Some random thoughts on last night's game

Posted on: November 28, 2018 at 10:43:44 CT

That wasn’t a real promising result. The better team simply came to our home court and defeated us, and that better team was Temple. MU could have played better in some capacities, but they also had a lot of fortunate breaks to keep it as close as it was.

The main limitation on this team appears to be we have no ability to dribble penetrate or get to the rim. That was completely absent last night so it made generating looks consistently a large challenge.

We are using Tilmon out in space and up high too much, that is what is leading to his ineffectiveness. He should be in the role of a true center.

I don’t think we can expect to continue to shoot 60% behind the arc like we have in the last two games, both losses. The free throw disparity was also preposterously in our favor.

This team has way too many defensive lapses where it just concedes buckets for the level of offensive and pace they play at.

We gave away about 8 points on trying to inbound the ball after made baskets, and about another 8 points on not being prepared trying to defend their dead ball in bound plays. Kind of hard to make that up when you struggle to score at the level we do.

Cuonzo seems less engaged than last year, which I assume is due to exhibiting patience and not wanting to put too much pressure and expectations on this young roster. That isn’t the way he would have coached that game last year.

I don’t get Watson. He seems like he is just a guy. I was expecting him to look tentative, or for the speed of the game to be a little too quick for him. But that wasn’t the case, he was just a guy out there. Not what I expected at all.

Pinson plays defense like Isabell, Cuonzo needs to fix his stance and his focus on that side of the ball for him to be effective at this level.

This team being led by Giest and Puryear kind of reminds me of our 1996-97 team being led by Sutherland and Thames respectively (although neither of our current versions are as good as the past versions). The 1996-97 similarly really didn’t have a pg. That team ended up going 16-17 overall and 10th in the Big 12.