Yes it was encouraging to see the offense play better especially Casey. The only problem was that infamous scoring drought we seem to have in a lot of games. But I want to give Key a big shoutout for his defensive intensity. Man he was all over the court helping out and seemed to be saying I’m not gonna let us lose. His hustle set the tone for the rest of the team to step up and get enough stops that allowed us to keep the lead once we got it back
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Braxton didn’t blink in admitting that he challenged Mamadi to turn it up defensively after not doing a very good job 1-on-1 on their big to open the second half. And you could see that sort of leadership playing out on the court.
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Great win - enough has been shared about the tactics and performances (though I have to throw in that through the non-conf sched Kihei IS the best PG in the ACC and I think there are multiple NBA players on this team) so I’ll point a couple thoughts towards the bigger picture.
1 - CTB and staff did an outstanding job in scheduling the non-conf games. Outside of JMU and Maine, I would argue that every team we played had something to prepare for that will show up across the ACC and tournament season. Kudos to them for challenging the team and we should be proud of the 10-2 record even if some of these teams aren’t traditional powers.
2 - Don’t look now but the shooting has vastly improved over the last few games. We’re +30% from 3 since Purdue and only shot worse than 40% combined against UNC (in a game in which we got to the line 25 times). Still not outstanding but at least it’s keeping us in games. Fingers crossed that Casey figures it out and our shooting % could look a lot closer to normal across conf play.
3 - CTB seems to have found two new levers to pull on that could change the course of our season: transition buckets and the pick-and-roll offense that we started seeing against USC. The article outlining that development was amazing (thank you to the author) and the PPP improvement was obvious in both the stat sheet and the on-court product. Caveat regarding the transition game: those points came mostly off of turnovers, not rebounds, so knowing when to push the pace is going to be the key… but I’d trust Kihei and Key to know when to hit the gas (no pun intended).
Chapter 1 of the ‘19-‘20 season is in the books, folks. Lots to be excited about. Now let’s go get that Orange Bowl W tonight! Wahoowa!
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Without those steals and great transition baskets the game woulda been very close… loved how the players took advantage there. Key is really good at knowing when to get out and run. His signature dunk to put icing on the cake vs Texas Tech in the Big One
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