Drake @ Bradley Post Game--DU 69 BU 68

[Double D]

I must say that I am not sure were this team would be even if Ruff hadn't been hurt. We were sliding in hustle categories prior to the injury. I am not discrediting any of the complaints about the rebounding and inside play.

However, last night, in the guts of the game he would have made HUGE difference. Ruff is one of the finest "on the ball defenders" in the country. After running a lot of FLEX offense earier in the game Drake was simply spreading us out and driving, including the final play.

IMO Ruff would have at least prevented 2 or 3 of the easy baskets and/or trips to the line late in the game. And minus the final rebound, that was the difference last night.

[onetuffshot]

Post reply

Were the stats in this mornings PJS correct? They showed Cole-Scott with 5 turnovers.

[BradleyBrave]

BB - I would like to better understand your POV on point 1 on what these mismatches would have been? From my perspective, not playing two bigs played into DU's strengths as they are not very big, but rebound with a lot of determination. The only way, in my mind, given the slate of players we have on this roster, to counter that would be to establish a height advantage and minimize DU's second chances.

There are a lot of ways to breakdown the stats. But, for this year's squad, it seems that whatever team wins the rebounding edge tends to come out the winner.

The DU/BU game makes a good case study. Bradley clearly out-shot DU but still lost the game:
Total Field Goals
BU: 22-47 .468; DU: 25-59 . 424

3 Point Shooting
BU: 10-22 .455; DU: 9-25 .360

FTs
BU: 14-17 .824; DU: 10-13 .769

BU has a two point lead at half, shoots over 50% in the second half and still loses. Bradley lost this game on the interior and the numbers tell the story in rebound deficit, points-in-the-paint deficit, and second chance points deficit. We lost the battle of those key metrics because of the lineup that was played (or not played), not due to the failure of any player on the floor even though I would expect that SM, TW, AW, and JC were a bit gassed by the end of the game since all four played 35+ minutes. DU took 15 more shots than BU in the 2nd half. Do you think our guards were a bit tired?

My point of view on that is if we went big, I think we'd have had a real hard time guarding Drake. They were all perimeter, even their bigs. I feel like they would have shot a much higher percentage from 3 if went with 2 bigs that couldn't defend the perimeter. Maybe I am wrong.

IMO the rebounding deficit had little to do with the personnel, and more to do with execution. We've got a 5'10" guard who led our team in rebounding, meanwhile we've got a 6'5" senior guard who plays 30 minutes and gets 2 boards. We've got another senior post player who gets 3 rebounds. They didn't outsize us, so I have a hard time believing that playing even bigger players would have made a difference. Maybe one can argue Singh should have played more than Salley (it's hard to argue with that, SS had 4 boards in 13 minutes as opposed to 3 boards in 24 minutes), but 6'3" Leonard Houston had 7 rebounds and 6'1" Adam Emmenecker had 6, including 2 in the final 10 seconds. It comes down to execution, boxing out, and flat-out desire. Drake beat us in all 3, and playing 2 bigs wouldn't have changed that.

[ER3]

My point of view on that is if we went big, I think we'd have had a real hard time guarding Drake. They were all perimeter, even their bigs. I feel like they would have shot a much higher percentage from 3 if went with 2 bigs that couldn't defend the perimeter. Maybe I am wrong.

IMO the rebounding deficit had little to do with the personnel, and more to do with execution. We've got a 5'10" guard who led our team in rebounding, meanwhile we've got a 6'5" senior guard who plays 30 minutes and gets 2 boards. We've got another senior post player who gets 3 rebounds. They didn't outsize us, so I have a hard time believing that playing even bigger players would have made a difference. Maybe one can argue Singh should have played more than Salley (it's hard to argue with that, SS had 4 boards in 13 minutes as opposed to 3 boards in 24 minutes), but 6'3" Leonard Houston had 7 rebounds and 6'1" Adam Emmenecker had 6, including 2 in the final 10 seconds. It comes down to execution, boxing out, and flat-out desire. Drake beat us in all 3, and playing 2 bigs wouldn't have changed that.

Totally agree here...Going with two bigs against Drake would have been a terrible idea. Drake's big guys are all essentially perimeter players, so Bradley's second big would have been trying to chase Korver around the perimeter, and that would have been a disaster. So yes, Wilson at the 4 was the right matchup against Drake.
Our bigs are not good enough to create mismatches on the offensive end, so putting two of them on the floor would have hurt us on both ends of the floor.
And we really need to get away from this notion that if we have two bigs on the floor that automatically makes us a good rebounding team. This is a huge oversimplification of things. We were bigger than Drake last night even with our smaller lineup out there. They played a lineup that was 6'0", 6'1", 6'3", 6'5", and 6'8" for most of the game...There is absolutely no reason that we couldn't have kept them off the boards. But once again, we didn't keep them off the boards because we don't block out, we don't put ourselves in good positions to get those rebounds, and we just don't have the attitude that says 'I will not be denied from getting this rebound'. The coaching staff obviously has not found a way to effectively teach these things to these players, either that or they simply haven't tried.

[Big Mike]

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/011908/SPO_BFHM96U1.071.php

Correction from the box score on TCS.