I suppose I saw this coming as a loss, which is why I bet Ok State -3, which is why Nate Mason's late lay-up instead of some desperate three clanging off the rim was a double killer. You either want the Gophers to win, or to win your bet. When neither happen it just sucks. Like the team this year. Anyway, here are 10 things I liked and didn't like (disclaimer: may not get to 10 because meh).
1. The defense was much better for most of the game. There were lapses of course, but in general the defense seemed much better both from an effort and a scheme stand point. The Gophers extended their zone out, way out, compared to usual in order to kind of take away the easy three pointer, and at the same time whoever was the anchor, Bakary Konate or whoever, laid back near the rim to discourage lay-ups. This forced the Cowboys into taking a lot of long twos, which is what you want. Considering Ok State shot a worse percentage from both 3 and 2 than the Gophers are allowing on the season I'd say it was a success. I want to see this exact defense in every game forever.
2. Kind of related to the effort and scheming on defense, the offense was much more active. It's like Pitino went into the lab on both offense and defense to change things up, and even though the Gophers shot like poop you could at least see more offense going on. Lots of off the ball screening, many times with a wing zooming from one side of the court all the way to the other, and far less reliance on pick and rolls. This helped facilitate a lot more ball movement than we've seen lately and will only make the team better in the long run. Of course, it's not all ball movement because Morris.
3. I don't see any reason to play Carlos Morris more than a token amount of minutes going forward. You can't just bench the guy because it's kind of a dick move to do that to a senior, but he doesn't fit the ball movement offense and just does some really dumb things. The passing up an open three to pump fake, then starting at the defender, and then shooting now that it's contested. The offensive rebound followed by fall away jumper that has no prayer of going in. Taking the ball at the rim in a one-on-four situation. And the ball stopping. Always the ball stopping. Last year, at least, you could point to his defense and high steal rate, but for whatever reason his steals are cut in half this year and he's just not adding anything of value. On a team that is going nowhere this year, there's no need to play a guy who isn't part of the future if he doesn't help you. Joey King at least gives you some shooting, even if that's about it.
4. Keep an eye on this Jordan Murphy character. His stats, obviously, are eye popping as he put up another double double with 11 points and 12 rebounds, his third in his last four games. His offensive rebounding is already elite with his quick jump ability and smarts (top 50ish) and his defensive rebounding is great too, mostly based on good positioning. His offensive game is decent as well, and if he can hit that open three-pointer to keep defenses honest it's going to open up so much more for him - and we're off to a good start there at 3-8 and they look good coming off his hand. His intelligence is what really sets him apart for me though. He and Mason ran a pick and roll, but the defender hedged so hard over the top the pick didn't really happen, so Murphy just flipped around and Mason came right back the other way. It was a smart, smart play. It resulted in a missed shot of course, but the Murphy/Mason pick and rolls should end up a staple of this team for the next few years.
5. Speaking of pick and rolls, I loved this one particular play. Pitino must have worked this one out in the lab because I can't recall seeing it before, but it should be used a minimum of once a half going forward. Mason has the ball, and Murphy and King set a double pick for him on the wing. Once he clears the pick, Murphy rolls to the hoop and King pops right out to the wing. It's brilliant. It gives Mason three immediate options - drive, hit Murphy diving to the hoop, or swing it back to King for an open three. Meanwhile the other two players are in the corners to clear spacing and give Mason the option of a kick out if their defenders collapse or jump to cover King. Really cool play.
6. Speaking of Mason, man this kid is good. He is just so under control at all times. He can drive and score, dish, or pull up and hit a jumper, and he can hit the open three (his shooting will come on despite a slow start). He took over running the offense this year and although the offense has been iffy at best, that's not his fault. Then there was a play that didn't work but just showed his court sense and vision. The Gophers got a rebound and outlet passed it to him, and Morris had broken down court (because OFFENSE OFFENSE OFFENSE is what is in his brain) and without even taking a dribble Mason turned and fired it all the way down court. The Ok State defender got a hand on it and knocked it out of bounds, but if he doesn't Morris catches it and dunks without having to dribble. Would have been a thing of beauty. Mason is a fun watch.
