#UWiscy (not our kind) coming to town Wed 9:15 EST tip

[Northeast Stinger]

We've got a good team.. Disappointing loss but if we keep working on playing as a team we will.be dangerous in the tournament (if we make it)

Lots to like about this team for sure. They played surprisingly well. I figured with the lost practice time due to flu they would struggle more but they had a chance to win at the end if a couple of shots had fallen.

 

[bke1984]

I know I got spoiled with Moses last year, but I wish Howard would just explode to the rim at times and dunk the ball. I hate when he misses those little chippy shots. Throw it down, big guy!

It just ain’t gonna happen man. He doesn’t have the athleticism. He’s serviceable on D, but we are seriously handcuffed at the 5 right now, and mildly handcuffed at the 1.

That said, this team can make the tourney. We get 15 out of Jordan tonight and we win easy. Gotta get more consistency from him or need someone else to emerge. Parham coming back is going to help more than we think.

 

[ChasonBaller]

Devoe…..baller. Nuff said.

Also, can’t help that Brad Davidson went white Kobe on us for a few minutes. We put Smith on him, Moore, and Usher. He just couldn’t miss. Can’t really do anything about that.

What you can control though, is continuing to run the ring around the rousey offense with Howard. That worked with Lammers. He had great vision and touch as a big man. They also had to play up and guard him because he could hit the mid range. Howard….not so much….or at all. They back so far off of him sometimes that it just takes away all back door opportunities. The big man is in the paint and just camps there. He doesn’t have the vision to be in the situation. That is not his fault, that is 100% on the coach for putting him in a position to not succeed. Those offensive fouls on him were kind of bs too. Wisconsin was doing the same thing and almost every team from high school to pro runs the same rub screens like that. I also think a few more breathers would benefit him. He is always looking over to the sideline and getting water from the trainer any chance he can get. We need to let him sit a little, so he can come back out and play like we need him too: a big man with effort to get boards and hit the occasional 5 footer on offense. He is a big man. Not a guard. Stop treating him as such.

Defensively, I think we were too focused on switching it up instead of sticking to what was working. We finally cooled off Davidson by going to the zone. Towards the end of the game, we had them in tough situations but bailed them out with tacky fouls when they picked up their dribble. They are Wisconsin…you know they will pump fake!!! Stay down and keep your hands HIGH!

This seems like the typical struggle game that we dont execute down the stretch and can’t ever break the seal. Around 5 minute mark we just needed that one basket and the roof would have blown off. I can’t stand our offensive sets and can’t really blame Devoe for putting his head down and just going left. We run zero sets to get Deebo a backside flare screen look at a corner 3…where he has shown to be knock down. We do nothing creative. It is so frustrating.

I will end this post with a few bright spots and shout outs:

1st, the students showed up early and often. I was in the student section and it was loud all game. Did a great job trolling and influencing our players energy.

Smith hitting the boards HARD. Smallest guy on the floor out jumping the bigs. 7 footers for Wisconsin and 6’10 Howard for us.

And once again, Michael f’n Devoe. Showing that killer instinct, very underrated vision and passing, and being quicker, which the NBA wanted to see.

Hope this is a teaching moment and experience for our young guys to grow on and be able to get a different outcome when ACC play rolls around.

Let’s beat unc….and roll tide this weekend baby!

 

[ChasonBaller]

I know I got spoiled with Moses last year, but I wish Howard would just explode to the rim at times and dunk the ball. I hate when he misses those little chippy shots. Throw it down, big guy!

Spot on. You have no idea how many times I said this tonight lol. You are a big physical presence, use what you were gifted with! 11/10 times if you go up for the dunk, you will at least draw a foul. Pushing up little one handers will be sent into the first row or brick off the side of rim like we saw tonight.

 

[Steverc]

Devoe will have to average, that's right, average, 40 points per game if we want to win this year.

 

[D-man44]

Devoe will have to average, that's right, average, 40 points per game if we want to win this year.

So the young guys won’t improve at all this season?

 

[Buzztheirazz]

Devoe is demonstrably better than last year. He is much more explosive and can use it to his advantage.
Howard should dunk more but if he could make a 15 footer it would open things up dramatically. Hard to run Princeton with no threat from the foul line. May have to go back to the Banks approach and put him in the short corner
We lost because Davidson went out of his mind for 7-8 minutes and we couldn't recover. Otherwise our D was pretty good. We obviously though need someone else to step up on the offensive end.
All in all I am not in hang dog mode after this game. This team has potential and should be better as the year goes on.

Great post. Davidson was unconscious for a minute and I think that terrible pick call started it up. He ran into the back of Howard and was gifted a BS call. They went up 10 when it should’ve been tight. Oh well…

I think Parham coming back should open things up for us. Really need a threat from outside.

