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Re: MBB v UCF Game Thread

PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 9:06 pm
by JasonB
I'm still waiting for us to employ a consistent full court press. We are so deep and athletic, it makes all the sense in the world to turn the game into an up and down racetrack.

My Larry Brown experience has a really hard time digesting this team.

Offensively, LB took a small number of threes, had a slow pace of play, and if you took a bad shot or forced a pass, you got yanked. This team is all about quick pace of play, 1v1, still good passing, but quick shots and sometimes just awful shots are taken. That said, is is much more modern NBA, and much more attractive for players and recruits. And lower pace of play and low number of 3s attempted has shown to be not successful in the NCAA tourney. So, it is probably a better fit for us going further at the end of a season.

Defensively, LB was about very good individual defending, plus physical man defense all the time so that you could block out and prevent offensive rebounds. Also sit back off the ball to prevent the drive and give up deeper threes. Again the LB system made us more consistent and tougher defensively, and slowed the game down, but at some point a team would get hot beyond the arc and would have knocked us out if we were ever eligible for the tourney. This defense is going to get out on the perimeter, play tighter man to man, but isn't as good of a defending team. So it relies on energy and help defense to be successful. The energy and help gives up open threes in the corner and offensive rebounds galore. It speeds the game up, which plays into our hands, but good passing and offensive rebounding teams have the opportunity to really hurt us. It almost guarantees good defensive performances against teams that aren't very good, but we will be torn up against really good teams.

The offensive shot selection kills me sometimes, but man when things are flowing well, like in the second half, we can put really nice runs together.

Re: MBB v UCF Game Thread

PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:06 pm
by Charleston Pony
I really liked the 9 man rotation in this game. Makes a big difference having Jolly back. I think we kind of wore UCF down in that 2nd half. Just checked the box score and see that UCF hit 48% of their FGs in 1st half but hit only 31% in that 2nd half. Jolly played 18 minutes and although he started slowly offensively, he really made a difference defensively and his 2 blocked shots aren't something you see every day from a guard

Re: MBB v UCF Game Thread

PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:34 pm
by ponyboy
Yes, and of course our big man.

Re: MBB v UCF Game Thread

PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 11:03 pm
by DC-Pony
Yes, Anei has been legit. His shot blocking prowess is crazy good. And, today, his touch around the basket offensively was really impressive and svelte.

Jason B, great breakdown of the team vs LB-coached teams. At one point in the second half our passing resembled that of an LB-coached team and we were getting some great looks from it. We weren’t as consistent with it as in the 2015-2016 time period. But it was encouraging.

And, man, is it ever a luxury to have a PG with the handle, shooting range, court vision, and FT consistency that Davis has.