7. Where was Charles Buggs? After playing at least 23 minutes and starting in the first 8 games this season (I think), Buggs played zero minutes against Oklahoma State after getting just 8 in the South Dakota State game. According to Pitino it had nothing to do with discipline or injury, and he simply played the players he though would help him win the game, which included walk-on freshman Stephon Sharp getting 3 minutes (after having had 1 whole minute this season) and little used freshman Ahmad Gilbert 2 minutes (he had 27 coming into the game). I don't think Buggs is some big game changer, but he's been an extremely efficient scorer this year and has improved on defense considerably from last season. Considering he'll presumably be around next season, this is a surprising development. I'd bench Morris way before Buggs. Also, full disclosure, I didn't even realize Buggs wasn't playing until someone mentioned it on twitter, so....
8. Dupree McBrayer took Buggs's spot in the starting lineup, and I think I like him. He needs a lot of polish, and I mean a lot, but there's things here I like. He does a good job as a secondary ball handler, and even it that role he's actually second on the team in assist rate (behind Mason). He also leads the team in fouls drawn and free throw rate because he already has a good ability to attack the rim and very smooth and in control when he does it. Against Ok State there was a play where he drove and the dude set up for a charge and he was able to just slide himself enough to the side to turn it into a block. Very good play. Yes, he's had some lapses on both sides of the ball, is too left-hand dependent, and hasn't been able to shoot a lick this year, but I'm ok with that. As a freshman I've seen enough that I'm confident he'll be a solid player down the line.
9. Kevin Dorsey too. Yeah him too. I'm liking how this class is shaping up for the most part. Dorsey is more polished than McBrayer, which is why I'm more concerned with his shitty shooting than Brayer's shittier shooting since I think if he could hit a jumper we would have seen it by now, but he's a bull getting to the rim. He's already a master of using his body to draw fouls and is third on the team in FT rate (behind McBrayer and Murphy). Considering he hits around 80% of his foul shots that's a solid strategy (and gives me hope his jumper will come around).
10. Next up, Chicago State. Considering the Cougars are one of the worst teams in the entire country (#339 per kenpom) this needs to be a blowout. They do nothing at all well. They do however, hoist a ton of three pointers. They don't make them, but knowing this Gopher team that's always a bit of a concern. Their only three wins this season were against non-D1 opponents, and they lost to DePaul by 24, Iowa State by 42, and Northwestern by 42. They are a terrible team. Please let this not be close.
Gophers 88, Chicago State 66.
Showing posts with label Richard Pitino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Pitino. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2015
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Everything is Great!
Well, we knew this was setting up to be a bad year, but I didn't expect this. The loss to Temple, sure ok. Decent team, Gophers are young and traveling for the first time, fine. The near collapse against Missouri State? Ok well they won. That was a little scary but they managed. The loss to Texas Tech? Ugh (and nothing to do with Tubby because if you care about that you're dumb). Man, maybe this team is even worse than I feared. Near loss to Omaha? Yikes! Well, they managed to win so they're just treading water and should end up not too terrible eventually. Then the win over Clemson! Yes! They're putting it together and Jordan Murphy is going to win the Heisman!!
Then came the past week. Swept by the South Dakota schools. So. Gross. A loss to SDSU on it's own wouldn't even be that bad, really. The Jackrabbits have a sweet name, rank 50th in kenpom's ratings right now, and only have one loss on their schedule (though they haven't really beaten anyone). That alone you could stomach. But South Dakota is a garbage diaper dumpster fire. They're 6-3 but have beaten nobody and have some bad, bad losses. The Gophers had extra chances to get their shit together with the two overtimes and it just never happened. Then SDSU just completely dominated from the start. This is so ugly.
The team is just completely clueless defensively. The rank 229th in defensive efficiency, giving up 1.04 points per possession, and this is against a schedule that features nobody ranked above the top 50 overall - that's really bad! Here is a list of the power conference teams that are worse: . That's not a typo. There is nobody worse. The only other times since 2002 (kenpom's existence) they've been worse than a 1 were Pitino's first year, the Molinari year, and Monson's worst year - and those were full season numbers which included Big Ten play. This is just horrible. Let's check something. Let's pretend the Gophers finish at that 1.04 mark, which frankly seems pretty optimistic, and see how that rates historically among Big Ten teams.
I mean this isn't just a bad defense, this is a horrific historically bad defense. If things hold here it's the sixth worst defense in the Big Ten in the last 14 years.
