Nebraska played horribly, but somehow we managed to play even worse. Oh well, nowhere to go but up I guess.And anyone who questions BMac's value to the team after this disaster tonight should have their head examined, imo...
What a terrible game
- Thread starter mikewebb68
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Yeah, watching them play a whole game without him makes me realize the error of my thoughts. Mac’s been the most valuable player for several years now.
I appreciate this post a lot. Sadly, we have to sit through a crap-show like this for it all to crystallize. We don't even SNIFF the NCAA Tournament last year without McIntosh. .... He turns it over this year because teams realize they can double/triple him with little chance of harm.
That second half was just as ugly as the Texas Tech massacre.
I just don’t know if I have it in me to watch this godawful basketball. It’s so depressing after the high of last year.
I just don’t know if I have it in me to watch this godawful basketball. It’s so depressing after the high of last year.
Player development: Ash and Brown have some native ability but they have not grown over their careers.
Worse, imo. Nebraska played terribly in both halves. We played a Chicago State-level second half....
I remain unconvinced that the talent has been seriously upgraded since the Carmody era. Our guys can dunk now, but they cannot create shots. And they shoot miserably.
Outscored by 20, by Nebraska at home - automatic disqualification from the NCAA's
Think this comment is premature on Brown, as this is only his second year, and was injured for a good portion of this year. Ash, however, has not improved one bit in his 2+ years now, imo.
Why can't we accept reality? This is a bad basketball team with very mediocre players. Why is this so difficult to understand? Losing to a bad Nebraska team by 15!! The proof's in the pudding!
Disagree completely. Ash has very little ability at the major college level. Zero offensive game. Just a complete liability. He'd be THE WORST starting point in the conference. At least Sanjay (in addition to actually being a good defender) developed that corner 3-ball and could grab some boards.
Brown -- i don't know how much his injury held him back this year. Not poised enough, seems best suited as a spark off the bench. But I DO appreciate that he's not afraid to take the big shot. We seem to lack that otherwise.
Nope, doesn't work that way. Still trust CC to somehow turn this around. But man, that was terrible, easily our worst game of the season.
I don't think Ash has the ability. I think we tend to force the "defensive stopper" role on guys without any offense games. I don't think Ash moves that great side-to-side -- anecdotal evidence is that he gets beat on blow-bys a lot
Essentially these same "mediocre players" won 24 games last season. Now, this was a terrible game, but let's not lose our minds here...
That...plus our players and coaches favor a defensive scheme that is passive and reactionary.
Teams can do whatever they want against us, even poor offensive teams like Nebraska. They weren't even shooting well, and yet we still allowed...45 second half points??
Down 7 with three minutes to go, Vic Law will stand 15 feet off of their guard, allowing him to calmly dribble at half court, while 20 seconds go off the clock. Especially in that scenario, we need BALL PRESSURE. Harass them. Look to swipe the ball. You might get a turnover, but at the very least you don't let them calmly set up a play, and survey the floor, run through progressions like it's a hotel walk-through. BALL PRESSURE.
That's not a talent thing. We have the talent and athleticism. We lack the desire.
Oh, don't misinterpret me-- I think that Ash is easily our least talented player outside of the walk-ons. I was addressing the poster's issue of development,
Trending in the wrong direction. Loss to brutal G-tech, OT to beat a bad Illinois and squeaker against worse DePaul; now second half massacre at home against bad Nebraska - not to mention losses against anyone else worth a damn.
Fair and agreed.
Hard to develop something that isn't there. At least not at the Big Ten level.
Vic Law's defense was about #101 of the top-100 reasons we lost tonight's game, imo. Hint; about 80 of those top-100 were on the offensive end....
I know that Gaines and Brown have their liabilities, but they have so much more upside than Ash I cannot justify starting Ash over either of them. Our lineup with Ash on offense is essentially 4 on 5, and Ash's D is not nearly enough to justify that.
Exactly what I was thinking. Weren’t the days of getting knocked around by better athletes supposed to be over? That’s three times by my count (OU and Texas Tech) ...
The Purdue game was after Georgia Tech, and I would argue we were trending well until Oklahoma. But hey, if you want to pile on, I won't stop you. This was just a dreadful effort.
Pardon was brutal on offense tonight though, missing 15 shots, 12 of which were 3 footers.
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Brown has gotten small minutes. Ash is just starting to get minutes.
The floor spacing of the entire team looked awful. The offense didn't move well at all.
I'd like to hear Collins talk about their play and explain his use of these two and huge minutes he's given B Mac.
You mentioned a player named Paton and I know you are a huge Holy Cross fan, so just trying to piece together your comment made on a northwestern board.
Nonsense. One can argue that he shouldn't have put up a couple of those three footers. But every shot he took was heavily defended. It's not like he missed bunnies. And a number of his makes were put backs after his own misses....two shots to make one.
His missed free throws were a problem late, but otherwise he was a beast.
His answer will be that he thought Ash could deliver a good defensive effort to neutralize their off guard.
The offense we run us drive and dish or isolations. Brown looks to score more than pass. He did make better post feeds into Pardon. You could see the nice angle passes. Ash can not defend adequately or do anything offensively.
Our offense is not predicated at all on ball movement. The next time you see Pardon hit a shooter on the kick out will be the first.