 

[gte447f]

Devoe…..baller. Nuff said.

Also, can’t help that Brad Davidson went white Kobe on us for a few minutes. We put Smith on him, Moore, and Usher. He just couldn’t miss. Can’t really do anything about that.

What you can control though, is continuing to run the ring around the rousey offense with Howard. That worked with Lammers. He had great vision and touch as a big man. They also had to play up and guard him because he could hit the mid range. Howard….not so much….or at all. They back so far off of him sometimes that it just takes away all back door opportunities. The big man is in the paint and just camps there. He doesn’t have the vision to be in the situation. That is not his fault, that is 100% on the coach for putting him in a position to not succeed. Those offensive fouls on him were kind of bs too. Wisconsin was doing the same thing and almost every team from high school to pro runs the same rub screens like that. I also think a few more breathers would benefit him. He is always looking over to the sideline and getting water from the trainer any chance he can get. We need to let him sit a little, so he can come back out and play like we need him too: a big man with effort to get boards and hit the occasional 5 footer on offense. He is a big man. Not a guard. Stop treating him as such.

Defensively, I think we were too focused on switching it up instead of sticking to what was working. We finally cooled off Davidson by going to the zone. Towards the end of the game, we had them in tough situations but bailed them out with tacky fouls when they picked up their dribble. They are Wisconsin…you know they will pump fake!!! Stay down and keep your hands HIGH!

This seems like the typical struggle game that we dont execute down the stretch and can’t ever break the seal. Around 5 minute mark we just needed that one basket and the roof would have blown off. I can’t stand our offensive sets and can’t really blame Devoe for putting his head down and just going left. We run zero sets to get Deebo a backside flare screen look at a corner 3…where he has shown to be knock down. We do nothing creative. It is so frustrating.

I will end this post with a few bright spots and shout outs:

1st, the students showed up early and often. I was in the student section and it was loud all game. Did a great job trolling and influencing our players energy.

Smith hitting the boards HARD. Smallest guy on the floor out jumping the bigs. 7 footers for Wisconsin and 6’10 Howard for us.

And once again, Michael f’n Devoe. Showing that killer instinct, very underrated vision and passing, and being quicker, which the NBA wanted to see.

Hope this is a teaching moment and experience for our young guys to grow on and be able to get a different outcome when ACC play rolls around.

Let’s beat unc….and roll tide this weekend baby!

That’s some high level commenting right there!

 

[gte447f]

Just back from the game. Geez… it’s 1AM. Anyway, great game. That was fun! Such a gut punch that we couldn’t get the W, but like others have said, I think it bodes well that we played right with a good top 25 team. If Davidson doesn’t go unconscious and score 9 in a row, we probably win. If Usher doesn’t go 2-7 we probably win. If Howard doesn’t go 2-7 we probably win. AND… if STEVE didn’t totally screw us over and over all night long we definitely win. Am I right?

P.s. not sure if the ref’s name was really Steve, but that “you suck ref” chant was on point, and then when it morphed into “you suck Steve” or “Steve you suck” that was next level.

The student section was overflowing and they were great. The rest of the crowd was pretty good too. I hope the loss doesn’t discourage fans from supporting this team. Attendance was 6300. We need 2300 more there on Sunday to fill McCamish to the rafters for unc.

LET’S GO TECH!!!

 

[lv20gt]

I can’t stand our offensive sets and can’t really blame Devoe for putting his head down and just going left. We run zero sets to get Deebo a backside flare screen look at a corner 3…where he has shown to be knock down. We do nothing creative. It is so frustrating.

I disagree with doing nothing creative. IMO our set was designed to try and exploit their tendency to run their starters big minutes but we haven't had success in forcing turnovers and have gotten more out of position. So instead of pushing the pace, we ran our sets designed to make them work defensively for much of the shot clock to try and wear them down that way. And with the way Whisky was defending, doing what we did also allowed us to someone keep down the TOs that have been more of an issue for us. Whisky was playing tight for most of their defense but more or less allowing Roddy in the high post to just sit and wait. I think the end result was they did get tired legs, especially Davis which helped prevent him from doing more on the offensive end, but it also allowed Devoe to get good opportunities going to the rim. So while it wasn't super flashy in creating dunks or wide open shots, I thought it was effective in exploiting a tendency of the other team.

Ultimately we scored 66 against a team averaging giving up 55 who is also a top 25 defensive efficiency team, and we were still able to generate 20 looks (more including the trips to the line) for our best player when everyone in the building knows we want to get him looks. And many of those were very good opportunities. All that with us getting very little from our second best player and generating very little in transition.