It's so bad that you can't even simply blame the young team right now, you have to take a hard look at Pitino. I fully supported the hiring at the time, and I have no quibble with the recruiting steps he's taken, but the on court and off court prep work is not coming together as I expected. When he first got here there were some missteps and weird on court decisions, but you kinda figured that would improve since he was so young and inexperienced and I was willing to give him time. But we're in Year 3 here, and not only has his coaching not improved, it's possible it's actually gotten worse, and I'm particularly talking about the constant defensive mistakes by the players. If it's one player then ok, he's kind of a dunce, but it's multiple guys and it's happening often. Teams don't shoot over 40% on threes against you by all being hot over 9 games.
Hey, I'm not saying to run him out of town or he needs to be fired or anything, but this team really needs to show improvement as the season goes along or there are going to be some hard questions to think about. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, because I really like the direction the recruiting is heading in.
Next up - Oklahoma State in Sioux Falls, which is some kind of hilarious joke having to traveling to that damn state right after both their schools beat the Gophers. Oklahoma State is also a bad team, sitting at 5-3 with zero Top 150 wins and their best wins over Long Beach State and Long Beach State who they've beaten twice which is weird. They're coming off a loss to Missouri State, yes that Missouri State, and have also dropped games to Tulsa (decent) and George Mason (bad). So congratulations Sioux Falls, here comes some crappy basketball.
The Cowboys don't shoot the three well and they don't shoot it often at all (though I expect both these to change on Saturday). They do, however, take great care of the basketball (this matters less this year than other years since the Gophers are not creating any turnovers), and they make their two point shots and excel at free throws. They don't cause many turnovers either, which means the Gophers will have plenty of chances to run offensive sets that don't go anywhere. This is a terrible match-up.
OSU lost their top returning scorer to injury early on this year, not to mention the other 3 top scorers to graduation, so the cupboard was pretty bare. They managed a nice, well rounded, spread it out scoring attack with five players averaging between eight and thirteen points per game this year. Jeff Newberry (13.0ppg) is your do it all guard type, Chris Olivier (12.1ppg) is a low post scorer who is frankly going to eat Bakary Konate alive, Jawun Evans (10.1ppg) is the freshman point guard (4.3apg) and best shooter on the team with Phil Forte on the shelf with an elbow injury, Leyton Hammonds (9.8ppg) scored 20 in his first game back from injury versus Long Beach, and Jeffrey Carroll (8.1ppg) is a person.
This could just be me being pessimistic because ugh, but I honestly think this Gopher team is much worse than I thought, and I also believe Oklahoma State is a terrible match up for this team. I do believe doors will be blown off on Saturday.
Ok State 88, Gophers 70.
Then came the past week. Swept by the South Dakota schools. So. Gross. A loss to SDSU on it's own wouldn't even be that bad, really. The Jackrabbits have a sweet name, rank 50th in kenpom's ratings right now, and only have one loss on their schedule (though they haven't really beaten anyone). That alone you could stomach. But South Dakota is a garbage diaper dumpster fire. They're 6-3 but have beaten nobody and have some bad, bad losses. The Gophers had extra chances to get their shit together with the two overtimes and it just never happened. Then SDSU just completely dominated from the start. This is so ugly.
The team is just completely clueless defensively. The rank 229th in defensive efficiency, giving up 1.04 points per possession, and this is against a schedule that features nobody ranked above the top 50 overall - that's really bad! Here is a list of the power conference teams that are worse: . That's not a typo. There is nobody worse. The only other times since 2002 (kenpom's existence) they've been worse than a 1 were Pitino's first year, the Molinari year, and Monson's worst year - and those were full season numbers which included Big Ten play. This is just horrible. Let's check something. Let's pretend the Gophers finish at that 1.04 mark, which frankly seems pretty optimistic, and see how that rates historically among Big Ten teams.
- 2008 Northwestern, 1.075
- 2007 Penn State, 1.057
- 2004 Ohio State, 1.052
- 2015 Indiana, 1.048
- 2005 Penn State, 1.044
- 2016 Minnesota, 1.041
I mean this isn't just a bad defense, this is a horrific historically bad defense. If things hold here it's the sixth worst defense in the Big Ten in the last 14 years.