I thought your point was that he missed really easy shots....my point was that they weren't easy and that he contributed.
In fact, his 33% shooting raised the teams' FG percentage! For which he should be commended.
Nebraska had 14 blocked shots. That last lineup they had in there looked a lot better than prior Nebraska teams.
Yes Vic's defense isn't a concern. There could be any of 100 examples of our defense being entirely passive. Teams just do whatever the heck they want. Do you think ANY team came away from playing us this year thinking "they really got after us and disrupted what we wanted to do"?
Other than the unreliable effectiveness of Pardon finishing post moves, we struggle in the half court when BMac's not driving and hitting floaters or kicking. Scottie, Vic, even Falzon and Gaines, are all much more effective when they can get out in transition. And so...PRESSURE THE BALL, create turnovers and run out on misses and makes.
I think it's most likely that Collins felt he just wasn't deep enough this year to do anything other than rest on defense. But better option would be get out in front of the issue in the preseason - get in better shape and commit to playing more players. Too late now.
Pardon was by far our best player, I was there. 3 guys sagged in him because they knew our “shooters” were either reluctant to pull the trigger or demonstrated they couldn’t come close to making a three. Our point guard got the ball at the top of the key and backed up to almost center court before he moved forward with typically 8 seconds left of the clock. Our two athletic wings have to be way more aggressive. We have plenty of guys to surround the three point line. Someone has to demand the ball and attempt to take over. Pardon was the only one looking like that was his intent.
I didn't watch this game tonight, so I'm blindly relying on some of your observations.
1) I don't know if I'm totally stunned by this. WITH BMac, this is a team that regularly demonstrates it can pretty much get beat by anybody this side of Chicago State. It's just not a good team.
2) To an extent, I'm with everybody who values BMac. However, it's become pretty obvious one of the HUGE gaps in this team is the precipitous drop in talent from BMac to his backups. And I don't say that because BMac is all-world. I love the kid, but his game has flaws.
But Brown and Ash really aren't "replacement-level" lead guards. Every other game or so Ash is ... maybe for a while. But if you're at a replacement level fifty percent of the time ... well ...
3) I've said this before, so bear with me. I don't buy that this trainwreck is strictly caused by Lumpkin's departure. It's too wide-ranging and too much of a mess. No real stars. Not enough improvement by too many players. Bad shooting. Poor defense. No consistency. Not much you can count on from night to night. No sign of the experience this group has.
When you have as many problems as this group and missed expectations by such a wide margin, you need to talk about more than the players "reading their press clippings."
I hate to say it, boys, but this hasn't been a stunning coaching job on many levels.
I know Collins and staff didn't become idiots overnight. And it's pretty obvious they saw several of these flaws coming and tried to work around them. Yet, they haven't been able to change the tide of the team except for Purdue.
I'm not getting the hot seat ready or anything like that. Let's just be honest and call it what it is.
1) I don't know if I'm totally stunned by this. WITH BMac, this is a team that regularly demonstrates it can pretty much get beat by anybody this side of Chicago State. It's just not a good team.
2) To an extent, I'm with everybody who values BMac. However, it's become pretty obvious one of the HUGE gaps in this team is the precipitous drop in talent from BMac to his backups. And I don't say that because BMac is all-world. I love the kid, but his game has flaws.
But Brown and Ash really aren't "replacement-level" lead guards. Every other game or so Ash is ... maybe for a while. But if you're at a replacement level fifty percent of the time ... well ...
3) I've said this before, so bear with me. I don't buy that this trainwreck is strictly caused by Lumpkin's departure. It's too wide-ranging and too much of a mess. No real stars. Not enough improvement by too many players. Bad shooting. Poor defense. No consistency. Not much you can count on from night to night. No sign of the experience this group has.
When you have as many problems as this group and missed expectations by such a wide margin, you need to talk about more than the players "reading their press clippings."
I hate to say it, boys, but this hasn't been a stunning coaching job on many levels.
I know Collins and staff didn't become idiots overnight. And it's pretty obvious they saw several of these flaws coming and tried to work around them. Yet, they haven't been able to change the tide of the team except for Purdue.
I'm not getting the hot seat ready or anything like that. Let's just be honest and call it what it is.
I wonder if Johnnie Vassar could've helped NU tonight (ducks) /s
Argh. What a bad effort. I actually thought Ash played a decent first half, but maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention.
What's frustrating is the sheer athleticism gap *still* on display. An NCAA tourney team should have better athletes than Nebraska. Most do, I suppose.
Argh. What a bad effort. I actually thought Ash played a decent first half, but maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention.
What's frustrating is the sheer athleticism gap *still* on display. An NCAA tourney team should have better athletes than Nebraska. Most do, I suppose.
The good news is there's 15 Big Ten games left on the schedule. That could also be the bad news if we're going to see more of the same. It's too early to give up on the season as there's a lot of opportunities for good wins (14 of the last 15 are Tier A or B games via KenPom), but this team looks somewhat destined for the 16-18 win limbo of a team that's not terrible but not quite postseason worthy. Hopefully the team gets it together enough to not let this turn into the 2001 or 2013 football seasons. I'm going to the BTT and I hope I'm not watching us play on Wednesday!
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