Gooood evening AU fans. I'm not feeling very well (I didn't even make it to the game today), so this will be a pretty perfunctory edition of good, bad, and ugly. Sorry about that. In any event.
THE GOOD
Riley Grafft - 14 points and 9 rebounds in 30 minutes? Pretty solid. He looked lost at times on defense and had some trouble guarding Robbie Jackson (who at 7'0", 275 lbs is a beast). Still, Riley has continued to be pretty consistent, and he deserves to be here for sure.
Stephen Lumpkins - 7 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocks. He played good defense inside and was great making the extra pass.
Passing early in the game - The first four minutes of this game featured perhaps the best basketball AU has played all year. Crisp passing. Good decisions with the ball. Great shooting. Pressure on defense. It was wonderful. Sadly the following 36 minutes weren't so great.
Vlad the Impaler - Vlad was limited to 17 minutes because he picked up 3 early fouls (at least 2 of which were bogus). Still, in 17 minutes, he notched 14 points. My only problem with Vlad's game today is that he was a little too quick to settle for the 3-pointer. Don't force them when you can try to make the pass and find a teammate who might have a better opportunity. Still, not bad for 17 minutes of work.
Nick Hendra - 7 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists? Pretty good from Nick. I would've liked to see more points, but he really helped with distributing the ball, which makes up for it.
Rebounding - we outrebounded UMBC by 11, 41-30. Nice work by Lumpkins and Grafft on that.
Honorable mention: Simon McCormack - 9 points and 5 rebounds were good. The 4 turnovers were not. This qualifies as an "almost in THE GOOD" for those of you that keep score on our arbitrary awards. Blake Jolivette and Danny Munoz - nice work taking care of the ball for the most part. Unfortunately going a combined 2-10 shooting doesn't merit a GOOD.
THE BAD
The second half - UMBC opened up with a 13-0 run. Seriously? What happens at halftime that we come out every game and suck at the beginning of the second half? I would love to know.
Turnovers in the second half - We gave up 10 after only have 4 in the first half. Is it any wonder we were outscored by 9 in the second half?
3-point shooting - 5-21? Wow. Nasty. Vlad was particularly guilty here, going 2-7. Everyone has off games though, for sure.
THE UGLY
We just lost to 0-9 UMBC. Tomorrow, TOMORROW, we go to Penn State. THAT'S going to be ugly.
Oh, also, we just lost to 0-9 UMBC.
See you tomorrow for the liveblog. God willing I'll be feeling better and it will be a little better than this entry.
Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!
It's pretty sad that the only thing that we beat was a bender arena chair that Jeff Jones threw when we didn't land a basket.
ReplyDeleteStarting team needs to be re-evaluated.
ReplyDeleteYou can't win with as many turnovers as we have.
The starting team has 117 turnovers combined in 11 games. Not good.
Stephen Lumpkins really looked good in the high post. We were successful in getting him the ball there, he fakes well, distributes well, and he doesn't turn it over. It seems to me we went away from this strategy in the second half... also it is a strategy which takes the pressure off the point guard spot which right now is AU's most glaring weakness (which is to be expected).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think this team would be well suited to a 1-3-1 defense with Hendra up top, the three big men in the middle, and the flavor-of-the-day point guard running the baseline. What do y'all think?
You have to be kidding me. Our GLARING WEAKNESSES are our turnovers, inability to finish at the rim and supposed more experienced players who can't shoot from the outside.
ReplyDeleteNice explosion of comments in the last hour.
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts:
- True, Lumpkins doesn't turn it over, he does distribute well, and he does move well inside. What he hasn't done well since pre-season is finish well. What he also doesn't do well is shoot free throws (somewhere around 53%). We should feed it to him inside because even Lumpkins' bad shots are higher percentage than some of our guards' good shoots.
- Agreed about the turnovers. The ball security has been flat miserable. About changing the starting lineup though...who would you put out there? The only change I can see is switching Vlad for McCormack or Munoz for Blake (and I'd only recommend the former of those two as I think Blake has been much more effective as a PG than Danny)
- Re: the 1-3-1, I don't think it's a bad idea, but it's not something JJ will do, so it's more or less moot.
I think we also need to work on avoiding stupid fouls. Vlad got himself into foul trouble early which caused JJ to not put him in.
ReplyDeleteYet at the same time, during the last 45 seconds we should have fouled them, gotten them to the foul line and then had 30+ seconds t get the ball down the court.
1. First off, why didn't Vlad start? Your best player is always in the starting five.
ReplyDelete2. 17 minutes? Keep him in. If he fouls out, then he sits. Think about it...if you doubled his playing time and he played 34 minutes would that have made the difference in the 2 point differential? Probably so!
Regarding the comment about the more experienced players not being able to shoot from the outside, Hendra has certainly stepped this up over the last few games. We know Vlad can shoot the three fairly well, and if Bersch and (dare I say it) even Joe Hill can get into a groove then I think if not later this season then next we will be a real perimeter threat again.
ReplyDelete