 

[ChasonBaller]

I disagree with doing nothing creative. IMO our set was designed to try and exploit their tendency to run their starters big minutes but we haven't had success in forcing turnovers and have gotten more out of position. So instead of pushing the pace, we ran our sets designed to make them work defensively for much of the shot clock to try and wear them down that way. And with the way Whisky was defending, doing what we did also allowed us to someone keep down the TOs that have been more of an issue for us. Whisky was playing tight for most of their defense but more or less allowing Roddy in the high post to just sit and wait. I think the end result was they did get tired legs, especially Davis which helped prevent him from doing more on the offensive end, but it also allowed Devoe to get good opportunities going to the rim. So while it wasn't super flashy in creating dunks or wide open shots, I thought it was effective in exploiting a tendency of the other team.

Ultimately we scored 66 against a team averaging giving up 55 who is also a top 25 defensive efficiency team, and we were still able to generate 20 looks (more including the trips to the line) for our best player when everyone in the building knows we want to get him looks. And many of those were very good opportunities. All that with us getting very little from our second best player and generating very little in transition.

That’s a fair point of slowing them down but I don’t think we needed to slow down. That is Wisconsin’s game. I don’t think it was by choice…they like to grind and they have pretty sound transition defense. Also, Davis didn’t look worn down to me on that beautiful block on Devoe in crunch time

Also, why not have Usher on the elbow or high post and run it through him if we are going to do that offense? He did it some last year when Moses got in foul trouble and he did a good job. He has much better vision and touch than Howard and he can hit that middle range jumper. Howard offers nothing from the position and is stuck being a handoff guy but is more likely to drop it/pick up an offensive foul/or hold it for 10 seconds while waiting for someone to save him. I would say that is not very creative and more importantly, not smart. Put him in a position where he is comfortable and more free and can get offensive rebounds.

We did score more than I anticipated. Though, I think that was more because of Devoe going off and hitting deep threes, shaking his guy lose, and creating his own shots…not the sets. If we wanted to get them tired, we should have been running our shooters around countless screens. Everyone knows that is so annoying to guard. But yet we continue to be post centric on offense and run it through the big, where we lack depth and that play making ability like a Lammers/Moses.

 

[OG-T]

Frustrating because we had it. Wanted SO badly for Ush to hit the 3; flip his game in an instant. Great head fake, side step to give himself a great look - just didn’t have his pure arch, looked flat on release. Bummed for him.

Most impressed when we were playing 5 on 8, and they gave Badgers a call that led to their 10 point lead, we THEN came back and closed to within a bucket and missed an opp or two to jump back up. Then we closed again. Impressed to see a never quit team. Will be harder to do this on road, but this team will grow with each game - just can’t lose too many where our season record takes a beating we can’t overcome.

 

[lv20gt]

That’s a fair point of slowing them down but I don’t think we needed to slow down. That is Wisconsin’s game. I don’t think it was by choice…they like to grind and they have pretty sound transition defense. Also, Davis didn’t look worn down to me on that beautiful block on Devoe in crunch time

I'm not saying we intentionally slowed it down. I think we knew that they want to slow it down and knew that we weren't likely to use our defense to try and push the pace to wear them out so we found a different way to try and punish them for their lack of depth which was with our half court sets. Also, yeah. He made a great play on the defensive end there. One play though. He also went 1-4 for 3 points in the second half. He was spending a lot of energy defensively, and not really stopping Devoe with it, and it showed with a lack lack of really being that involved offensively. He is to them what Devoe is to us. But he also serves the role of Moore for them.

Also, why not have Usher on the elbow or high post and run it through him if we are going to do that offense? He did it some last year when Moses got in foul trouble and he did a good job. He has much better vision and touch than Howard and he can hit that middle range jumper. Howard offers nothing from the position and is stuck being a handoff guy but is more likely to drop it/pick up an offensive foul/or hold it for 10 seconds while waiting for someone to save him. I would say that is not very creative and more importantly, not smart. Put him in a position where he is comfortable and more free and can get offensive rebounds.

We could have. That would just be a different approach and more than one approach could be effective. We weren't really looking for Howard to make the play from the high post like we would have been with Ush in the situation you described. Howard was basically being used in a similar way that bigs sometimes are when they just set screen after screen after screen. However instead of having a PG have the ball and wait while the off ball motion takes place, we just had the ball with Howard and the "screen" was the threat of the handoff into tight curl. It wouldn't have been effective with Ush because then you'd have Rodney being off ball and his man wouldn't have to respect him on the curl or the back door and so could help out allowing the other off ball defenders to worry less about the back door. The "creative part" wasn't the ball being in the high post. It was how the off ball action was used and the focal point of the set rather than the guy with the ball being the one to make the play. To put it a different way, a lot of the time it looked like how OOB plays are designed where the inbounder is more just waiting for the off ball movement to open something than really looking to make the play himself.

