Yeah. Second half issues. But come March, this win will look big for the tourney. Dayton is likely going to be in and a win is a win. Nobody's going to remember the second half struggle.
Huge win.
- Thread starter timbfischer
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IMO second half issues were really exacerbated by our lack of depth. Dayton would have made a run anyway, and we would have won this game by less than 23, but I think with Pardon it's a pretty comfortable 10+ point win.
Nobody will remember it, but can our guys learn from it? They won this time, so that's a big first step. Can they take another and play well down the stretch? It's a good thing the second half is 20 minutes rather than 21.
The win helps, but the 2nd half gives me no confidence this team can get going when the going gets tough. Did anybody else see Collins scream "WANT THE BALL?"
GOUNUII
Collins essentially said this in both his postgame sideline interview and press conference comments.
The good part about this win and our losses for that matter is that the team will learn from them and maybe more importantly, young coach Collins will learn from them.
Collins said his team was gassed the last 10 minutes. What lessons do you learn from being tired? Work harder on conditioning in the off season, maybe. But when you only go 8 deep and have foul trouble for one of your two big men, you are kind of in a pickle.....
Brown seemed the most confident with the ball. Nothing scares that kid.
I think the lesson I'd like CC and the team to learn is how to attack pressure. But the fact that all of Collins' teams seem to struggle against pressure seems to indicate this lesson probably won't be forthcoming from this game, either.
We've seen growth vs pressure this year against lesser, less physical and athletic opponents, leading to some easy baskets. Executing that somewhat against the Daytons and better may just tell the tale of this season.
Ding! Ding! What do we have for TejasCat, Johnny?
But seriously, we did look significantly better against the press when Brown came in; notice how the Dayton defenders overplayed to steal against BMac,Lindsey et al. and did not even try to do that against Brown. I believe that is because they knew that Brown had the quickness to leave them in the dust. Have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more two PG sets against pressure in the future.
Yes. I think Nu needs for McIntosh to be the guy who gets it after it gets to the frontcourt, so that pretty much means Brown should be in to help get it there.
It's hard playing with only 8 eligible or healthy players, vs. 10 or 12 men the opposition throws against you. Could definitely have used an additional schlorship player.
True. Collins should have landed a playable transfer with his open scholarship in May.
I agree with many other bloggers that Brown is going to be a very valuable player for the Cats during his career. I was watching the game last nite with my wife and even she yelled out to Skelly to shoot the open three at the top of the key. It seemed like several players in the last 7 minutes had open shots but didn't want to take them. I thought some fouls should have been called on Dayton like on the inbound pass to Law that the Dayton player just pick-pocketed him on and then made a quick shot. I am hoping that the refs going forward will call the games fair- unlike during last year's BTTourney when the Michigan player obviously traveled and it wasn't called. Perhaps with more wins like against Dayton, the refs and everybody else involved will expect victory for NU going forward.
1) I'm not very confident we'll see a Collins team that is great against the press for a while. It's pretty obvious part of their strategy is to get the ball in the corner and make that quick jump pass to someone at mid-court. To me, that plays right into the hands of 90% of opponents, no matter who is handing the ball.
2) Maybe I missed it, but nobody seems to address specifically that this win is without Pardon. Without him, I think a nice win like this is excellent. I don't care how they played in the second half or against Dayton's press.
That's a major piece they are missing.
2) Maybe I missed it, but nobody seems to address specifically that this win is without Pardon. Without him, I think a nice win like this is excellent. I don't care how they played in the second half or against Dayton's press.
That's a major piece they are missing.
Ha! In her world Dayton gets extra points for making the Elite Eight in the past.
As I understand it, Kenpom's ratings are just a team's difference in adjusted offensive efficiency and adjusted defensive efficiency. I assume that means our second half last night hurt our cause to move up, especially since the game was deemed "semi-home" for us by Kenpom and "semi-away" for Dayton despite the crowd disparity in their favor. Thus, this was a "Tier B" game for us and a "Tier A" game for them. Losing a Tier A game by 3 points is not much of a negative. Winning a Tier B game by 3 points isn't necessarily going to move you up much.
Didn't see much of the game, but your strategy should NEVER be to get the ball into the corner against a press. A good double-team will eat you up every time if you do that, since you've basically made the out-of-bounds line a third defender.
That's not a one-game observation. It's something they do game-in and game-out. It's pretty maddening.
They did not do it vs. Wake Forest; they consistently got the ball to the middle against that press. I believe that Dayton was overplaying that option in this game, though, since that is what they saw on tape. Think we needed more deep-middle or outlet passes to loosen up the overplaying...
The kenpom model also takes margin of victory into consideration. It's predictor before the game had us winning by 2 in what it deemed a "semi-home" game. Since we won by only 3, the new data points tell the model that it already had both team ranked just about the right.
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