re: Tide Hoops | Please Anchor

If only there was a mute/ignore option.

Realized watching in person last night that the main offensive problem is the absolute lack of a pick and pop threat from our 5s.

Last year, the combination of Bruner/Reese/Rojas shot 29% from 3pt on 6-7 attempts per game.

This year, Bediako/Gurley have shot 21% on 2-3 attempts per game from the 5, and that’s all Gurley because Bediako hasn’t attempted one.

With a pop threat from the 5, it’s all pick and rolls, which just clogs the middle whenever JQ and JD try to drive it. There isn’t any room to get to the paint.

Gurley was supposed to be an offensive upgrade for the pick and pop coming in as a 35% career 3pt shooter over 3 years at Furman. But his 3pt woes have stifled what worked so well on offense last year. We are really missing what Bruner/Reese gave us in terms of floor spacing.

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FUUUCK...last night sucked.

Last years team really fricked with our expectations. Making the tournament is a good season and we are still in strong position to do that

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I think most of us were hoping we'd end up with just 3 losses at this point. I don't think the expectations were from last year's team as much as they were from this year's team after the Gonzaga and Houston games.

9-3 with this schedule is pretty incredible. The losses weren't where we expected them and we have a lot to figure out defensively, but us taking down 2 top 5 caliber teams in consecutive games is a very good sign for this team come March. We just have to come out with that intensity every time. The past few games we've lost a lot of fire on the defensive end, and it's bit us in the arse twice.

JSU actually moved back into Q3.

Alabama is now the only team in the Top 300 NET that hasn't played a single Q4 game.

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Realized watching in person last night that the main offensive problem is the absolute lack of a pick and pop threat from our 5s.

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This is why I scratch my head about Tchikou. Watch his highlights he can shoot the three and is comfortable doing it. He can't be that bad. He's pouring in threes from everywhere.

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The ball sticks so much this year compared to last it feels like. It just seems like we over dribble, wait for a ball screen, and then continue to play iso ball as opposed to really getting the ball swinging around and making the defense work more. We did that unbelievably well in the 2nd half of Miami and 1st half of Gonzaga but for the most part it’s not been very good. As poor as our offense has been at times though, it’s the defense and rebounding that continues to haunt us.

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The best ball movement comes from getting into the paint and kicking out, so I think those go hand and hand. Bad spacing without a stretching pop threat from our bigs like Reese/Bruner is making it hard on our guards to drive it and key everything else.

The other team's bigs are just sagging off our ball screen and staying in the lane and the defensive guards are going over screens to keep the guards from shooting the 3.

Last year, if the defensive big sagged and the guard went over the ball screen, Reese or Bruner were wide open at the top of the key and making those 3s at a good clip. And if the big stayed with Reese/Bruner, our guards had an open lane to drive, which keyed everything else.

We have to figure out a way to scheme a better advantage in the 2v2 game at the top of the key between our PG/C because the lob dunks to Bediako that we were getting frequently to start the season haven't been there the last few weeks.

I don’t know why he doesn’t get PT since I’m not at practices, but when I do watch him in warmups, he doesn’t make shots at a high level. That’s a very small sample size though.

Davidson coach Bob McKillop’s 616th career win came in a game that was not even on his school’s schedule five days earlier, and he had yet to reach his seat for his postgame news conference Tuesday night before he began reacting to a 79-78 upset of tenth-ranked Alabama.

“We play a style of basketball that people don’t like to play against,” the 33rd-year coach said. “Nate [Oats] graciously pursued playing us. I want to say thanks to him for doing that.”

“We told our guys, if you’re not gonna get any pressure on them, disrupt timing, get some deflections, force turnovers, you’re not gonna be able to beat them,” Oats said. “I told our guys before the game, these are the three best top-three shooters of any team we’ve played all year. If you’re going to give them open shots, you’re going to get beat.

“I think we’ve got the personnel,” said Oats, who mentioned possibly giving senior forward Noah Gurley more minutes over freshman center Charles Bediako. “If we get the mindset corrected, we can give a good defensive team. I don’t think the mindset is there right now.

“We can’t win like we did last year without guys really buying into being great individual defenders, great team defenders and just giving us an effort on defense. Until we get that figured out, we’re going to be a pretty average team.”

McKillop compared Tuesday’s environment to an NCAA tournament game, which the reopened venue will host in 2023.

“The crowd was frenetic and it was terrific,” he said. “It was an absolutely great crowd. It was just wholesome. And by the way, roll Tide. I’m a closet Saban fan.”

McKillop, a former high school coach on Long Island before taking over Davidson’s program in 1989, said he has a kinship with Oats, another former high school coach, and “loves” Alabama’s style of play. Alabama’s three-point heavy approach yielded some results Tuesday, with the Tide finishing 12-of-36 and powering some of its comeback runs -- but it was ultimately not enough.


al.com
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