We did score more than I anticipated. Though, I think that was more because of Devoe going off and hitting deep threes, shaking his guy lose, and creating his own shots…not the sets. If we wanted to get them tired, we should have been running our shooters around countless screens. Everyone knows that is so annoying to guard. But yet we continue to be post centric on offense and run it through the big, where we lack depth and that play making ability like a Lammers/Moses.

Some of what Devoe did was him making plays. No matter what offensive set you run that will always be the case. A lot of what he did came as a result of the sets we were running. Devoe is improved but he isn't super explosive going to the rim. Davis is the type of defender to be able to prevent that, but Mike was able to do it anywas often because Davis, and others, were expending a lot of energy guarding off ball. And Mike wasn't forcing bad shots, for the most part. And a team like Wisconsin doesn't let a player as good as Devoe get that many looks without the offensive set helping generate it.

And there is more than one way to try and tire the opponent. I'm not sure why you think that because one other approach we didn't take could have work that the one we did take was somehow wrong. There are always multiple ways to approach attacking a defense. What you are suggesting is more for targeting a specific defender. What we did was targeting all the off ball defenders. Running off screens would have been more if we wanted to get a certain match up trying to force switches. I don't think that was our goal, and based on performance I don't think we needed it.

Not sure the point about lacking big man depth. Having Roddy do what he did was a way to conserve him on the offensive end so he could play longer. And yeah, we lack play making from the high post. But like I said, we weren't looking for Roddy at the high post to do what Ben or Moses did with it. It was a different approach. Doesn't make it poorly designed.

 

[Rzunz]

My thoughts exactly. Usher had a bad shooting game, but Sturdivant, Deebo and Kelly were 0-6 from the floor. Deebo and Kelly are the keys as we need some scoring from the wing.Have to keep bringing them along. Would have loved to try and get Deebo that look that usher got.

Smith has had his ups and downs but I like his energy at PG, just has to stay grounded.
When we get bubba back 100% we will have more options for him going balls out.

If Howard added any sort of jump shot he would score 10+ per game. Guys run away from him at 10 feet. No threat at all. Love his d though.

This…

 

[orientalnc]

It was a tough finish. Tech looked tired the last few possessions and Wisconsin was able to take advantage.

Next up will be another BIG team, but one that likes to run. This will be a very different challenge.

 

[KeystoneJacket]

The key for this team is to get 12-15 points a night between Deebo and Kelly. I think that's imperative to win enough games to make the tournament.

Still would have been a win with a normal Usher night. I haven't seen Wisconsin, but I suspect their fans might feel the same way we do about that game. One guy going off and the rest struggling to step up.

 

[MikeGT]

It was a tough finish. Tech looked tired the last few possessions and Wisconsin was able to take advantage.

Next up will be another BIG team, but one that likes to run. This will be a very different challenge.

Devoe was completely exhausted the last few minutes of the game. Unfortunately, we didn’t really have much going on from anyone else scoring to be able to give him a rest earlier.

 

[Fatmike91]

Great post. Davidson was unconscious for a minute and I think that terrible pick call started it up. He ran into the back of Howard and was gifted a BS call. They went up 10 when it should’ve been tight. Oh well…

On the very next possession they came down and their center set a clearly moving screen on our guy and he got open for a three.

That one sequence (BS foul, then no call then 3) helped decide the game.

/

 

[Fatmike91]

I said in chat there were two good teams playing last night. We need to do what we do a bit better but we can win some games this year.

I question if we got the full practice in or not before the game. i suspect a few of the guys weren’t 100% yet.

I hope CJP learns how to deal a bit better with the refs. That kind of unbalanced crap doesn’t ever happen to ratface or Boeheim.

As a team we need to practice with our practice squad fouling our offense (pushing, holding, poking, moving screens, no freedom of movement, etc.) We need to learn how to play through it better.

/

 

[CuseJacket]

On the very next possession they came down and their center set a clearly moving screen on our guy and he got open for a three.

That one sequence (BS foul, then no call then 3) helped decide the game.

/

I don't remember the play exactly, but in CBB this year the handoff rub screen is a point of emphasis. That is a key part of our offense when Rodney has the ball at the top of the key.

The more classic screen that we see in pick and rolls, and often plays out as a moving screen, continues to not get called much.

I didn't have much of a reaction to the play in question real-time, and I also wasn't in chat to ingrain the play in memory, so I may not have it right about what is in question on this one.