About as I expected.
We looked terrible against the zone. We shot 50 percent from the line. Let entirely too many defensive rebounds slip through our hands.
On defense our bigs just sat behind their post player and didn't fight him for position. And we didn't adjust the defense when they kept going to him. When a guy gets the ball right in front of the rim, he's usually going to score or get fouled. How to play it? With an undersized post player, you front him and force the defense to throw the ball over the top. If you can't get in front then get three quarter post position and force him to his off-hand.
Bottom line: we didn't deserve to win this one. We were stagnant on offense and uninspired or unmotivated on defense.
Dustin Ware had a couple of key buckets, but his shot is definitely off. His biggest problem is with his lift. He points his feet inward toward each other and thus his lower body works against his upper body on the release. He needs to watch some film to get it corrected. Teams are playing off of him, so although I don't recommend a lot of tinkering with a guy's mechanics during the season, in this case it's warranted. If he's going to shoot 8 or 9 threes during regulation and 13 for the game, then he needs to get it right.
A continuing concern is that Ware has no game going toward the basket. That was my point when he was recruited. He had a lot more three-point shots than a good point guard should have, especially when compared to the number of free throws he shot. He just has to take it toward the basket sometimes. Develop a floater, spin move, or learn to draw contact and get to the line.
If teams zone us, we might want to experiment with Robinson at the point and Brantley at the 2-guard. Not that Brantley is a particularly true shooter, either, but if Ware is off, let's try someone else.
And we need to develop an offense against the zone. We seemed to not know what to do. We looked confused and out of sorts and decided to just swing the ball around the perimeter. You do have to swing the ball, but if there is no movement through the paint, the zone will just shift. I like to overload one side and put a double or triple screen on to free a shooter. Tubby's offenses were great against the zone and Bruce Pearl has effective schemes. Either we run the normal triangle or we come up with a different offense against teams that zone us.
Wasn't a terrible game, but we had our chances. We'll get better as Trey gets acclimated to being on the floor again. You can tell that he doesn't have much lift.
When the guy banked in the three-pointer during the second overtime, I figured we weren't going to win it. They played just good enough to win and we have a lot of work to do.
2 comments:
They psyche of this team is still very fragile. It was inevitable that ND would eventually make a run and, when they did, we tightened up and offset 25 minutes of good work with 5 minutes of terrible basketball.
We obviously are still lacking when it comes to perimeter shooters. While we settled for the outside shot against their zone way too much in the 2nd half, we weren't getting bad looks. We just weren't knocking them down. 34 three points shots??? And only make 9 of them??? That's awful...and the FT shooting wasn't much better.
It's not easy being a fan of UGA athletics right now. Over the past year, we've had losing teams in baseball and men's hoops and now the football team is under .500 as well. Was really counting on this year's hoops team generating some positive energy on campus. They still might, but this is a game we needed to win to continue to build the confidence of the kids on the team.
We were such a better team than Notre Dame that the loss was very disappointing, but, at the same time was very reassuring.
Coach Fox got his ass handed to him by Brey. That was a total coaching loss (as bad as the free throws were, ND wasn't much better) as it appeared we have never practiced against a zone, and never made a defensive adjustment in the 2nd half to counter ND's change in offense.
The good thing about it is that we lost to a likely NCAA tourney team in 2 OT's and learned a lot about what we need to improve on.
This team knows that, athletically, they are going to be better than most everyone they play, but they have to be smart and prepared every game, or they will get beat.
Overall, I thought that this loss is the reason that it is so great for the program to play in these kinds of tournaments. It will serve as good preparation for the rest of the year, while not registering an RPI crippling loss.
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