Anyone who watched that game had the same reaction to the number of back door cuts. That was ridiculous!
I thought Sellers played a fabulous game! But in the 2nd overtime, to me he looked gassed. According to the box score, Sellers played a total of 43 minutes. Was Ryan Mela hurt? He only played 13 minutes! Having a deep team should mean that no one has to play the number of minutes that Sellers did.
I love that Vaaks plays with confidence. But he shot 1-10 from 3 yesterday (after going 1-11 in the Brown game) and 4-16 from 2 (after going 3-13 against Brown). Where he's got the vision and ball handling skills to create for others, I wish that when his shot is not falling he instead used his minutes to create opportunities for his teammates.
Also, PC is one of the best free throw shooting teams in the country. They need to get to the line more! The team only shot 18 free throws yesterday (compared to 38 for Butler!). Free throw shooting accuracy is a weapon that cannot be squandered.
An old coach once told me, you can have a bad day on offense, but you shouldn’t have a bad day on defense. 80% of it comes down to five guys wanting to play defense. If one of the five is playing half speed it screws it up to the other four.The back door cuts killed us last night. and I’m sure Coach Kim works on boxing out. If the Friars can’t fix those defensive lapses, it’s going to be a long year. But I have confidence in Coach Kim and his staff go Friars
Sorry Michael, I agree with you BUT I do not have confidence in English or his staff. If both were good the defensive problem would have been fixed by now after the twelfth game!
I want to be wrong about this opinion but it remains to be seen if they will fix the problem.
I hope they do. If not as you stated it's going to be a long season. Go Friars!
I'm with you Alfred. It all starts with defense and physicality. This team doesn't have it unfortunately. So far, this is another very disappointing season after significant pre-season expectations. Need a quick turnaround and a true leader on the court to emerge! Go Friars!
Michael- you are 110% correct. The team needs a much much better defense, physicality and a sense of urgency. I watched the entire UCONN BUTLER game last night. UCONN's defense was awesome. That is why they are a contender for the Big East title and the NCAA Championship again. They play with energy and purpose. I for one am not looking forward to playing them on January 7th at the AMP or the 27th in Storrs. You have to give alot of credit to Dan Hurley and his staff. English and company better make some drastic changes to our defensive posture. Go Friars!
Kevin, thanks for this as always. Not sure how closely you watched the tape - I didn't, so hoping you have insights I don't as I only saw it live and might think I saw something other than what really happened. Here's what I think I saw:
Motta/Butler were exploiting something with the backdoor cuts all game long that English and crew wouldn't or couldn't adjust to. It seemed like it was a 10-12 point exploitation which was to me, the difference in the game. Did you see something on film? Why couldn't they make an adjustment?
The biggest head scratcher for me was that Powell looked markedly better on both offense and defense compared to Hargrove but it was Hargrove getting the minutes down the stretch. Powell can score in a variety of ways, and Hargrove can't score at all. Wouldn't having Powell in there for Hargrove minutes give us a plus up of 4-5 points a game without any specific plays or looks being called for him? This might be a hot take on just one game but Powell seems equal if not better on the glass--and he's not foul prone like Hargrove is. The game seems to be moving too fast for Cole - my eyes tell me every game that his hands are too slow to grab the contested board and that's not fixable. Powell seems quicker, faster, and can run the floor.
Other than that--the game was enjoyable. I can live with Vaaks missing 3 at the end, I can live with the flukiness of Edward's getting stripped at the end and the subsequent back breaking 3; disappointing and painful but that's just the way the ball bounces at time.
But the backdoor cuts and the Powell / Hargrove things were mystifying to me. Seemed to me like head in the sand things from a coaching perspective that send up big red flags in my mind....but again, I didn't rewatch the game.
________________________________
There's a childish, unsophisticated strain to most of the Friar twitter takes - it's best to not even read them most of the time lest one make the mistake of responding and engaging in emotional arguments masquerading as logical ones. Some of the best (meaning "worst") of late are:
*Pointing out that English has only won about 30% of his road games in his tenure and pointing to that as an indication of "bad coaching", which is completely ignoring the fact that any D1 team that wins about 50% of it's games over a period of time is going to have a 30% ish road win percentage. That's how the math, maths.
*Pointing out that is winning percentage in "close games" is really low...but in doing so treating a six point lead with 3 minutes left the same as a three point deficit with 3 minutes late as the same thing--which is saying an 90/10 proposition is the same as a 10/90 proposition. If you do the math on the probabilities of that bushel of games and take the exact score at the exact time that it's declared a "close game" the winning percentage for that bushel of games falls exactly in the expected range, and oh by the way the percentages of games that are on the positive side of the equation versus the negative side - accounting for home and away - are exactly consistent with the expected values of English's overall winning percentage and his home / away splits. Hopefully the people making these "observations" aren't bettors because I suspect they'd be loosing their shirts if they approach things from these value-less frameworks.
