shadowman wrote:Pony81 wrote:Thankfully, Memphis is less disciplined and more sloppy with the ball than we are.
Equally poorly coached teams and we win.....
Just back from the game, and I will disagree just a bit. This SMU team defense is the best I have seen in quite some time, even including the tournament teams. It is very frustrating how some of scorers decide to disappear and we get offensively struggled at points, but the defense is solid.
Even more perplexing is how we cannot win on the road, even against very bad teams. At home, we rock it, on the road, we have lost to the two worst teams in the conference.
Just have to finish the season strong, get a bye in the tournament and see how we do on a neutral court for the tournament. You would expect a conference tournament in Ft. Worth to be lightly attended. It is up to us to turn it in to a home party.
/cheers
That was by far the best defensive performance we have seen in quite a long time, since early season home conference games an OOC games.
Memphis, like us, were very quick to heave up a three. But our activity defensively was much, much, much better than it has been. Davis set the tone on the very first possession of the game by picking up his player in the backcourt and playing physically with him all the way up the court. Lots of pressure on the ball, not sagging in too much to leave wide open kickouts unless it was a player we wanted to shoot from outside. This was a much more intense, focused, and well prepared defensive effort than we have seen in a long, long time.
They showed some information on our home/road defensive stats during the game, and it was shocking the distance. Some of that is influenced of course by the week OOC schedule. But our defensive workrate just isn't travelling right now.
Offensively, I'll disagree with some of the takes that we took good shots from three. We rush every single three. We might have a little space, but we really rush those shots. Both teams, for large stretches of the game, looked very disorganized on the offensive end.
The difference in the game, beyond the turnovers, is that we would feed the ball down low. Ethan had his best, most active game in a long time. He was willing to go down low, demand the ball, and try a turnaround or go hard to the basket. If we got that Ethan every night, we would be a much better team as a whole. We would be able to play more patient offensively, be more efficient, and create more space for quality three point shots.