Too many short memories. Some of our best teams took bad beatings early in the year. CTB focuses so much practice time in defense in preseason and early season that our offense always lags behind until January. All the new faces compunds the problem this year. This was a great game to help prepare this team for wars down the road. Kadin started the game timid and ineffective. CTB coached him up on the sidelines and Zay got on his face and challenged him to man up. He was in beast mode for the rest of the game and stood chin to chin with Houston inside. Growing and maturing before our eyes.
3 Likes
If it makes anyone feel better #12 Oregon just lost at home to BYU by 32 points lol
5 Likes
Iām just pissed they lost to Navyā¦ Houston I get, that team is physical.
1 Like
Some late night stats stuff, image is sorted by +/-
Pros: Kadin, Armaan, Reece
Cons: Carson (yikes), Taine, Caffaro
Another thing of note with Kadin - next game he will likely pass the 86 minute threshold for this season, which was his total number of CAREER minutes up until this year. Heās super inexperienced and still playing fairly well.
The kid is going to be good.
7 Likes
I feel like the root of so many of our problems is playing Reece & Kihei together. Individually, we need bothā¦together, it doesnāt work. Our offense rarely looks in syncā¦especially against higher level opponents who can defendā¦with them paired. Itās an endless cycle of Kihei trying to do too much, and Reece looking tentative. Kihei & Ty together worked because Ty was such a deadly shooterā¦I may literally lose my mind if we watch 4 more months of last yearās rerun.
5 Likes
I have some terrible news about the āfour more monthsā portion of your comment
3 Likes
I just wish Tony would experiment more with lineups that donāt include the both of them. Thatās what this part of the season is for.
1 Like
Houston really seems like the type of line up weāve been working toward but CTB just canāt get the pieces. A bunch of 6ā3 - 6ā8 versitale players. All defended hard. Guards can all handle, drive and shoot. Switch everything.
Back to our current team, I donāt understand the thought process with only 10 guys. At first I thought it was play everybody, get better with an eye towards next year. Problem is and the coaches surely knew this while the transfer market was still hot:
-The starting 5 would be solid, lacked shooting and a guy that could create his own shot.
- the two international guys would not be ready, but we may play them a lot for the future
- The rest of the bench Papi Kody Carson probably isnāt ACC level talent.
Ok, so, back in the summer this had to be the knowns? and if we thought Taine/Igor werenāt going to be ready that leaves 8 guys, 3 of which are not ACC level (or at least not top 4 ACC level talent). So that leaves the starters with only one proven 3 pt shooter and basically no depth at the 5 with a high level of uncertainty about the starting 5.
With those knowns it seems we could have continued to look for several types of players at the 2, 3 and 4. For some reason we did not and we can see the early returns.
Will this team get better, of course. Is it a double bye team, no. NCAA tourney team, unlikely. We probably need to sweep the rest of the non con, not out of the question but Iād expect us to drop at least one, maybe 2 more to either Prov and or Iowa. We probably need 13-7 or so in league and while the league is still down we donāt have any gimmes with this team. Iād call 11-9 right now. So 7-3/11-9 = 18-12 with our schedule isnāt getting us there. Maybe Iām wrong and this is a massive hot take after losing to a very good team, but I donāt see any correlation to last yearās turnaround after the Purdue and Zags blowouts
2 Likes
No it isnāt. Not to TB. This season is to max out this team as much as possible and give them the best chance to win every game. TB thinks the way to do that is to play them together. Heās not worried about next year or the future right now.
This is what I keep going back to as well. Our offense is simply not built to handle more than one guard that canāt shoot. Ideally you have a PG that can shoot as well like Jerome and London and the offense works at peak efficiency. I hate to beat a dead horse but the idea of Kihei coming back another year makes me sick to my stomach. Not his fault at all I just simply donāt trust Tony not to play him 30+ minutes alongside Reece if thatās the case.
9 Likes
I now have a much better understanding of the total media lockdown in the preseason than I did before.
3 Likes
EXACTLY or if you are going to play them together you CAN NOT run sides/ B/M. What the hell is the point of Reece and KC running off screens when neither is going to shoot? Its maddening to watch that happen for 25secs of every poss. Go all pick and roll or 4 and 1 out
7 Likes
Thatās my issue with what Tony is doing: Iād play for the future but nobodyās letting me coach nothing. But if his goal is to win every game, heās not doing a very good job of it. I think that 19-20 team broke his brain a little bit. I always thought that season was a bit of a Rorschach test for the fan base. Maybe for Tony, too. I saw a 6-seed that was a prime upset candidate. Maybe Tony saw something elseā¦
I feel like we are having the conversation that would make sense to me if we had squeaked past Navy and lost an 8-10 pt game to Houston (just outside the spread). But we were never competitive.
