Bradley - Quincy Game Thread

[Lakeview Brave]

Sam is simply making the most common mistake freshmen guards make in defending players too close. He is right up on top of his guy, and that makes it easier for them to fake him one way and go around him the other way.
I'm sure he'll correct that. He was known as a great defensive guard in high school, and defended guys like Demetri McCamey and Evan Turner as well as anyone did. He'll be OK.

I recall Will Franklin was not a very good defender early in the 2005-2006 year, but by the end of the year, he was playing shutdown defense and helped hold opposing guards to low scoring games down the stretch with incredible defense-- Johnnie Mathis (Creighton- 2-13 in the MVC tournament 1st round), Jamal Tatum (4-15 in the championship game of the MVC tournament), Brandon Rush (Kansas- 4-14), and Carl Krauser (Pitt- 1-6 from 3) and Antonio Graves (0-8 shooting).

Yea he was right on top of his guy and I think Coach Les even commented on that in the post game but my radio cut out while he was talking. He went well beyond the 3 point line to pick guys up, you are right that will probably change as he learns the D1 game.

[tornado]

Does "the having to play 1 minute of D1 basketball" rule before you can make an assesment only apply to other teams players?

Everyone is entitled to make assessments of anyone anytime...and I have never seen a comment to the contrary.

But putting multiple incoming freshmen on All American teams is a very recent phenomenon, and possibly a reaction this season to the press' missing it last year in regards to Durant. You have to keep in mind that until you've seen the high schoolers play against college kids (and I doubt you have seen Derrick Rose play against college kids, but we have seen Sam doing it since way last July) you're basis for doing so is weakened.

[tornado]

Sam M. may be too slow, but I don't think he needs to guard everyone so CLOSE!

I disagree, and I am pretty certain Jim Les disagrees, as he said plainly that those guys doing the best and working the hardest on defense would get the start. Maniscalco is a good defender, and the only times he "lost his man" were when he gambled on a steal in the backcourt, but he was fully able to recover and caught up with his man before any damage done.
Sam Maniscalco got the start so I can only assume Jim Les appreciates his defense.

The reason we are playing small a lot is because our new big men are NOT ready for D1 basketball yet.

Then isn't an exhibition game the time to put them on the court so can get ready? I think the main reason we played "small" is that Bradley is and always will be a guard oriented team and the minutes played show that.
As I noted elsewhere, the big guys played about 80+ of the 200 minutes, and the guards played the other 120- minutes....so roughly 3/5 of the playing time was played by guards and 2/5 by forwards and centers.
If anything, this is actually a bit more time from frontcourt players than if you look at the last couple years' figures.

[ghunt]

I disagree, and I am pretty certain Jim Les disagrees, as he said plainly that those guys doing the best and working the hardest on defense would get the start. Maniscalco is a good defender, and the only times he "lost his man" were when he gambled on a steal in the backcourt, but he was fully able to recover and caught up with his man before any damage done.
Sam Maniscalco got the start so I can only assume Jim Les appreciates his defense.

Then isn't an exhibition game the time to put them on the court so can get ready? I think the main reason we played "small" is that Bradley is and always will be a guard oriented team and the minutes played show that.
As I noted elsewhere, the big guys played about 80+ of the 200 minutes, and the guards played the other 120- minutes....so roughly 3/5 of the playing time was played by guards and 2/5 by forwards and centers.
If anything, this is actually a bit more time from frontcourt players than if you look at the last couple years' figures.

I think I noted previously for the Quincy game, the minutes were: Egolf 12 minutes, Austin 3 minutes, Thompson 4 minutes, Singh 8 minutes, and Salley 23 minutes. 50 minutes total for 2 to 3 positions (true 4 and 5). I would not consider Wilson a 4 at all, and if we play him as such against some teams like Michigan State, it may not be pretty. I think we did better on defense and rebounding when we had a true 4 and 5 in there (i.e., Matt and Will, Sam S. and Will, David and Matt). Granted they need development, but game minutes will be needed against competition--playing against each other in practice just won't suffice sicne they do not have real experienced players like Zach or POB to go against. I hope to see the big fellas get a lot of minutes against the softer part of the schedule, so that way by the time we are in the meat of the season and/or the post season, we will be extremely balanced with not nuch positional weakness, otherwise this could be a replay of last season.

[tornado]

I think I noted previously for the Quincy game, the minutes were: Eglof 12 minutes, Austin 3 minutes, Thompson 4 minutes, Singh 8 minutes, and Salley 23 minutes. 50 minutes total for 2 to 3 positions (true 4 and 5)....

Now you really have me puzzled....???

Does not David Collins and the minutes he played count towards the total minutes of the "true 4 and 5"?
and I guess if the lineup lists Theron Wilson as a forward, and if he's assigned to guard the opponents' forward (and Quincy started THREE forwards), then maybe count his minutes, too, so now you really do have over 80.

Just go back and look at any game from last season and see that Bradley played MORE minutes with frontcourt players (forwards and centers) yesterday against Quincy than we did at any time last season!
So if anything we should be asking "so is BU shifting to a MORE frontcourt oriented game?"

In the exhibition at Carver last year the only forwards who played were Salley, Andrews, and 15 minutes of garbage time from Saihou Jassey, and their totals are way less than the frontcourt minutes yesterday.

http://www.bubraves.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=19332&SPID=1498&DB_OEM_ID=3400&ATCLID=676055

So all I am saying is don't expect to see a whole lot more minutes than you saw yesterday coming from the "bigs". Yesterday is about as "big" as BU ever plays.



