Disagree completely. They will lose to AZ by a large margin...

Seems like you agreed completely?

UMBC had two very good players. That said, we played very poor defensively in the first half.

Lots of touch fouls called. They let them play a bit more in the second half. But a lot of the fouls were legit. Jank said we had several players "foul out" in the scrimmages. So we are getting used to the points of emphasis and the college game. This is going to be a major problem against good teams.

We didn't really close them down better in the second half, they just started to miss shots.

It was really nice to see Shake actively take over the game. He demanded the ball and took it over. That was needed, and really showed a step up.

The only frosh who looked really lost was Douglas. He had the deer in the headlights look.

The big thing offensively is that the only two players who had confidence in the outside shot were Shake, Foster, and Chargois. We relied on dribble penetration more than we ever have. The other frosh showed no confidence outside, Whitt didn't even attempt, and even Gu passed up some open looks (although he hit the big three in the second).

Honestly, I think we are just going to be okay in non-conference. There are going to be games where not having a third scorer hurts us, foul trouble really hurts us, defense hurts us. We may get blown out in games against good teams with an inside presence. USC and TCU might be rough games. But once we get Georgetown and UCF in the mix and the frosh have experience going into conference play, things will straighten out. We have a good chance, IMHO, to be one of those teams who hurts the conference ratings by getting beat non-conference and playing well in conference.

Grant Carter wrote:

PonyTime wrote:

jimhagle wrote:Bet UMBC gets clobbered at Arizona on Sunday.

Disagree completely. They will lose to AZ by a large margin...

Seems like you agreed completely?

Disagree that they only had one good player and the inference that they are a bad team. Don't disagree that they will lose to AZ by 20+.

The missed shots helped but we definitely played better defense in the second half. There might have even been some correlation between those two things...

Passing was improved in the second half. Announcer mentioned several times in the first half that there was too much dribbling and not enough passing by SMU.

Really enjoyed my new Moody debut last night.... so much so I will be in the house tomorrow.

Observations in no particular order:

Lots of things we’ve taken for granted for awhile need to be re-learned by the noobs:
Defensive rotations, movement without the ball, inbounding, Press breaking.

On the good side our rebounding wasn’t bad (although their “bigs” were not so hot) we even lost a few because two of our guys got and lost them.

Once Chargois got his feet under him he was pretty good... he tripped at least three times in the first couple of minutes. What he brings is what we can use. (G’day mate!)

Ray will be fine... and he will get the minutes he needs

Landrum is going to be a blast to watch. He’ll lose minutes to McMurray.

I laughed when Douglas just ran on the court without checking in at the scorers table in the second half. Naw... he wasn’t a nervous wreck last night.

We are a much better team with Agau and McMurray but there will be an adjustment period then too.

Whitt’s stat line: quietly impressive. Isn’t that what was advertised?

Shake, Jarrey and Ben: Put the team on their backs in the second half.

I hope Jarrey shoots free throws better. We’ll need that.

I’ve missed Shiner Bock and SMU coeds.

The most pleasant surprise to me in the first game was the play of Chargois. Eight rebounds and decent offense, including a couple of three-pointers. We don't always get that outside shooting from our big men. On top of that, I liked his on court demeanor.

H-E-B Mustang wrote:The most pleasant surprise to me in the first game was the play of Chargois. Eight rebounds and decent offense, including a couple of three-pointers. We don't always get that outside shooting from our big men. On top of that, I liked his on court demeanor.

Big surprise, right? I thought coming in that Ray would be the new guy to step in and play, but Chargois is a huge bonus. If Georgetown can get healthy, we will have a really nice rotation at 4/5.

I thought Ray played well and is a physicall grown man type player.

Rebel10 wrote:I thought Ray played well and is physicall grown man type player.

Co-sign. Though chargois has the skill edge, Ray won't be easy for teams to knock off the blocks. We need that type of player. He looks like he understands positioning well for a freshman.