It's so bad that you can't even simply blame the young team right now, you have to take a hard look at Pitino. I fully supported the hiring at the time, and I have no quibble with the recruiting steps he's taken, but the on court and off court prep work is not coming together as I expected. When he first got here there were some missteps and weird on court decisions, but you kinda figured that would improve since he was so young and inexperienced and I was willing to give him time. But we're in Year 3 here, and not only has his coaching not improved, it's possible it's actually gotten worse, and I'm particularly talking about the constant defensive mistakes by the players. If it's one player then ok, he's kind of a dunce, but it's multiple guys and it's happening often. Teams don't shoot over 40% on threes against you by all being hot over 9 games.
Hey, I'm not saying to run him out of town or he needs to be fired or anything, but this team really needs to show improvement as the season goes along or there are going to be some hard questions to think about. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, because I really like the direction the recruiting is heading in.
Next up - Oklahoma State in Sioux Falls, which is some kind of hilarious joke having to traveling to that damn state right after both their schools beat the Gophers. Oklahoma State is also a bad team, sitting at 5-3 with zero Top 150 wins and their best wins over Long Beach State and Long Beach State who they've beaten twice which is weird. They're coming off a loss to Missouri State, yes that Missouri State, and have also dropped games to Tulsa (decent) and George Mason (bad). So congratulations Sioux Falls, here comes some crappy basketball.
The Cowboys don't shoot the three well and they don't shoot it often at all (though I expect both these to change on Saturday). They do, however, take great care of the basketball (this matters less this year than other years since the Gophers are not creating any turnovers), and they make their two point shots and excel at free throws. They don't cause many turnovers either, which means the Gophers will have plenty of chances to run offensive sets that don't go anywhere. This is a terrible match-up.
OSU lost their top returning scorer to injury early on this year, not to mention the other 3 top scorers to graduation, so the cupboard was pretty bare. They managed a nice, well rounded, spread it out scoring attack with five players averaging between eight and thirteen points per game this year. Jeff Newberry (13.0ppg) is your do it all guard type, Chris Olivier (12.1ppg) is a low post scorer who is frankly going to eat Bakary Konate alive, Jawun Evans (10.1ppg) is the freshman point guard (4.3apg) and best shooter on the team with Phil Forte on the shelf with an elbow injury, Leyton Hammonds (9.8ppg) scored 20 in his first game back from injury versus Long Beach, and Jeffrey Carroll (8.1ppg) is a person.
This could just be me being pessimistic because ugh, but I honestly think this Gopher team is much worse than I thought, and I also believe Oklahoma State is a terrible match up for this team. I do believe doors will be blown off on Saturday.
Ok State 88, Gophers 70.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
10 Things I Liked and Didn't Like from the Puerto Rico Tip Off
I didn't get to see much of the tournament this weekend. The first two games happened while I was at work, and the third I missed because on account of being at a bar that didn't have the game on because grrr football, so most of these impressions are coming from flashes of the first two games and looking at box scores and advanced metrics. Let's just say that coming out of there 1-2 with the only win over lowly Missouri State in a game they almost blew is not an encouraging sign for this season. Ugh.
1. The Rebounding. Oh god, the rebounding. We were pretty well tipped off when Southwest Minnesota State or whoever outrebounded the Gophers in their exhibition game, but man oh man it is not pretty. They were outrebounded in all three games, and their rebound rates on both sides of the ball are north of the top 225 in NCAA, and they have yet to play a real good opponent. This is a really, really bad thing. It's not surprising with the personnel they have, but might be worse than I thought. Jordan Murphy's defensive rebounding rate is the only one on the entire roster to crack the Top 500 of all NCAA players.
2. I'm kinda worried Kevin Dorsey can't shoot. This can be worked around because he is so, so, so good at attacking the rim, but I'm a little worried here. I know it's easy to point at 2-15 and yell about how he can't hit the broadside of a rim, and that's stupid because sample size and all that, but it's more how he missed. I'm pretty sure I saw at least one airball, and a couple more that were just, yuck. Hopefully this gets a little better as the year and career go on, because I love the way he goes to the rim, and a broken jumper makes that more difficult.
