re: Alabama Basketball Megathread | 26-7 (16-2)

Shows how much I know. I thought he would take a couple of years to develop and get recruited over at Kentucky.

Bruner has to play more but he also needs to play more aggressive on the offensive end of the court. Has his big arse had a dunk yet? He doesn’t do anything stupid and is a solid player, he’s just too passive.

Herb needs to shoot less and take it to the hole with authority like he did a couple of times late. That would really enhance his game if he became a threat to drive and finish.

Some if you will probably disagree but I think Shack has been our most consistent scoring threat. Yeah, he does stupid shite and he can’t hit shite from short range but he’s a good shooter and he’s aggressive on offense and gets points. He plays hard all the time too. Sometimes out of control hard but hard nonetheless. On his drives, he gets in among the trees and panics a little I think, and rushes a decision, be it a wild shot or a wild pass. If he ever learned to hit from short range, he’d be a beast.

Reese just needs to sit the frick down. He’s a possession destroyer. Nothing positive about his game. I fail to see what Oats keeps him out there for.

Primo has skills. You can see that. But he’s still got a lot to learn about playing at this level.

P3tty. Man, what can you say. We got good Petty tonight and we won. But it seems like it’s either Petty for 22 6/10 3’s 4 boards and 6 assists or Petty for 6 2/11 3’s. There’s no happy medium and I’m only talking about points. He contributes in other ways but his offense is either all or none.

Q is ok on offense and awful on defense but he doesn’t look like a pure point/distributor that we need there.

Got a long way to go and lots of work to do.

So far, I'm really missing Kira Lewis.

Not making any excuses for this team, because outside of the 2nd half of last night, it's been terrible basketball. They started off like this last year, then slowly got better as the season progressed.

It sucks Alex Tchikou got injured. He'd been raw too, but maybe we're not forcing Bruner to play at 5 and he's more aggressive.

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So far, I'm really missing Kira Lewis.

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We are eventually going to adjust to the new personnel in our halfcourt sets. We started to a bit after halftime last night. Where we probably aren't going to be able to adjust is in transition. We are going to have to change how we run the break, because no one on this roster can put the defense on their heels like Kira could. A lot of these dudes are trying to be Kira in transition and it just doesn't work if you aren't that fast.

Yes! But instead of pulling it back out and setting up the offense, the fast break just charges right into the teeth of the defense and tries to force up a bad shot. Then we’re going back the other way. The lack of awareness is just mind-boggling.

Well we are trying to steal possessions. That's a big part of what we do. If you are going to shoot 30+ 3s on a nightly basis then you have to steal possessions. Low possessions + lots of outside shooting and you run the risk of getting obliterated if they aren't falling at a very high rate. So I don't think that pulling the ball back out and slowing things down is going to be an effective strategy for us. We have to figure out a way to set up open looks for trailers, even if they're outside shots, in those 1 on 2 transition situations. Shack or Herb taking it to the basket against multiple defenders is not a winning strategy. Hell, maybe that can be Reese's niche. He's so fricking slow that the defense will all outrun him and leave him wide open for a kick out 3.

I don't know why I was thinking Petty was going to be much different in year 4. This style of play is begging the guy to just let it rip without conscience. He runs about as extreme hot and cold as it gets. Not sure what he's thinking out there, but eating the heart of his opponent ain't one of them. He needs some Larry Bird and soon.