Many games this year have followed an 'interesting' pattern. Tonight was a good example. Pastner has always stressed low turnovers and tonight Tech had a very respectable 5 while Louisville had 15! (with 9 to 5 in steals and 5 to 1 in blocks). Pastner says offensive rebounds are vital and Tech had 12 to Louisville's 9. So far, so good!
The fouls were almost identical and both teams had 10 assists. Louisville scored four more points at the line and both teams only hit 7 threes. Yeah, well, I guess both teams struggled tonight.
So from what I've said so far, this looks like a game slightly in Tech's favor.
Now we look at total rebounds and ah, I see that Louisville had 14 more! Well, Smith was out and he's had double digits in rebounds more than once. Even though we knew Tech would lack effective height this year, they outrebounded Pitt, Notre Dame and Miami and were right there with Virginia, FSU, and N.C. State.
So for all the things Pastner coaches in order to minimize THE problem, none of it matters if your players can't score......and this year is downright dreadful. I don't think some of these guys could shoot if Jay Wright or Dean Smith were coaching them either.
But what those guys could teach is offense.....and Tech hasn't had an effective coached offense in over 26 years!
We've had a few players that willed us to victories and we're all very appreciative of that.
We all want to see better recruits but when he had them, they didn't turn Hewitt into a genius, unfortunately.
So if Tech does go in a different direction, can they for once PLEASE line up somebody that can coach offense BEFORE making major changes?