Wake is a great team and I expect them to be a high seed in the tournament. But BC did not play well last night. For those who missed it, here is the very good game story from Julian Bellow (can the Globe please make him the full time BC beat writer?!?). Here are the raw numbers.
I don't know what we have in this group. More talented Skinner teams have been run out of the building before. Most bounced back during the season. Unfortunately I think every game is going to be a surprise. What follows are my specific points about last night:
Likes
-- Reggie Jackson's fight. If you ask me, he was the spark during the second half run. He's not at the point where he can carry the team, but hopefully he continues to play with emotion and confidence. This team is lacking both.
-- Going small. With Raji at 50% and Wake's bigs dominating, it only made sense to go small. It was a little too late, but the Paris-Jackson-Rice combo worked. We should use it more often.
-- The crowd. Full house even for a 9 o'clock start. They also made some noise during the second half run. Despite the loss, it was the best BC basketball crowd for a non-Duke, UNC, Kansas game since 2007.
Dislikes
-- Interior D. It was a bad match up to begin with but we did everything wrong with their big men. No boxing out, no effort, poor footwork. Why not get Ravenal a shot. No one else did anything.
-- Transition D. There wasn't any. Part of it was Wake's speed, but also lack of effort and sloppy play.
-- Shot selection. One of my keys to the game from the short preview. BC had trouble establishing the offense early and then just started chucking it up as things progressed.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Wake up call
So there was that game last night...
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11 comments:
First of all, Tyrese is quoted in the Globe about turnovers, saying: "It's hardly ever [that we] just come down and it's a sloppy pass." Well, he needs to watch the tape. Second, I can accept coming out flat for Bryant or Sacred Heart (although I still contend that good teams do not do this as often as we do). But last night, I saw a lack of intensity and effort for the first 30 minutes, playing the #2 team in front of a packed home audience. I am a Skinner fan, but his downfall is managing attitudes. I see these guys in warm-ups and they are not focused, intense, or serious. I see some cocky attitudes from guys that think they are special, without having achieved anything of note (other than what now appears to be a fluke win over NC). I saw the same thing in Sean Williams when he was here, and it's either something that Skinner does not recognize or just doesn't want to address. I think he is a good coach, but I think some of these young men need a lesson in humility, respect, and how to give your best effort at all times. I see far too much bravado, playground antics, and clowning around.
I agree to a certain degree on the intensity, but it was a weird game. The officiating was awful....to be clear, it was awful both ways, and without rhyme or reason, but that sort of game favored Wake. My issue was more with discipline than intensity. We kept trying to run with them, which we don't have the horses to do. These guys seemed to forget that they beat Carolina methodically, not by throwing the ball all around Conte. It was a disheartening loss, to be sure, but there are still enough flashes to hope that it comes together at some point this season. Saturday looms as pretty close to a must-win at this point, though.
At the game: have to second morrina's frustration with the general attitude of Skinner's team(s). Don't wanna point fingers, but with this years squad, it also begins with a certain superstar PG...
With that said, there were flashes of exceptional effort and fight on the court. Trapani's efforts both on the block and on the perimeter were solid and Reggie Jackson, if he can hone his fundamentals, looks like he really could become something special at BC. He playes with passion, can stroke it, and has ups which can be an anomoly with Skinner's teams.
I don't know if this is a harbinger for things to come, but he team actually played quite well in the second half with "Tyree" (oh Spaz), on the bench.
oh man Spaz, got a great applause, but get the name right!
I have some serious issues with the way Skinner manages games and no one else, locally or nationally, calls him out on it. The turnovers and lack of any semblence of a play off the under the hoop inbounds plays are startling. we look for a tiny bounce pass (turnover) or lob it to half court. we even had a 5 second call against us. Every 5th grade team has plays in this situation.
The flex also needed to be modified sooner. Too many TOs (not necessarily skinners fault) but kind of shows that these players are not always fond of this offense. they dont set great screens, get too bunched together, and southern can not be getting the ball at the top of the key against a fast, athletic team like that. really wish he had varied up a little sooner than he did, especially with wake's small guards trying to defend raji for extended periods.
i like what al has been able to accomplish here, some good teams, developing players, but please, will someone address his in-game management?!?!
it's Benbow, not Bellow
Since I started at BC in 2003, I have always said have not seen a team at the high school level with worse looking inbounds plays than BC. It is painful. You cant just keep running the flex and call it your inbounds play. 5 minutes into the game, the opposing defense already knows all the cuts that you are going to make. Coaches... Get out the clipboard and draw a couple of x's and o's, a screen or two, some other meaningless squigglies, and have a safety valve at half court if no one is open. It's not that hard.
Everyone on here bashes Al the rest of the time, and praises his "patience" and the design of the flex during the UNC game. You can't have it both ways people. It's clear that the UNC game was not typical of this team, for once they ran into a good team that was shooting colder than them.
I don't understand the mentality with this offense. If you're going to run the flex, you have to recruit disciplined players who can shoot from the outside when things break down, and a big man in the post to work around. Our current players fit none of those characteristics. On the defensive front, when you do have these kind of athletes, why not use them in a press or something similar? This is the wrong system for these players.
Run a quick motion offense and a pressure D.
Matt, I have been bashing Al for years now. My problem with him is that he is too slow to make any in-game adjustments. The flex did not work for basically the entire first half and Al never adjusted his game plan and moved away from it. He makes no game to game adjustments either. Everybody knows BC is going to run the flex and they come prepared for it every time. If Al threw in a new wrinkle every now and then, it might give opponents something else to worry about. As much as I did not like Al's coaching, I hated Tyrese Rice. I am quickly jumping off his bandwagon. I loved the guy for his first 3 years but this year he seems uninterested in playing and he lacks intensity and heart. After the rough start yesterday, Rice basically packed it in for the first half. He played lackadaisically, became careless with the ball, and basically did not try anymore. He is not the leader BC needs. He has a horrible attitude and if he keeps it up, he's got zero chance at the NBA. Quit the crying Rice and suck it up. Players like Raji, Sanders, and Trapani seems to be better leaders than Rice.
I'm not bashing the flex as our offense. I'm bashing the 4-man version of it as our INBOUNDS play. We have to mix something else in.
I hate when we know another team is going to press and deny the inbounds play after a made basket, and we decide to take the most time possible to get the ball, stand around and let the defense set up, then go for an inbounds play that eads to a 5 second call or a player being trapped in the baseline corner. Instead of grabbing it quick, quickly passing it to Rice so he may dribble up the floor uncontested.
It drives me bonkers, this being a long time problem.
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