re: UA Basketball (16-15, 8-10)

Every player has an off night scoring here and there, even James Harden went 3 for 13 the other night and got 12 points.

Pettys looks bad because he has gotten under 10 points in 2 of the last 5 games, and the team has struggled a bit during that span.


Against LSU defense and rebounding were our main problems, we still scored almost 80 points, the problem to me is that they scored 90 and out rebounded us by a ton.

Petty was 2nd on our team in rebounding vs LSU with 7 rebounds, so even though he hasn't been scoring like he has been he is still playing hard.

I assume he is getting down on himself since he has been in shooting slump, and since Petty is the leader of the team, it's not good for him to show negative body language or get down, probably leads to him not giving the same energy in practice. I assume that's what Oats is trying to correct.

quote:

---

And I told our guys I don’t want to be associated with a fake team

---

I love his openness and how brutally honest he is

quote:

---

Another thing that's interesting is one of the two games recently he had under 10 points was vs Auburn, he had 7 and we still won by 20.

Vs LSU he got 4 and we still scored 76 on the road.

We can handle his cold shooting nights if we just play decent defense and don't get out rebounded by 20, those are effort things, and hopefully Oats got in the teams arse this week and we look a lot different tomorrow than we have these last two games.

---

Yeah, we need Petty to be confident and aggressive on offense but with him being the guy that defenses are making the most effort to cover beyond the arc, we need other players to step up and make open 3's. . . We're deadly when Reese and Shackleford are hot but need a bit more from Kira and definitely Forbes.

Forbes not yet getting into the groove behind the arc is hurting us with the amount of minutes he's getting. I think Forbes is going to be a very good player for us in the future and it's clear from watching him practice that he has a good 3 pt stroke and should be a 33% or better shooter with the looks he's getting.

LSU is a tough matchup for us in that they're very good driving and crashing the offensive glass and our two biggest weaknesses are on the ball defending coupled with no rim protector drivers and rebounding.


That said, it's a different game, at least much closer, if we didn't miss about 4 or 5 wide open corner 3 pointers we usually hit at key moments when we could have swung momentum.

A couple of times we cut it to 9 and came down and played pretty good defense and they just made some tough, contested shots.

Rhode Island is mashing VCU 49-27 at halftime.

quote:

---

Especially Skylar Mays - that dude is cold blooded. Would love to get a clone of him in our system.

---

That game winner he hit vs Miss St a few games ago was amazing. I thought for sure Miss St was about to beat them.


Here it is if anyone hasn't seen it. They had 4 seconds left down by one, in-bounded it to him, he drove down and did this.

LINK

the crazy thing is, LSU's forwards aren't really even that big. Galin Smith, Reese, and Davis are all bigger then Watford who is their biggest player.

Days - 6'6 240
Williams - 6'6 230
Watford - 6'9 235


They give a ton of effort on the glass though for sure, and are all pretty athletic.


I was surprised how good off the dribble Watford and Williams were, and Days is a really good three point shooter for his size, he isn't shooting as well this year but he was 38% from three last year, he hit a few vs us.

They are a tough team to match up with.

I didn't compare his athleticism to our bigs, I compared their sizes. Ours are obviously much less athletic.