*A third argument is the offensive rebounding figures allowed, without accommodating for scheme and pace. Giving up 21 offensive rebounds on 83 shots against Butler in 50 minutes of 2Xovertime....kinda within the normal range. Citing that stat doesn't prove a lack of effort or boxing out...it just tells you that they played for 50 minutes and their opponent took 83 shots.
But the general echo of "English isn't a great coach" is starting to get my ears picking up a bit despite the constant logical fallacies coming from the ones shouting it the loudest. The backdoor cuts and failure to adjust, the inconsistencies and apparent incongruence with the changing of scheme from last year to the beginning of this year to the current approach this year....I am torn if he's "evolving" or "thrashing". I've always thought it was "evolving"--anyone coming from different levels of play like English (Big 12 as a player, NBA as a player, overseas as a player, A-10 as a coach and then BE as a coach with an inherited team) is going to need a bit of time to have that collage of experiences settle into a unified system that fits....and I've seen enough so far to think that is what has been happening over the last two years. But there are moments....
_____________
There are things that I liked:
*I thought they played well enough to win on the road against what I consider to be an NIT level, 17-19 win team in Butler
*Jones as a force of nature (Mela is the #7 guy, not Jones--he should be the starter)
a slowly solidifying 8.5 man rotation
*Sellers, Edwards as exciting bucket getters, and perhaps/hopefully an emergence of Powell as a big who can force defenses to account for a presence on the blocks more than the occasional lob to Oswin or a dunk putback.
Where does it all go? Who knows and that's why they play the games. Seton Hall should be exciting...hoping for some more progress and clarity in that one.
Exciting but disappointing game. Some thoughts: since Jones is clearly better than Mela—make Jones the starter. Also, Powell played very well yesterday—mystifying to see Hargrove in there down the stretch. That might have been what cost them the game—well either that or the 1 million back door cuts they gave up. You’d think they would have made an adjustment after the 3rd or 4th time, no?
Anyone who watched that game had the same reaction to the number of back door cuts. That was ridiculous!
I thought Sellers played a fabulous game! But in the 2nd overtime, to me he looked gassed. According to the box score, Sellers played a total of 43 minutes. Was Ryan Mela hurt? He only played 13 minutes! Having a deep team should mean that no one has to play the number of minutes that Sellers did.
I love that Vaaks plays with confidence. But he shot 1-10 from 3 yesterday (after going 1-11 in the Brown game) and 4-16 from 2 (after going 3-13 against Brown). Where he's got the vision and ball handling skills to create for others, I wish that when his shot is not falling he instead used his minutes to create opportunities for his teammates.
Also, PC is one of the best free throw shooting teams in the country. They need to get to the line more! The team only shot 18 free throws yesterday (compared to 38 for Butler!). Free throw shooting accuracy is a weapon that cannot be squandered.
An old coach once told me, you can have a bad day on offense, but you shouldn’t have a bad day on defense. 80% of it comes down to five guys wanting to play defense. If one of the five is playing half speed it screws it up to the other four.The back door cuts killed us last night. and I’m sure Coach Kim works on boxing out. If the Friars can’t fix those defensive lapses, it’s going to be a long year. But I have confidence in Coach Kim and his staff go Friars
Sorry Michael, I agree with you BUT I do not have confidence in English or his staff. If both were good the defensive problem would have been fixed by now after the twelfth game!
I want to be wrong about this opinion but it remains to be seen if they will fix the problem.
I hope they do. If not as you stated it's going to be a long season. Go Friars!
I'm with you Alfred. It all starts with defense and physicality. This team doesn't have it unfortunately. So far, this is another very disappointing season after significant pre-season expectations. Need a quick turnaround and a true leader on the court to emerge! Go Friars!
Michael- you are 110% correct. The team needs a much much better defense, physicality and a sense of urgency. I watched the entire UCONN BUTLER game last night. UCONN's defense was awesome. That is why they are a contender for the Big East title and the NCAA Championship again. They play with energy and purpose. I for one am not looking forward to playing them on January 7th at the AMP or the 27th in Storrs. You have to give alot of credit to Dan Hurley and his staff. English and company better make some drastic changes to our defensive posture. Go Friars!