And oh by the way, Iām not sure Houston is that good! I didnāt think they were top 25 good coming in. Maybe they were a top 20, but that team isnāt that skilled, either.
1 Like
This is whatās so maddening to me too. Tony HAS to adjust the offense given the personnel. If you insist on playing Kihei/Reece 90% of the game together you canāt run B/M. Point blank.
What we get as a result is 20-25 seconds of passing around the perimeter and then a rushed shot attempt by one of our guards who arenāt adept at creating for themselves. Led to a ton of turnovers and blocks yesterday and will look like that most of the year if we continue to run that offense.
6 Likes
They are a solid team, maybe not top 15 good but defensively they are as equipped as any team in the country to give our current roster fits.
It seems like Tony at least sees the problems in his last few rosters and has made a concerted effort to recruit the right players to fill these holes. But we will probably have to suffer through more bad offense next year too while those guys get up to speed.
2 Likes
Everyone survive last night? We good?
5 Likes
These problems make a lot more sense if you dont consider CTB to be a particularly innovative/flexible offensive coach. There is stark evidence heās not. Weāve had two abominable offenses now that face the same problem and yet there are few adjustments.
That San Fransisco loss was really bad for the program
2 Likes
We could stick with what we knew on O in 19-20 because the D was so damn good and the team became very adapt at winning rock fights. This current team canāt fall back on that and is going to have to win games scoring in the 60s. Weāve got to figure out something on O. We are way to easy to defend
4 Likes
I think a lot of it unfortunately boils down to misevaluations in recruiting. After 2016, you expect a down class in 17, and we got one. In 18, we missed some targets, but tough to tell what PT looks like with Ty, Guy, Dre, Huff, Diakite ahead of '18s with their futures still unsure. But the real jab is the 19 and 20 classes not totally panning out.
Between the 6 players in 19 and 20, our roster looked set for years with equal balances of future high level role guys and future studs. Unfortunately, Casey and JAR didnāt pan out, and that really hurts us not only because we expected to have All-ACC guys in them, but because 21 recruits expected us to have high-level players ahead of them eating PT. I like Taine and Igor considering, but we could really use some game-ready freshmen.
Obviously we have gotten some really great transfers that I wouldnāt trade, but transfers are almost always patch jobs in terms of fit, and almost never fill the exact role you wanted / are there long enough to fully gel (Gill and Braxton are great examples of filling both of those). That being said, we look primed to refill the cupboard completely, and hopefully donāt have any talent gaps heading forward
12 Likes
Day after hot takes:
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Reece needs to start without Kihei and Kihei should be 6th man. Is it just blind loyalty to Kihei at this point or why do we insist on pairing these two constantly?
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Shedrick is another year away. But he got better throughout the game and will get better throughout the season. Heās going to take his lumps this season for the most part though.
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We need to play Carson, Taine, and Igor as much as possible or else this is a totally wasted year. We already punted on the filling out the roster to try to establish some cohesiveness and presumably so everyone could play. Frankly, itās past time to start allocating some Kiheiās and Stattmannās minutes to the young guys. Igor has exponentially more potential than Stattmann for example. How much do we really lose by giving him some of Stattmannās minutes. I really donāt care how āreadyā they are. They need to get experience in the form of real playing time. Doesnāt have to be starterās minutes, but steadily in the rotation
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How in the hell do we still not have an end of half play?
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I just donāt how this team can get a lot better unless we develop into an elite defense. I see people saying the offense needs to change and it very well may need to. But we still have a bunch of guards who canāt shoot or arenāt ready to play, and guys post guys who are raw and/or lack any offensive skill. I see us getting better only if we get a lot better defensively. Primarily becoming an elite rebounding team. I have no idea if thatās possible but I do know our players arenāt magically going to be able to shoot or score in the post. I think this defense point is why Tony insists on playing Reece and Kihei so much but Kihei seems like a liability on defense at this stage so I still wouldnāt mind seeing him come off the bench
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Edited to add that I think we basically just lack talent. All of our players have at least one severe limitation. We have no complete players who are sure fire NBA guys. Not sure when was the last time we lacked talent this much. Kihei - severely limited, Reece- canāt shoot, Armaan - streaky, hopefully becomes consistently good, Stattmann - no comment needed, Gardner - undersized, Caffaro - no offense, Shedrick - very raw, little offense, gets pushed around easily, Taine/Carson/Igor - young, raw, etcā¦ Itās pretty sad to actually type out our 10 scholarship players and see how talent deficient this roster is.
4 Likes