Last thoughts....
this is a very good Quincy team.
In each of their exhibitions, they really did a good job and outplayed their opponent for at least a full half.
Watch what happens in the rest of their exhibitions if you don't agree.

And I still suspect there could be one or more of the BU players redshirt this season.
Either injury or lack of playing time opportunity seems to make that a possibility.

[Stryker]

We need to start rebounding more aggressively as it appears our bigs are not physical enough under the basket; size only matters if you get good position and go up with the intent that you are going to get the ball and no one else is going to keep you from getting it.
Did anyone else notice the official ( Gerry Pollard ) going in front of the student section because one of the students was letting him have it because of a poor foul call made against Bradley; he should have stayed out on the floor but chose to go over to the students section which in turn stirred one of them up even more and then he went over to a policeman and pointed the student out to him as if he wanted him to do something about it; none of this would have happened if the official had acted professionally and stayed out on the floor.

See my posts in this thread. I was just surprised because the ref actually turned around and started talking to us. I'd never seen a ref do something like that before, and I felt like he was b****ing to the police officer about us then.

[ph]

Jim Les, in the pre-game said the Quincy starting lineup was the 5 best defenders. So Sam M was one of the best 5. At the moment his philsophy was 3 guards, The 4 was shared with Wilson and Egolf and the 5 was the rest of the bigs..

[BU ICEMAN]

OK, before I begin, lemme state all I've done is listen to the games on the 'net, so I'm not talking from a first-person perspective.....so, hopefully y'all will cut me a little slack, on the ol' opinions, alright?

It looks like a lot of folks have elevated to DEFCON 2 based on the scrimmage/Ambrose/Quincy games, specifically in relation to our post play/big men. Obviously, last year's team is still fresh in our minds, and we're still remembering the complete lack of "true" big men, which is why a lot of us have such huge expectations for the new fellas. Here's the thing, the way we've built up the expectations, I'm not sure any of these guys could live up to them....yet. We all know there's no substitute for learning how to perform in game conditions than the game itself. Granted we've got some competitive non-con games coming up fairly quickly, which means the fellas have to figure it out/get better fairly quickly......but they don't need to be all-stars yet, because....

I would say that we've lost focus on what we do well, and did extremely well last year, and instead are focusing too much on looking for a lot of production across the stat sheet from the big men. Guess what? We don't "need" it. Our guards can carry this team, they learned how last year. Given the early favorable reviews of Cole-Scott and Maniscalco, it sounds like they're fitting in quite well with DRuff, Crouch, and Warren. If there's anything we "need" from the big men, it's to keep the rebounding difference close. Certainly you want to win the rebounding battle, but I think we can get away with a -2, -3, -4 differential. If there's one truism in college basketball, it's that good guard play is critical to success, and I don't think there's a doubt that our guards are **************** good. Compared to last year's team, this team has improved just by having the big men available, certainly as their play improves, the team's fortunes will improve as well.

Waaaaay too early to panic. Granted both exhibition squads weren't D-I, but we still hung a hunny on each of them, looking across the other exhibition games from the MVC schools, it doesn't look like we saw that offense anywhere else, which is a real positive sign for BU's offense. The flip side is that we allowed a lot of points, but with the uptempo, pressing style we've switched to, that's a side-effect we might have to learn to live with. Perhaps we have still have a Molinari hangover and expect a grinding defensive game.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be concerns, but I don't think that the situation is nearly as dire as some would have us believe. We'll be fine.

[Double D]

Stryker, in response to your issue with the official. His name is Gerry Pollard. He is not one of my favorites (I am not sure who is?). While I felt like it was a bad call, I thought the reaction of the students was a little over the top especially for an exhibition game. I think he wanted to have a little fun in the beginning and the students wouldn't lay off and that is when his "machismo" took over.

[Double D]

I agree alot with what Iceman said. I think in addition to that there are going to be many more possesions in our games not only for us but for the opponent as well. We shouldn't give up 47 in a half, but we need to pay alot closer attention to shooting percentge of the opponent and points per possestion than their scoring. So long as we are ahead of course.

[Da Coach]

The referee we are referring to did an awful lot of chatting with the Quincy coach throughout the game. I don't know if they knew each other, but they certainly seemed like good buddies.

[Rusty 54]

Stryker, in response to your issue with the official. His name is Gerry Pollard. He is not one of my favorites (I am not sure who is?). While I felt like it was a bad call, I thought the reaction of the students was a little over the top especially for an exhibition game. I think he wanted to have a little fun in the beginning and the students wouldn't lay off and that is when his "machismo" took over.

He was not trying to have a little fun. If he would have turned around and said "thats enough" and ignored us it would have been fine, or if he would have tried to have a little fun we could have worked with him, but he was combative.

[thefish7]

Not only did he do an awful job as a ref (lots of bad calls, and several when completely out of position), but he should in no way, ever, interact with the crowd. If he can't hack it, then he needs to be in another line of work.

[Double D]

Rusty,

I saw him turn around when you guys got after him. What did he say? I am not agreeing with Pollard or arguing with you, just curious.

On another note, I thought the student turnout and enthusiasm was great yesterday. In my day an exhibition like this would have been "lightly" attended at best by the students.

[Stryker]

If you would have seen the foul he called you would have been just as upset about it as we were. The foul was literally 20 ft. in front of me and should not have been called. We could have not replied in such a way to the call because it was an exhibition game, but come on, it was our first time at Carver this season and we were pumped.
I also agree with Rusty 54 and Da Coach here as I stated previously. Anyway, it was just a weird situation and I wouldn't have brought it up but for the fact that I had never seen a ref do what this one did.