This has mostly to do with the mental approach, with how a team is run.
Who's your buddy who's long urged football to run uptempo often (Oregon offense, pressure D)? Which has been fairly widely copied, generally to good effect.
Now we see VCU constant defense pressure (which your old buddy has urged, too) and an offense with multiple screens pretty much constantly, either at different points on the court or in series in order to free up one man.
Exposing 'kron and, referently, us. VCU is playing a different brand of hoop,
Sure, they're athletes are good. But anyone can use this approach and I thought you told me that we have depth.
And don't lay it to 'kron's weakness/flu today, This is about a smart brand of basketball.
Hey Monroe
As much as I share your views in this regard you should realize that you're arguing with the equivalent a lot of emotional women in here.
The truth doesn't matter. (unless it's one that favors our Bobcats) They will all accept a pretty lie every day of the week compared to the ugly truth about our Bobcats.
Facts don't matter. To paraphrase a great line from a very good comedian when speaking on men arguing with their girlfriends or wives...."Men have the handicap in an argument of actually needing to make sense...emotional women don't have such silly constraints"
We are all watching VCU do the exact same thing to a team with a raw as you know what freshman point guard that I said we should have done in the MAC title game. My failure is that sadly it actually makes sense to do the same thing our seniors were recruited here to do while at the same time shining a bright light on Akron's weaknesses. Again, making sense is not welcome here in a honest and negative post about our Bobcats.
The only negative thing you're allowed to say our our Bobcats apparently is that the season is over. Anything beyond that is clearly unwarranted.
Fortunately, we aren't the only ones who frequent this fine site who have a problem with the absolute truth.
If there's one word to describe your posts around here, it's definitely rational.
Many things beyond your grasp are fortunately labled the same. :-)
You know the way you just implied that my advocating we attack a team with an unproven freshman point guard is in a word...rational.
That if a 7 footer is guarding our MAC player of the year that we make him move side to side off a number of screens..... clearly rational
Anytime you wish to talk basketball please know you have an open door.....one can never have enough ration.
That's the beauty of your posts, and I mean this genuinely--the tiny specks of substance you provide get completely drown out by your insistence that anybody who disagrees with you is an irrational woman. In your mind, somehow the thousands of words you've graced us with over the last couple of weeks count as basketball analysis, when in actuality they've been really weird musings about how you're speaking the truth, and how everybody is in confederacy against you. If you were to post like, I dunno, an adult, and in a thoughtful, conversational tone go "Anybody other than me think we should have pressured the ball 90 feet against Akron?" plenty of people would have agreed with you. Instead, you couple that idea with sky-is-falling drivel and a holier-than-thou "I'm the only one who sees the truth here" attitude. And that's what I was calling irrational, not the 17 words of actual basketball analysis that you've posted in the last 2 weeks.
As for your actual basketball analysis, here are my guesses:
We got into foul trouble early in that game. Smith and Hall both had foul issues, and teams who press a lot have a tendency to commit more fouls (unless you're VCU, and the officials inexplicably let you get away with more contact that anybody else in the nation). Additionally, the foul trouble shortened our bench in a game that we were playing a back-to-back. Not ideal situations to pressure the ball 90 feet. Additionally, Akron killed us on the boards all 3 times we played them and a lot of teams struggle to get back and rebound when pressuring the ball. I don't know if those were Christians thoughts or not. Regardless, the fact that the logic behind this thread is VCU just dominated Akron with pressure, therefore, we would have dominated Akron with pressure doesn't really hold up. VCU is one of the better defensive teams in the country, we're not. A lot of that has to do with our big men this year who had a disturbing tendency to miss rotations in favor of going for the big block (I'm looking at Reggie and Ivo here, not Smith who I think is a very good defender).
DJ struggled against long defenders his entire career. That's how Bruce Pearl disrupted our offense, that's how Belmont disrupted our offense, and why DJ shot a combined 3-28 against UNC and Akron in the final games of the last two seasons. If you have length, and that length is quick enough to hedge ball screens and corral his attemps to drive, DJ turns into a one dimensional player. And unfortunately, that dimension is deep 3's.
Lastly, we shot 1-20 from 3. A lot of them were good looks, too. The idea that pressuring the ball more was the difference in that game is ludicrous. It reads as nothing more than a desperate attempt to make Christian more culpable for this team's failings that he actually is.
But ultimately, you're right about your major point, which is: Go Bobcats. We all want the same things here and I still think we'll get there. Keep the faith and all of that good stuff.
Edit: I'll also say, in regards to the Akron game, that Smith's foul troubles were the big turning point for me. I thought the refs got him on 2 ticky tack calls early, which forced him to sit for a long time, and from my vantage point this year (which, in Brooklyn with even the fanciest of direct TV packages only allowed for 5 or 6 games this year) Smith was a key for us this year. As a screen and roll guy, he really attacked the basket much better than any of our big men, and that played into one of DJ's strengths really well. Smith is basically our version of Tyson Chandler. Doesn't have a developed offensive game, but finishes well around the basket, attacks it well, sets very good screens, and is a big difference maker on defense. Without him, especially against a team with Akron's size, we really fell apart.
Last Edited: 3/22/2013 9:54:27 AM by Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame