Thursday, December 11, 2014

Thoughts on the Maine win

In the final minutes of the ESPN3 broadcast, Malcolm Huckaby talked about how style points against Maine don't count. The team won. But that doesn't make it less frustrating. But if you're going to sleep walk through a game, doing it against Maine and holding on to win is better than losing. Here are some other thoughts:

-- Having trouble with the weave!! I know Christian put a lot of emphasis on defense, but there were still too many breakdowns and open shots. Later you could here the guys calling out the switches (in part because Conte was so empty). I am glad they are communicating, but that doesn't excuse the open shots.
-- A big night from Clifford. He scored a career high and played nearly 30 minutes. I just wish his D was a little better.
-- Finding a rotation. It seems like Christian is going to let the best players play close to 30 minutes. The only bench guys that got real run were Magarity and Owens. I don't know what happens once Jackson and Odio are back, but for now playing the starters is our best chance to win. These guys haven't played four years together, so giving them big minutes now will hopefully pay off come ACC season.

Hanlan had an off night but the other guys filled in for him. I won't worry about his recent inconsistency until it proves to be an issue against lesser teams.

3 comments:

EL MIZ said...

wake me up when the ACC season starts. nice to bank some wins, but the true test comes once we play our conference schedule.

Hoib said...

El MIZ

I looked at it yesterday. It is just brutal. These cupcake games are good to help learn to play offense together. Hanlan should give it up more on the p/r to the bigs. At times they revert to Donahues weave instead of dumping it in to the post or taking it to the basket.

Hoib said...

Just finished watching the game on ESPN replay. I'm very impressed w/ the transformation of Heckman under Xtian. He looks like a savy vetern now. Under Donahue he so often looked lost out there. I hope he keeps it up as the competition gets tougher.