re: Tide Hoops | Please Anchor

The disparity between JQ and Shack is mildly surprising.

I hope Miles is alright and back on Saturday.

Chuck and JD…sheesh.

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I'm a bit confused by the stats.

In your (great!) thread about the lineups, the most productive lineups included JD (to my surprise) but his + per minutes/possessions here just seem awful.

Why do you think that is?

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I'm pretty sure it has to do with this - basically JD is a raw player and when he plays with certain other lineups it is an abject disaster. Specifically when he and JQ are on the floor together, and even more so when they are on the floor together with Bediako.

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Goodness gracious, the whole first page is filled with "Oates".

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When your only discussion of basketball is fighting with LSU/Auburn trolls on the Rant solely to be fighting/trolling then you end up speaking their language.

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When your only discussion of basketball is fighting with LSU/Auburn trolls on the Rant solely to be fighting/trolling then you end up speaking their language.

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The one lifestyle choice that is less healthy than just being a fan and wanting us to win.

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“We have first-, second-half splits. We’re much better in the first half defensively than we are in the second half on the year. … There’s things that we do at a pretty high level or pretty good and then we just, as the game moves on later in the game, we start to lose our focus, lose our attention to detail and we get bad. And two of the worst that we do defensively is we foul too much and we give up too many O boards. We’re trying to fix that."

“Offensively, we haven’t been shooting it well. Our offense is still the 10th-ranked offense in the country. We’ve done a lot of other things well, but shooting covers a multitude of sins and we’ve gotta start shooting the ball a little bit better. And then when our turnovers are kept down to a minimum, we’re pretty good, too. (Tuesday), we had 19 turnovers at Georgia, and they only had five or six steals. Most of them are unforced turnovers."

“It seems most of our damage is we’re doing it to ourselves in these games. I think we can fix that. We’ve just gotta get guys’ confidence up, their minds right, and that’s part of coaching. There’s a lot that goes into coaching. The analytics are part of it, the psychology’s part of it. I think the psychology part is a little more important at this stage for us right now.”

“We’ve got enough good games left on the schedule that we can play ourselves into a good seed still,” Oats said. “If you look at UCLA last year, they lost three in a row to close the year out, lost the first game of the Pac-12 Tournament to go four in a row and then had to play a play-in game as an 11th seed and goes on a run and was a play away from playing in the national championship game. They made it to the Final Four.

“We just have to get where we’re playing our best basketball come the end of February, March. I was a high school coach not too long ago – everybody made the state tournament, so whether you won or lost during the regular season was a little bit irrelevant. You’re just trying to get to be the best team you can be. I think we’re back at that stage now.

“… There’s plenty of games left on the schedule to get our resume where it needs to be. We’ve proven that we’ve got the talent to play with the best teams in the country. We’ve just gotta go out and figure out how to do it every night.”

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I agree with everything he's saying, just not sure it's gonna happen if it hasn't already. Just have to hope a light switch turns on or something I guess, I dunno.

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That makes sense.

The real disaster for all the potential minutes/lineup decisions Oats is facing is JQ's outside shot just having completely abandoned him.

JQ seemed often even more effective last year playing off the ball being lethal on corner and wing threes. If he can't do that, him being on the floor with JD just couples our worst two on ball defenders with two non-shooting ball handlers.

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I posted this in SOG's other thread, but I'll double post here as well. I would like to see us try to mix in a little high-post split offense with JD and Bediako to see if we can't create a little more for that duo on the offensive end.



JD is at his best getting downhill, but he hasn't shown the ability or confidence to use the Bediako high-screen PnR to get downhill off the bounce.

At the same time, Bediako has shown a little bit of passing ability from the lane in situations where he receives the double-team splitting bounce-pass on roll situations and has to pull up 10 feet out to avoid a charge.

If we mixed in a little high-post split, it's basically using the same concept. Bediako is setting a high-screen with his body for the guards to cut off of, only he has the ball instead of the guard. Davison could use his athleticism without the ball to use Bediako as a screen and take a handoff already having a downhill head of steam.

Just to mix in another look that isn't exclusively high-screens, which have gotten very stagnant with JD running point.

Just A Minute: What's Alabama Basketball Missing the Most? The Guy Who Wore No. 1 (SI)

Crimson Tide hasn't been the same this season without one player in particular: Herb Jones.

Since he’s the voice of Crimson Tide basketball:

Chris Stewart's Recovery a Story of Faith and Blessings

Crimson Tide men's basketball and baseball broadcaster continues to recover from health issues that plagued him for several years.

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Perfect description of what happens when you "run out of gas". The announcers pointed out against Ga that somewhere in the second half GA started getting almost all of the 50/50 balls. Fatigue, tired legs. As I posted earlier.

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Yeah, your point was dismissed a bit but there could be something to it.

Last week a few of us were wondering about mental fatigue from that "every game a big game" non conference slate. I'd guess the vibe around most practices has been a grueling "let's fix this" one for a while now too.

Not sure any of us are insiders enough to know but it would not shock me to hear something like JQ, JD among others have been taking lot more extra shooting practice than you normally would mid-season after the early struggles, just for example.