At the same time we are Hauser and Murphy making a few more shots away from a dominant win. I will take a 9 point ACC road win when our two best shooters donāt shoot well every day of the week. This team is a Rorschach test right now. Plenty of positives but also plenty of negatives from tonight. People will focus on the aspects they see fit.
I think looking at it with a positive spinā¦ a win is a win. Seemed like we figured out a lot of those last season. 
Zach, do you think our offense last night was a case of poor opportunities or just shots not going in? Because it seemed to me that we got a number of good looks that just didnāt fall
Yep lots of good looks, especially in the first half that didnāt fall. Last night couldāve easily been a 15pt win. Refs helped close the gap as well.
Personally I donāt think tech is as good as youāre making them out to be. A threat given how weāve played for sure but if we play our B game then itās a W. Luckily they donāt have a crazy stretch 4 that can stroke it from 3 ā two guys that will take 3ās in Mutts and Aluma but not guys that can shoot anywhere near like Kispert and the ND guy (not going to butcher that spelling).
This is a game weāll need Morsell on defense to lock down some of their guards like Cone Cattoor and Alleyne. Kihei will eat Bedeās lunch like always. So long as they donāt get crazy hot from 3 then I like our chances
I felt the sameā we appeared to have plenty of space on most of our threes but shots werenāt falling consistently. If we hit 11 out of 26 on threes instead of 8, we would have had a much more respectable points per possession against their M2M. A big reason for our success under Tony is our defense winning games when our offense does not. Last night we had just enough good defense and timely plays on offense to beat a good, but not great, Notre Dame team. As Tony said in the post game presserā we made a few little steps in improvement.
FT. Hoos 4-8. Irish 16-21 was ridiculous
Think it really just shows we have no true bangers down below. Jay is all finesse moves and very little power.
Getting to the line is never the Hoos strong point. Not a lot of slashers or post ups. Id guess jalf those FT were Kihei
Yup the play of our bigs concerns me.ast 3 front courts have lit them up. While the Zags are an exception ND isnāt a big driven team and they dominated putting our bigs in trouble through pick n roll
Not so much us but them. Every time Nate or Juwan turned the corner a whistle blew and several phantom and 1s.
There were some soft/questionable calls but thats been the case across college hoops this yr as it is every year. When teams make agressive plays the calls tend to go in their favor. Turn and atrack the hoop likely to get a foul call turn ans spot up or fade away. The calls dont come.
To be fair, I think we benefitted from a favorable call in McKoyās favor when he decided to drive to the basket stumbling backwards and got a blocking call instead of a charge at a key point in the second half. It was the type of questionable play heās made on a couple of ocassions thatās helped keep him on the bench a lot of games. But McKoy finally turned it around on the offensive boards last night and had a couple of big baskets in the second half. Itās the kind of performance that will hopefully give him and the coaches more confidence in him going forward.
Need to do a better job of helping underneath so far rotations havenāt been crisp, but I guess that is to be expected from how little familiarity/on court time this group has. A couple times late in the second half we did a better job of a help defender sliding underneath and actually came up with a couple steals from it. Slowly but surely theyāre getting better.
Agreed on the rotations on pick-and-roll, I think it was sharper this game, but still work-in-progress. Kihei mentioned it in his post-game comments; he said that they had been trying to stick a guy in the middle to tag the roller (I think he said they do it specifically when there are two guys weakside to help). After one late Durham bucket on the roll, you could see Sam tell Reece he was supposed to be there to tag the roller; I think it was a possession or two after that where they got a steal from tagging the roller.
Yeah I caught sam telling Reece too. Guys will get adjusted to it as they have more time in the system.
Yup its the rotation on the picks. If they can get someone to tag the roller and slow his momentum it would provide enough time to recover. Really feels like guys are thinking their way through their options currently and that extra time is costing them. To run the system effectively it needs to be instinctive. Hopefully that comes with reps
I think that is one of the underrated costs of trying to be flexible on defense with switching and multiple coverages; you might not get good in any of them. Even though there might be matchups where it doesnāt look ideal, Iād rather them stick to their base coverage and principles and try to execute them consistently.
Feel like this year has highlighted the importance of rangy, athletic bigs in our defenseā¦like Mitchell, Diakite, Atkins, and wings like Key and Hunter. I really like the guards we have defensively, but Shedrick is the only player on our roster that I think can turn into a legit defensive stopper given his size and athleticism.
Obviously weāve been heavily recruiting guys like Keels, Taylor, McNeely, etc. but are we linked to any wings/bigs in that above mold? Maybe McKoy will get there defensively, heās certainly got the energy level and desire that weāre looking for but would love to add another guy that can guard stretch bigs that have been killing us and provide additional rim protection. Surprised this hasnāt been more of a focus in our recruiting but maybe Iām missing someone.