Thoughts on the USC win

[PonyFan32]

1. Said elsewhere by another poster but this is a very talented team.
2. Welcome to the big time, Will Douglas.
3. Still think we lose a game or two we shouldn't due to inexperience. But people will not want to play us in conference play.
4. Whitt's jumpers are another dimension for us.
5. Can you believe we played that way without McMurray and with minimal production from Akoy?
6. Tim Jankovich is indeed a mad scientist. It was so obvious on TV that he was constantly making adjustments to counter USC like the Whitt high post and the press break. And putting in Douglas when Chargois got his 4th foul was bonkers.
7. I thought Ray was playing well enough to handle spot minutes in a big game. Surprised he sat.
8. Emelogu is ice. I would not want to meet him and Foster in a back alley. Also, he has a decent three point shot.
9. Apparently Shake just needed to up the shot difficulty for them to start dropping. Who knew?

[Terry Webster]

I would add that when Jenk puts in the small lineup it is a really tough team to guard. Interesting to see what happens when we get Jamal out there in a week.

[indianmustang]

Feels good with the win

[ponyboy]

No love lost between those two teams.

[SmooBoy]

USC fans around us were quiet and disinterested.

#4 is a force for them. Wish we had a big to counter a player like that (Jordan Tolbert have any eligibility?).

[PonyLawExpress]

Some Thoughts:
1) Gu loves big games. He played within his role and came up huge. He is shooting the 3 lights out.
2) How about those Shake buzzer beaters.
3) Douglas and Chargois had some nerves it seemed, but they are both gonna be big time players over the years.
4) Still rocking the short rotation (Akoy isn't in Shape yet and Ray/Landrum don't have enough O game yet)
5) I don't want to hear any more complaining about Jimmy Whitt. He is a good player for us who is just going to keep getting better.
6) Jank is such a good coach. Hope he finishes his career here.

What a great win!! We now have 2 quality OOC wins with 2 quality OOC opponents left.

[Stallion]

against both Arizona and USC Gu looked like the only guy who wasn't intimidated early. He has put this team on his back in both games. One of the great redemption stories in SMU history

[sadderbudweiser]

1) That was Moody 1.0 Great job. Maybe the late start helped?
2) Enfield had a game plan but Jank whittled away at it until the dam broke.
3) Home cooking by the refs? I really don't think so...pretty fair and not a badly officiated game.
4) Free throws...gotta be improved.
5) Great leadership by our four experienced guys. Not one ounce of fear in any of them. Awesome.
6) Jank obviously has confidence in Douglas' court sense. He'll explode from three at some point.
7) Free throws suck.
Need work on press breaking.
9) Two big time wins for the NCAA fellas...very helpful.
10) noticed the "coke spilling" kids in the house.
11) Did I mention free throws?

[Charleston Pony]

looked to me like everyone was nervous when the game started. It was Shake who decided he was going to have to initiate things and what a night he had. Leading all scorers and dished out 9 assists including how many back door slams? And like another poster said...how about those buzzer beaters!
Great to see Moody has become the home court advantage it was back in the day. Now it remains to be seen whether these guys can play well on the road.

[gostangs]

Back in the day? Moody is far better than ever been!!

[mrydel]

It was pretty rowdy in my time there. Especially since the students were allowed to sit directly behind the opposing bench.

[jimhagle]

Who was that sitting next to McMurray?

[Mexmustang]

Interested in your feedback about my observations:

Shake seems to be holding off taking shots in lieu of passing to a team mate. I felt he was ready to go off big time, but he kept hesitating and passing off too many times. He took his shots only when he had no other option due to the clock...not just those two fantastic shots. Obviously not every time, but it seemed that way. I wish he would become a little more selfish.

USC was shooting 100% from the free throw line well into the second half, then I noticed they only had shot from the line twice! twice!

We sure need to work on our free throws.

Until 3-4 minutes before half time, I thought we were going to get blown out, our FG percentage was awful.

Too often we went for long tip ins rather than grabbing the ball and re setting the offense.

USC was embarrassed, hope we don't see them again.

We are going to be a difficult team to beat as we are so different than most other teams in terms of how we play defense and move the ball around on offense. Imagine a point guard being one of our best rebounders!

[Pony_Law]

From watching the game and listening to Jank’s post game comments, it’s pretty clear that the coaching staff has decided that the best way for this team to handle big men is to spread the floor and try and get opposing bigs to have to come out away from the basket. As Jank says all the time accentuate your strengths try and hide your weaknesses. We are weak inside but we are extremely quick and anthemic and we can put 5 guys with ball skills on the floors 4 of which are lights out on the perimeter. Playing small or with our big going to the top of the key playing on the perimeter, draws bigs out and allows us to race them to the hoop for rebounds, allows less contesting on our interior passes on back cuts, and can create some favorable switches on our pick and rolls. We won’t always play this way but it is definitely the mode against big teams.

For akoy and Ray thus means there minutes will be cut in games against big teams because neither of them seem to have the ball skills to do what chagois does on the perimeter and clearly Jank has decided going really small with Douglas is better than asking Ray or Akoy to do things they can’t (though I’ll reserve complete judgement until akoy is fully healthy and in shape).

This stratagy helped us beat both USC and Zona. I think it can be successful and help us win games because we can zone on defense and our length pressuring the ball and athleticism allow us to compete defensively even when so small. It also threw both those teams for a loop and they struggled to adjust. That said i’d Be worried about this stratagy in the NCAA tournament. USC missed a lot of good looks from the outside that if they fell the game would have been very tight. Arizona was a young inexperienced team that didn’t know what to do. In the tournament your are facing seasoned teams and this stratagy will surprise no one. Also tournament teams should mostly be capable of beating you with their outside shooting when invariable our zone collapses to guard competent bigs and good guards. Wichita state will likely expose us on this and maybe cinci as well. We should be fine against the rest of the American.

Proud of the team and they are showing me they are going to do well in conference and win plenty of games likely giving us a tournament birth.

[Charleston Pony]

Back in the day? Moody is far better than ever been!!

Were you ever there when we had SRO crowds of more than 10,000 and students standing in the courtside pullout bleachers like Duke has at Cameron Indoor? Moody is the same building (now modified) as Cameron and while today's Moody is great, the old Moody was very special.