BC's win over Virginia was crucial. It was a must win and became that much more important after Virginia Tech beat Duke Saturday night. The BC-VT game Tuesday will probably get one team in the Big Dance while putting the loser on the narrowest of margins.
Likes
-- A tight rotation. Ideally Donahue would like to play 11 guys a game. But that is not a luxury he has. Heck, it's not even good strategy when you don't have starter talent on your bench. Today, Donahue played all his starters 29+ minutes. With that he got his most efficient game in weeks.
-- Reggie stepping up. I keep hoping for a mega-run from Reggie. Let's hope this is the start of a big spring.
-- The defense. Virginia is not good on offense, but holding any team to 32% shooting is impressive.
Dilikes
-- Biko Paris' outside shots. We don't ask him to do much, but he does need to make some 3s.
-- Moton's ball handling. Even in limited minutes, he still had two turnovers. He needs to improve on that next year if he doesn't want the incoming freshmen playing ahead of him next year.
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7 comments:
VT is a big test on Tuesday. I can't wait to see which team shows up for that one. We haven't had great luck against them down there. We did handle them better at home though than the score indicated. All I know is that I'll be on pins and needles until then.
ATL, you mentioned Cahill's defense the last game, so I paid more attention to it this game. And I agree, he's weak. Doesn't fight through screens, looks unsure of himself. The thing is, on the offensive end he doesn't seem comfortable either. He rarely takes more than one dribble before getting rid of the ball. He may be a good shooter, but he doesn't mesh into the offense that well. Did I miss something like Rubin getting injured? They seem pretty similar, but I think Rubin is better on defense and seems more comfortable on offense.
I'm not saying one is necessarily much better than the other, I just found it odd that one played 35 minutes and the other didn't get off the bench. I think they could split the time, keep fresh bodies on the floor, and let whoever has the hot hand stay on.
On a separate topic, I liked the trapping defense at the end of the first half and part of the second. If we're going to play so small (not that we have much of a choice) we should use more press to force turnovers. It may open things up to fast breaks, but we can't play down low with big teams anyhow, so we might as well try to cut them off before they can get into their offense. Just my 2 cents.
Question for B_Ball gurus.
I know Kenpom is a respected ratings source, but cannot figure out why he has Maryland ranked #16 in the country. I think BC is #62. Maryland lost to us and and many others. How does he rate them #16??
Is Kenpom more subjective than I think?
Mod, you sure you're not looking Women's BBall?
For better or worse, Pomeroy measures teams on offensive and defensive efficiency (as opposed to wins and losses). He has Maryland with the 10th best D in the country (BC with the 203rd best D), and that combined with the 51st best offense makes them formidable on his list. Seton Hall is 11-17 and he has them above BC. The man obviously knows what he's talking about, but at the end of the day it's just a list. Incidentally, having followed his twitter for a couple of weeks, he has a Keith Law-ish streak about him re: being kind of a sanctimonious douche nozzle (though to me, Law kind of earns it and KP most certainly does not).
Thanks Nick. nice explanation
Nick, good call on KenPom and Keith Law being self-righteous. I have hated their personalities independently of each other, while respecting their work for a while. But I somehow hadn't compared them to each other until now. Makes perfect sense. My all time least favorite statement Keith Law has ever made was something about milk chocolate being chocolate for people who don't like chocolate....what a total dick thing to say. He makes me much more likely to hate people from Harvard.
I like to think of KenPom as being somewhat useful for game by game predictions, but not for general rankings because that's not really how the system is built.
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