3. Speaking of which, this offense is way too 3-point dependent. Over 40% of their attempts so far this year are from three, and although that kind of offense can work it's a dramatic uptick from the 33% last year. Not to mention last year they could actually shoot, hitting almost 38% compared to 34% this year. Nate Mason will be better than his 29% so far and Dorsey likely isn't a sub 20% shooter, but Carlos Morris, Joey King, and Charles Buggs aren't going to keep hitting at this high of a percentage either. Plus, again, the caliber of competition so far says they shouldn't have to depend on the 3, and should instead be going to the rim. Unless something changes this is only going to get worse once conference play starts, which means they'll probably get one cool awesome upset win when everyone is hot, but a whole lot of losses.
4. Terrible 3-point defense. Again. The Gophers have always struggled defending the three for whatever reason and so far are again. Looking back the last time they ranked in the top 100 in the country against the three was 2008. 2008! Last year they ranked 287th, this year so far 275th. That is bad. The one positive I see is that they're actually limiting the number of threes opponents shoot for the first time under Pitino, with opposing teams taking just 32% of their attempts from three, a number that was over 35% in both of his first two years and every Tubby year, so maybe that's a positive trend. Or maybe teams are just attacking a gooey soft defense. Too soon to tell, but they are at least playing pretty good two-point defense.
5. Bakary Konate is better than I expected. Now, this is still a very, very fragile compliment given that he is indeed still raw and is kind of a foul machine, but I was impressed by two things. I saw a legit jump hook. Not a raw goofy one like if you ask a high school wrestler to shoot one, but a real, good looking shot. I remember being so stunned by it that I don't even remember if it went in. Also, his free throws are gorgeous. Great form, nice high arc, just perfect. He's only 5-9 this year but whatever, that's fine. He's further along than I expected him to be. The Gophers are still screwed for this year, but I am pleasantly intrigued. His rim protection numbers also look good with a Top 100 block rate in the country right now, but I don't recall seeing any blocks of his so I won't comment further.
6. Carlos Morris may yet be the death of me. Every once in a while Morris does something smart and in control. And I do mostly love him on the defensive end because he balances out his lapses and mistakes by getting a lot of steals. However, "Morris floater in the lane" might be my least favorite sentence ever because he just does not have that shot. I knew this year would be nuts because he was going to be asked to be a big part of the offense. I guess I had hoped we'd see a different Morris, and I suppose if he continues to hit threes at a 43% clip you can deal with a lot of mistakes. Also he's taking the ball to the rim more than last year, so that's good too. Look at me, I'm talking myself into Carlos Morris! This is gonna be a great year!
7. This is a young team, and a young coach. Duh, of course, but it's good to keep reminding myself that when Pitino switches up defense to a half court trap for no good reason and the defense gets torched after regular old man to man was doing a good job against Missouri State. With so many young players and youngish guys playing heavy minutes for the first time and the variety of defenses Pitino likes to run it's no wonder at times the defense looks like a rec league team of 5th graders running around. This is a year for patience and waiting, which is kind of frustrating considering it's Year 3 of the Pitino era, but at the same time the way the roster was constructed you could see this year looming, and unless he hit on a huge recruiting class this year was pretty much earmarked as rough. Something good better happen next year though, because he's got that big time class.
8. Nate Mason is going to be a star. He played pretty crappy in the tournament overall and so far is showing a disturbing propensity to foul so far this year, but much like Carlos Morris passes the eye test for reckless crazy, Mason passes the eye test for totally under control future star.
And I could only come up with eight things and I kind mailed in the last one so I guess that's as good as you're gonna get. Up next is Omaha, a terrible team the Gophers ought to beat by double digits. Their only win this season against a D-1 team was in overtime against a UMKC team the Gophers beat by 18, and one of their losses was to Santa Barbara, their only win so far this year. They did hang with Colorado and lost by just five, so maybe they aren't completely terrible, but they shoot 23.6% from three, so maybe they are. The most worrisome thing is so far this year they've given up a lot of three pointers, but done a good job and teams are hitting a super low percentage, so that's bad considering the Gophers love to shoot threes and are horrible at it.
Should be fun.
1. The Rebounding. Oh god, the rebounding. We were pretty well tipped off when Southwest Minnesota State or whoever outrebounded the Gophers in their exhibition game, but man oh man it is not pretty. They were outrebounded in all three games, and their rebound rates on both sides of the ball are north of the top 225 in NCAA, and they have yet to play a real good opponent. This is a really, really bad thing. It's not surprising with the personnel they have, but might be worse than I thought. Jordan Murphy's defensive rebounding rate is the only one on the entire roster to crack the Top 500 of all NCAA players.
