Guards, Size, Rotation

[BradleyBrave]

Random thoughts the day after...

I know Jim has the philosophy that he wants the best basketball player possible, regardless of size. To a degree, I agree with that. However, I can't help but think that if our guards were 6'1-6'3" as opposed to 5'10", their size and length may have been able to prevent a team like UIC from shooting 70% from 3-point range. Dan Ruffin is a generous 5'10", Cole-Scott is a generous 5'10", and there's no way Sam Maniscalco is a legit 6'0". There were times last night when all 3 were on the court, and while we were clearly more athletic and talented than their guards, they were able to shoot over us with relative ease. I recall one possession where Sam played great defense on Stewart, and he was able to pull up and score because of his size advantage on Sam. I guess my point is, Ruff, Sam,and TCS can't be playing at the same time. Even when playing good defense, bigger guards are going to be able to get clean looks when we have those 3 in together. Taking advantage of our quickness is important, but we need to be cognizant of our size. We can get away with 2 small guards on the court at at a time, but I am not sure we can get away with 3.

What does Sam Maniscalco do so much better than TCS that he's getting twice as many minutes? From what I have seen, TCS is a better on-ball defender, more athletic, and a better overall offensive player. Don't get me wrong, I think Sam is good and definitely needs to be getting minutes in our backcourt, but I think the minutes between him and TCS should be reversed. On that note, and partially related to my comments above, I think there should be a 3 man rotation between Ruffin, TCS, and Maniscalco (maximum 2 on the court at a time), with Crouch, Warren, and Wilson rotating in the other guard spots.

David Collins needs twice as many minutes as he got last night. He completely changed the game while he was in there, even if he wasn't a primary option offensively. The two best stretches of the game was when he was anchoring the middle. If it means less minutes for Matt Salley, so be it. Right now Singh and Collins are our best bigs.

We need to mix in more zone, especially when we're getting our doors blown off on the perimeter like we were Saturday.

Anyways, look forward to seeing a lot of these ills rectified Wednesday night. I think they will be.

[Beninator]

On that note, and partially related to my comments above, I think there should be a 3 man rotation between Ruffin, TCS, and Maniscalco (maximum 2 on the court at a time), with Crouch, Warren, and Wilson rotating in the other guard spots.

Bradleybrave, I agree..... This is a little difficult for me to comment on as I did not see the UIC game last night. That being said, from what I have seen so far this year, I have not been a big fan of having Ruff, TCS, and Sam on the court at the same time.

[BradleyBrave]

Bradleybrave, I agree..... This is a little difficult for me to comment on as I did not see the UIC game last night. That being said, from what I have seen so far this year, I have not been a big fan of having Ruff, TCS, and Sam on the court at the same time.

I know UIC was unconcious from 3, but one has to wonder if they would have been able to shoot that well with longer arms and bigger bodies contesting the shots.

Getting beat consistently on penetration didn't help matters either.

[numbr_9]

I like Sam M, and think he will be a great player when all is said and done... however, I don't really agree with coach L's using him so much on Saturday. Sam kept getting burned both on and off the ball, and TCS seems to provide more offense.

I also agree with your assessment of Collins .. he was a beast. I don't know if his conditioning kept him from getting more minutes, but i thought he should have had twice as many. having 2 out of 3 bigs (collins, singh, salley) seems to be a really nice strategy for shutting down the inside and clearing the boards.

i know JL knows this team far better than I do, but those were just the thoughts that I had and seemed to share with the folks sitting around me.

[bu fan 9]

Warren got burned the most the first 4 times down the UIC went right at Andrew and schooled him.

[BradleyBrave]

Warren got burned the most the first 4 times down the UIC went right at Andrew and schooled him.

Which is not a good thing, considering he's one of our few guards with size.

[Long-Hair's Lunatics]

Warren got burned the most the first 4 times down the UIC went right at Andrew and schooled him.

He was just playing too much help defense. Just because other players were getting toasted, Warren had to help out and it left his man open too much. Maybe if we had an inside pressence things would be different.

Long-Hair

[BradleyBrave]

He was just playing too much help defense. Just because other players were getting toasted, Warren had to help out and it left his man open too much. Maybe if we had an inside pressence things would be different.