Kevin, thanks for this as always. Not sure how closely you watched the tape - I didn't, so hoping you have insights I don't as I only saw it live and might think I saw something other than what really happened. Here's what I think I saw:
Motta/Butler were exploiting something with the backdoor cuts all game long that English and crew wouldn't or couldn't adjust to. It seemed like it was a 10-12 point exploitation which was to me, the difference in the game. Did you see something on film? Why couldn't they make an adjustment?
The biggest head scratcher for me was that Powell looked markedly better on both offense and defense compared to Hargrove but it was Hargrove getting the minutes down the stretch. Powell can score in a variety of ways, and Hargrove can't score at all. Wouldn't having Powell in there for Hargrove minutes give us a plus up of 4-5 points a game without any specific plays or looks being called for him? This might be a hot take on just one game but Powell seems equal if not better on the glass--and he's not foul prone like Hargrove is. The game seems to be moving too fast for Cole - my eyes tell me every game that his hands are too slow to grab the contested board and that's not fixable. Powell seems quicker, faster, and can run the floor.
Other than that--the game was enjoyable. I can live with Vaaks missing 3 at the end, I can live with the flukiness of Edward's getting stripped at the end and the subsequent back breaking 3; disappointing and painful but that's just the way the ball bounces at time.
But the backdoor cuts and the Powell / Hargrove things were mystifying to me. Seemed to me like head in the sand things from a coaching perspective that send up big red flags in my mind....but again, I didn't rewatch the game.
________________________________
There's a childish, unsophisticated strain to most of the Friar twitter takes - it's best to not even read them most of the time lest one make the mistake of responding and engaging in emotional arguments masquerading as logical ones. Some of the best (meaning "worst") of late are:
*Pointing out that English has only won about 30% of his road games in his tenure and pointing to that as an indication of "bad coaching", which is completely ignoring the fact that any D1 team that wins about 50% of it's games over a period of time is going to have a 30% ish road win percentage. That's how the math, maths.
*Pointing out that is winning percentage in "close games" is really low...but in doing so treating a six point lead with 3 minutes left the same as a three point deficit with 3 minutes late as the same thing--which is saying an 90/10 proposition is the same as a 10/90 proposition. If you do the math on the probabilities of that bushel of games and take the exact score at the exact time that it's declared a "close game" the winning percentage for that bushel of games falls exactly in the expected range, and oh by the way the percentages of games that are on the positive side of the equation versus the negative side - accounting for home and away - are exactly consistent with the expected values of English's overall winning percentage and his home / away splits. Hopefully the people making these "observations" aren't bettors because I suspect they'd be loosing their shirts if they approach things from these value-less frameworks.
*A third argument is the offensive rebounding figures allowed, without accommodating for scheme and pace. Giving up 21 offensive rebounds on 83 shots against Butler in 50 minutes of 2Xovertime....kinda within the normal range. Citing that stat doesn't prove a lack of effort or boxing out...it just tells you that they played for 50 minutes and their opponent took 83 shots.
But the general echo of "English isn't a great coach" is starting to get my ears picking up a bit despite the constant logical fallacies coming from the ones shouting it the loudest. The backdoor cuts and failure to adjust, the inconsistencies and apparent incongruence with the changing of scheme from last year to the beginning of this year to the current approach this year....I am torn if he's "evolving" or "thrashing". I've always thought it was "evolving"--anyone coming from different levels of play like English (Big 12 as a player, NBA as a player, overseas as a player, A-10 as a coach and then BE as a coach with an inherited team) is going to need a bit of time to have that collage of experiences settle into a unified system that fits....and I've seen enough so far to think that is what has been happening over the last two years. But there are moments....
_____________
There are things that I liked:
*I thought they played well enough to win on the road against what I consider to be an NIT level, 17-19 win team in Butler
*Jones as a force of nature (Mela is the #7 guy, not Jones--he should be the starter)
a slowly solidifying 8.5 man rotation
*Sellers, Edwards as exciting bucket getters, and perhaps/hopefully an emergence of Powell as a big who can force defenses to account for a presence on the blocks more than the occasional lob to Oswin or a dunk putback.
Where does it all go? Who knows and that's why they play the games. Seton Hall should be exciting...hoping for some more progress and clarity in that one.
Fantastic game to watch. Unfortunately we came up short again. We don’t seem to come up with loose balls or key rebounds down the stretch.
Exciting but disappointing game. Some thoughts: since Jones is clearly better than Mela—make Jones the starter. Also, Powell played very well yesterday—mystifying to see Hargrove in there down the stretch. That might have been what cost them the game—well either that or the 1 million back door cuts they gave up. You’d think they would have made an adjustment after the 3rd or 4th time, no?
Defense saves jobs.