2. I'm kinda worried Kevin Dorsey can't shoot. This can be worked around because he is so, so, so good at attacking the rim, but I'm a little worried here. I know it's easy to point at 2-15 and yell about how he can't hit the broadside of a rim, and that's stupid because sample size and all that, but it's more how he missed. I'm pretty sure I saw at least one airball, and a couple more that were just, yuck. Hopefully this gets a little better as the year and career go on, because I love the way he goes to the rim, and a broken jumper makes that more difficult.
3. Speaking of which, this offense is way too 3-point dependent. Over 40% of their attempts so far this year are from three, and although that kind of offense can work it's a dramatic uptick from the 33% last year. Not to mention last year they could actually shoot, hitting almost 38% compared to 34% this year. Nate Mason will be better than his 29% so far and Dorsey likely isn't a sub 20% shooter, but Carlos Morris, Joey King, and Charles Buggs aren't going to keep hitting at this high of a percentage either. Plus, again, the caliber of competition so far says they shouldn't have to depend on the 3, and should instead be going to the rim. Unless something changes this is only going to get worse once conference play starts, which means they'll probably get one cool awesome upset win when everyone is hot, but a whole lot of losses.
4. Terrible 3-point defense. Again. The Gophers have always struggled defending the three for whatever reason and so far are again. Looking back the last time they ranked in the top 100 in the country against the three was 2008. 2008! Last year they ranked 287th, this year so far 275th. That is bad. The one positive I see is that they're actually limiting the number of threes opponents shoot for the first time under Pitino, with opposing teams taking just 32% of their attempts from three, a number that was over 35% in both of his first two years and every Tubby year, so maybe that's a positive trend. Or maybe teams are just attacking a gooey soft defense. Too soon to tell, but they are at least playing pretty good two-point defense.
5. Bakary Konate is better than I expected. Now, this is still a very, very fragile compliment given that he is indeed still raw and is kind of a foul machine, but I was impressed by two things. I saw a legit jump hook. Not a raw goofy one like if you ask a high school wrestler to shoot one, but a real, good looking shot. I remember being so stunned by it that I don't even remember if it went in. Also, his free throws are gorgeous. Great form, nice high arc, just perfect. He's only 5-9 this year but whatever, that's fine. He's further along than I expected him to be. The Gophers are still screwed for this year, but I am pleasantly intrigued. His rim protection numbers also look good with a Top 100 block rate in the country right now, but I don't recall seeing any blocks of his so I won't comment further.
6. Carlos Morris may yet be the death of me. Every once in a while Morris does something smart and in control. And I do mostly love him on the defensive end because he balances out his lapses and mistakes by getting a lot of steals. However, "Morris floater in the lane" might be my least favorite sentence ever because he just does not have that shot. I knew this year would be nuts because he was going to be asked to be a big part of the offense. I guess I had hoped we'd see a different Morris, and I suppose if he continues to hit threes at a 43% clip you can deal with a lot of mistakes. Also he's taking the ball to the rim more than last year, so that's good too. Look at me, I'm talking myself into Carlos Morris! This is gonna be a great year!
7. This is a young team, and a young coach. Duh, of course, but it's good to keep reminding myself that when Pitino switches up defense to a half court trap for no good reason and the defense gets torched after regular old man to man was doing a good job against Missouri State. With so many young players and youngish guys playing heavy minutes for the first time and the variety of defenses Pitino likes to run it's no wonder at times the defense looks like a rec league team of 5th graders running around. This is a year for patience and waiting, which is kind of frustrating considering it's Year 3 of the Pitino era, but at the same time the way the roster was constructed you could see this year looming, and unless he hit on a huge recruiting class this year was pretty much earmarked as rough. Something good better happen next year though, because he's got that big time class.
8. Nate Mason is going to be a star. He played pretty crappy in the tournament overall and so far is showing a disturbing propensity to foul so far this year, but much like Carlos Morris passes the eye test for reckless crazy, Mason passes the eye test for totally under control future star.
