For a team that prides itself on defense, it's been missing way too often this year.
- Thread starter olshin
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I really don’t understand how we did nothing to shut him down.
Face guard him, over help while guarding him with no space, taking away his shot. Rely on the help when beat off the dribble, but take away his shot.
I mean I’d have more respect for going to a desperate box and one than this doing nothing.
Face guard him, over help while guarding him with no space, taking away his shot. Rely on the help when beat off the dribble, but take away his shot.
I mean I’d have more respect for going to a desperate box and one than this doing nothing.
You do not need to stop every bullet man. It makes you someone that cannot see the praise the coach gets because all you see is the negative comments. I’ve praised, for example, taking Berry off the starting 5. I’ve been very complimentary of Collins.
No coach is immune to making mistakes. It does not make them bad coaches, it just makes them human.
And I still think we’ll win this.
I read the praise and appreciate it and agree with them. I read the criticisms and largely disagree with many of them (not all, of course - no one is perfect) just like the recent one about not defending Bailey. Some folks criticize me for defending Collins. Others should not be afraid to be criticized for being called out when being so quick and frequent to criticize him.
I like your optimism; but it’s just not looking good.
The problem with this team is not defense. It’s offense and has been all year.
Got some nice stops to start the second half but we couldn't make any shots after cutting the lead to 3. Long draught killed any momentum and let Rutgers control the clock and the game. And Rutgers was hot all night. Bailey banked in his first three and that got him going. One guy made a basket on a pass attempt. Also, their interior defense flummoxed Brooks and Nick, forcing them to take tough shots. But who is there to pass to? Gelo was doing a nice job on defense but we needed more offense from him. And they were all over Leach.
We don’t have a real offense. That’s the big problem. Without a PG, we don’t run sets and that’s on Collins. He didn’t get Blackmon (the guy who went to Miami) but still could run sets like Wisconsin used to with their flex offense. Why aren’t we?
Offense was not great. No questioning that.
But consider this:
1) We average 73.5 ppg in conference. We scored 72
2) Rutgers averages 71.8 ppg in conference. They scored 79 without Dyland Harper, a top 3 draft pick
3) Vegas believed this was a 138.5 points game. It was a 151 points game
We lost the game, and frankly were disapointingly not that close to winning it, because we could not stop a fairly mediocre team
Not so eye popping but, in the spirit of fairness and to not deny offense was not good, at all:
1) We allow 77.3 ppg on average, we allowed 79. But we allowed this with the toughest front loaded schedule of the B1G
2) Rutgers allows 76.6 ppg, they allowed 72
Bailey was in the zone after he overshot that three and it fell anyway. I'm pretty sure he had a hand in his face on almost every three he took, he was just tall enough to shoot over whoever was guarding him and the shots were falling.
I dunno, maybe coach should have put Keenan on him all game...
I dunno, maybe coach should have put Keenan on him all game...
Coach and players sounded vaguely similar to me after the game though.
Ace Bailey is one of the 5 most talented players in the conference. Period.
However, there's no excuse for a lack of effort, energy, or communication on defense. And we've had too much of it all year. That's why we're 3-7 and closer to missing the Big Ten Tournament than making the NCAA Tournament.
Effort in the 2nd half was better, we just couldn't shoot. But there was no excuse for the first 20 minutes. None. They got disspirited because a good player went off. That's inexcusable.
Agreed, but when you have defensive efforts like the first 20 minutes, that magnifies it.
The effort was way better than against Illinois. The effort against Illinois was abysmal. Last night, we should have tried something different when he went off. Deny, double, hard foul, don’t know if it would have made any difference. This was not a lack of effort!
And thank goodness. The guy has been a total bust at Miami. 0 points again last night.
By my estimate, which could be entirely wrong if I've screwed up the math, based on the schedules thus far, in a 65 possession game, we were expected to score 74 points (1.138 PPP) and they were expected to score 65.4 (1.006 PPP). Clearly, we had a defensive problem last night, but our offense also looked like garbage for long stretches of the game.
Here's how the PPP looked throughout the game:
| Time | NU PPP (5 min) | RU PPP (5min) | NU PPP (cumulative) | RU PPP (cumulative) |
| 5:00 | 1.571 | 0.571 | 1.571 | 0.571 |
| 10:00 | 0.875 | 1.625 | 1.200 | 1.133 |
| 15:00 | 1.571 | 2.000 | 1.318 | 1.409 |
| Halftime | 0.857 | 1.714 | 1.207 | 1.483 |
| 25:00 | 1.000 | 0.571 | 1.167 | 1.306 |
| 30:00 | 0.600 | 0.800 | 1.043 | 1.196 |
| 35:00 | 1.286 | 2.000 | 1.075 | 1.302 |
| Final | 1.250 | 0.833 | 1.108 | 1.215 |
The problem was defense in the first half, as after we went up 13-4, Ace Bailey himself outscored us 24-22 the rest of the half, while the rest of Rutgers added another 15. The first 8 minutes of the 2nd half sealed the game though, as the defense arrived only for the offense to collapse into disaster, going scoreless for over 5 minutes in that stretch. Extremely disappointing night.
Yeah, the simplification of my numbers is they do not account for tempo. But I'm glad that the whole idea of "our offense was not good but our biggest problem was defense" holds.
Agree to disagree, especially in the FIRST half. But yes, way better than Illinois.
Point being .... why would that happen 2x in 4 days?
I have a hard time questioning players effort unless it is blatantly obvious. At Illinois, it was a lay up drill and I too didn’t see much intensity. Probably the only time I saw it all year.
Yesterday, I thought we came out fired up to play as evidenced by the 13-4 start. Then Bailey went off and made shots. He’s a special talent and I didn’t see a lack of effort. I hoped the Coaching staff tried something different on Bailey earlier. I have my doubts on whether that would have stopped him or even slowed him down, but it would have been a different look.
Great players get their stats. The Joker doesn’t throw up triple double nearly every game because the opposition isn’t trying. It happens, we had no answer, but I didn’t see any lack of effort in that game.
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