Some random thoughts on last nights game

Posted on: January 24, 2019 at 13:01:09 CT

Kind of weird to see the level of questioning of Cuonzo and the coaching. We are one game removed from a frankly masterful coaching job of just dominating A&M on the road. There is not much to work with on this roster, I certainly wouldn’t say suspect coaching is one of our main concerns.

I thought we did a very good job in the first half of controlling the tempo and playing strong D and forcing them into half court sets. Predictably they were able to speed us up and start to generate easy baskets from turnovers eventually, and our pace got all discombobulated. Roster wise we are the exact type of team that is susceptible to that.

The story of each game will be what we can get out of Tilmon, because when an aggressive version of him isn’t on the court its becomes excessively easy to both defend and score on MU. But when he is effective we can play with most of the teams in this league.

Losing Picket was a huge blow. He is one of arguably our 3 ‘good’ players that can cause opponents issues. The real issue is even our 'good' players are very young and still developing, so what we really mean are the potential to become good players.

Can you imagine this season had Mark Smith not been given a waiver for immediate eligibility?

One coachable aspect is our complete inability to properly feed the post. Its almost 100% lobs, and almost always delivered at the wrong times at the wrong angles. We had also done such a good job against A&M of not using Tilmon in setting high picks or in pick and role situations to such success that I thought we were done with that, but reverted back to it.

Its frustrating how very little we get from Puryear/Watson/Santos. For this team to be formidable all three really had to exceed expectations, and they don’t even come close to approaching them.

9 assists to 24 turnovers on the road is a losing formula every time. Especially when most of those are live ball turnovers that the opposition (who really struggles to score) turns them into easy baskets. They outscored us in fastbreak points 18-4.

Good to see Pinson back on the court, I thought he made some meaningful contributions and showed some promise.

That game all came down to tempo. We allowed ourselves to be sped up out of our comfort zone after controlling it much of the first half, and things fell apart. Mike Anderson has made a career out of doing just that.

Edited by FIJItiger at 13:02:14 on 01/24/19