And I could only come up with eight things and I kind mailed in the last one so I guess that's as good as you're gonna get. Up next is Omaha, a terrible team the Gophers ought to beat by double digits. Their only win this season against a D-1 team was in overtime against a UMKC team the Gophers beat by 18, and one of their losses was to Santa Barbara, their only win so far this year. They did hang with Colorado and lost by just five, so maybe they aren't completely terrible, but they shoot 23.6% from three, so maybe they are. The most worrisome thing is so far this year they've given up a lot of three pointers, but done a good job and teams are hitting a super low percentage, so that's bad considering the Gophers love to shoot threes and are horrible at it.
Should be fun.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Gophers Lose Again. Season Over.
Well it's over. Any slim hope, any dream you may have had that the Gophers would go on a miracle run and get themselves on the NCAA bubble is now dead, and it probably was prior to this anyway. A loss to Northwestern, RPI #147, is a killer, especially at home. It's a bad enough loss that it may even have knocked them off the #1 seed line for the NIT, which granted barely matters but the one good thing about the NIT is the ability to see teams you normally wouldn't in person and that requires a high seed. Sure, nobody's exactly clamoring to watch Oregon or Boise State in person, but I enjoy it so shut up.
I'm not quite really even sure what to make of it. This year's team, though definitely flawed, had enough talent to finish the season in contention for an NCAA bid at a minimum, and clearly sail into NCAA lock status well before Selection Sunday if everything broke right. Unfortunately everything broke wrong. An 0-5 start to Big Ten play could easily have been a 4-1 start, however late game meltdowns put the team in a big hole. They valiantly clawed their way back and started to appear on the fringe of the bubble, culminating in a great win at Iowa that was probably their best game this season. Optimism abounded about their chances of knocking off Indiana in Bloomington, including Vegas who pegged the Gophers as just two point underdogs. Eighteen three pointers later that dream was dead, and fifteen more by Northwestern last night killed everything else.
It's tempting to delve into what went wrong with this season and find someone(s) to blame, but I just don't know. I think Richard Pitino and his staff made a lot of mistakes, but learning on the job in the Big Ten isn't going to be smooth sailing from Day 1. I think he's trying to coach the team like he learned at Louisville and Florida as if he has the same caliber of players, and he clearly doesn't. If he can translate his hard work recruiting into bringing in some of those same type of players his system and style will definitely work. If he can't get to that level of player, however, he'll need to adapt or die. Any defensive style that allows 33 made three-pointers over two straight games is clearly not working.
I don't know why, but DeAndre Mathieu took a huge step back this year, both in results and swagger. His aggressive style was what elevated this team last season, but this year he's been far more passive and when he did try to push it ended in disaster far too often. He's been playing better (1 turnover in the last five games) and along with Dre Hollins has really improved from early season struggles, but the team was too far behind to really make any kind of move and then came last night to shiv the rest of the season and pack up the corpse.
So I really don't know. Just a lost season. A horrible, terrible lost season. Next season, two starting guards and two centers leave, and it doesn't leave me optimistic. Though it would be awfully difficult to feel optimistic at all right now. Different coach, different players, same kind of results. Usually when the Gophers blow a game they should win by playing like morons I feel mostly rage. After last night it's mostly depression. That can't be a good sign. We move on. Hey, catchers and pitchers have reported!
I'm not quite really even sure what to make of it. This year's team, though definitely flawed, had enough talent to finish the season in contention for an NCAA bid at a minimum, and clearly sail into NCAA lock status well before Selection Sunday if everything broke right. Unfortunately everything broke wrong. An 0-5 start to Big Ten play could easily have been a 4-1 start, however late game meltdowns put the team in a big hole. They valiantly clawed their way back and started to appear on the fringe of the bubble, culminating in a great win at Iowa that was probably their best game this season. Optimism abounded about their chances of knocking off Indiana in Bloomington, including Vegas who pegged the Gophers as just two point underdogs. Eighteen three pointers later that dream was dead, and fifteen more by Northwestern last night killed everything else.
It's tempting to delve into what went wrong with this season and find someone(s) to blame, but I just don't know. I think Richard Pitino and his staff made a lot of mistakes, but learning on the job in the Big Ten isn't going to be smooth sailing from Day 1. I think he's trying to coach the team like he learned at Louisville and Florida as if he has the same caliber of players, and he clearly doesn't. If he can translate his hard work recruiting into bringing in some of those same type of players his system and style will definitely work. If he can't get to that level of player, however, he'll need to adapt or die. Any defensive style that allows 33 made three-pointers over two straight games is clearly not working.