Long-Hair

Inside presence? Did you watch the game? We had a great inside presence Saturday night. Our bigs kicked their big's @sses. Look at the stat sheet - Salley, Singh, and Collins combined for 19 pts and 18 rebs. Our guards are the ones who were the problem Saturday. If our all-MVC point guard doesn't get torched for 34 points by a junior, and then turns it over 7 times on the other end, BU wins by double-digits.

[BU ICEMAN]

Inside presence? Did you watch the game? We had a great inside presence Saturday night. Our bigs kicked their big's @sses. Look at the stat sheet - Salley, Singh, and Collins combined for 19 pts and 18 rebs. Our guards are the ones who were the problem Saturday. If our all-MVC point guard doesn't get torched for 34 points by a junior, and then turns it over 7 times on the other end, BU wins by double-digits.

BB-

Yes, our guard play on defense was awful. Agreed.

But are you sure you were watching the same game I was? The stat sheet is very misleading in this aspect. As far as a defensive presence, you have to be in position to be a presence. I can't tell you how many times I yelled for Singh/Collins/Salley to get the heck off the 3-pt line and get their butts back underneath the basket. Many of the drives that UIC got after beating our guards were uncontested underneath because our big guy wasn't even near the basket! Of course the argument is that perhaps they were told to get up and show on a screen that far out because our guards were getting torched, but I still think they needed to stay FT line or below, none of UIC's bigs were an outside threat. If our bigs are down low where they belong, Mayo doesn't get all the way to the rack.

Don't forget Salley put up a donut in the scoring column and perhaps was possibly miscredited with 2 of Wilson's rebounds. If Collins had gotten Salley's minutes, I think we all might be singing a different tune. He seemed to be much, much more effective than Salley on both ends of the floor.

[BradleyBrave]

BB-

Yes, our guard play on defense was awful. Agreed.

But are you sure you were watching the same game I was? The stat sheet is very misleading in this aspect. As far as a defensive presence, you have to be in position to be a presence. I can't tell you how many times I yelled for Singh/Collins/Salley to get the heck off the 3-pt line and get their butts back underneath the basket. Many of the drives that UIC got after beating our guards were uncontested underneath because our big guy wasn't even near the basket! Of course the argument is that perhaps they were told to get up and show on a screen that far out because our guards were getting torched, but I still think they needed to stay FT line or below, none of UIC's bigs were an outside threat. If our bigs are down low where they belong, Mayo doesn't get all the way to the rack.

Don't forget Salley put up a donut in the scoring column and perhaps was possibly miscredited with 2 of Wilson's rebounds. If Collins had gotten Salley's minutes, I think we all might be singing a different tune. He seemed to be much, much more effective than Salley on both ends of the floor.

I was certainly in favor of Collins getting more minutes than Salley. Salley played hard defensively, but it still very weak with the ball offensively. I definitely agree with you that Collins' minutes should have been doubled, especially in the 2nd half.

As far as the bigs being up high, one of the cardinal principles of our man-to-man defense (as well as several other good defensive teams' schemes) is for a big whose man is setting a ball screen up high to push the guard out so the person being screen (our guards) can recover. POB did it, Zach did it, Eric Coleman does it, Randal Falker does it. Our bigs were doing their job. The problem was our guards not recovering, or just getting torched without a screen even being set.

If our guards are getting beaten consistently like they were Saturday, then we need to go to a zone much, much earlier. We saw very positive results in the few possessions we played zone Saturday. It doesn't look like we're very good on-ball defenders up top just yet, so I hope we aren't as stubborn about the zone as we seemed to be Saturday.

[Southside]

Misleading

Most of the points BU'S big's put up were off of screen and roll. I can't remember any points on post ups. I do think they rebounded pretty well.

[BradleyBrave]

Most of the points BU'S big's put up were off of screen and roll. I can't remember any points on post ups. I do think they rebounded pretty well.

That's how ZA scored a lot of his points last year, and that's how our bigs will score this year. In this offense, and with our personnel, that's to be expected. Regardless of how they're scoring points, if we're going to get similar production all year from our bigs, we'll be in good shape.