I don't know why, but DeAndre Mathieu took a huge step back this year, both in results and swagger. His aggressive style was what elevated this team last season, but this year he's been far more passive and when he did try to push it ended in disaster far too often. He's been playing better (1 turnover in the last five games) and along with Dre Hollins has really improved from early season struggles, but the team was too far behind to really make any kind of move and then came last night to shiv the rest of the season and pack up the corpse.
So I really don't know. Just a lost season. A horrible, terrible lost season. Next season, two starting guards and two centers leave, and it doesn't leave me optimistic. Though it would be awfully difficult to feel optimistic at all right now. Different coach, different players, same kind of results. Usually when the Gophers blow a game they should win by playing like morons I feel mostly rage. After last night it's mostly depression. That can't be a good sign. We move on. Hey, catchers and pitchers have reported!
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Remember All Those Guys the Gophers Almost Signed? How they Doing?
Remember how exciting last year was recruiting wise, what with the Gophers making so many top 10 lists and top 5 lists only to pretty much not ever sign anybody? Yeah, I was wondering how every's doing so far this year. Keep in mind it's awfully early in most of these guys' careers. All rankings from 247sports.
PG Tyus Jones (Apple Valley, MN)
247 Rank: #8 overall, #2 PG
Commit: Duke
Close?: Not really
Bummer?: Not really, it was known
Season Stats: 11.3 points and 5.3 assists in 31.5 minutes.
Outlook: He's basically been everything everyone said he would be. Maybe the only point guard the Gophers looked at last year who has a clearly brighter future than Nate Mason. He should die.
PG Ja'Quan Newton (Philadelphia, PA)
247 Rank: #42 overall, #7 PG
Commit: Miami (FL)
Close?: Maybe?
Bummer: He jumped on a Miami offer so quickly it was hard to get too excited. Still, kind of a bummer.
Season Stats: 3.5 points and 1.3 assists in 12 minutes.
Outlook: Typical freshman point guard line so far, and his shooting has been pretty bad (not rare for a freshman). Having Angel Rodriguez there (transfer from Kansas State) has really cut his potential minutes down.
PG Lourawls Nairn (Wichita, KS)
247 Rank: #85 overall, #17 PG
Commit: Michigan State
Close?: Yes, until Izzo got involved.
Bummer?: Yes. After a whole bunch of misses he looked like he might be the big time recruit Pitino would finally sign. Then Tom Izzo called.
Season Stats: 2.0 points and 2.5 assists in 16.7 minutes.
Outlook: I was surprised his minutes are this high because I rarely notice him when I watch the Spartans, but that's probably pretty much what Izzo wants on a team with Travis Trice, Denzel Valentine, and Branden Dawson. His 2.5-to-0.9 assist to turnover ratio is nice for a freshman. Interested to see if he can add any offense next year, since he pretty much never shoots.
SG Riley LaChance (Brookfield, WI)
247 Rank: #133 overall, #34 PG
Commit: Vanderbilt
Close?: At least somewhat.
Bummer?: Not really. Just as his buzz was starting to build he suddenly committed to Vandy.
Season Stats: 12.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.6 assists in 33.3 minutes.
Outlook: Basically a starter from day 1 and looking like a pretty big recruiting steal for Vandy. He's the team's second leading scorer, has hit double figures in 17 of 23 games this year, gashed Purdue for 26 points, and is hitting 40% of his threes. Maybe wasn't a bummer to lose out on at the time, but he sure is now.
SG Rashad Vaughn (Henderson, NV)
247 Rank: #13 overall, #5 SG
Commit: UNLV
Close?: Not really
Bummer?: Yeah, but we knew it was coming, particularly after the move to Nevada.
Season Stats: 17.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in 32.2 minutes.
Outlook: Dude loves to shoot. He takes 33% of the Rebs shots when he's on the floor and hits a respectable enough 44%. The one and done looks like it's not going to happen (hopefully for the kid) since NBADraft.net ranks him 65th and DraftExpress ranks him 37th (14th among freshman), but he's definitely a talented kid. Another year in college should help polish his game and can only help.
SG Isaiah Whitehead (Brooklyn, NY)
247 Rank: #10 overall, #3 SG
Commit: Seton Hall
Close?: Painfully close. Close enough I watched his press conference hopefully until twitter broke the news.
Bummer?: Extreme bummer. Would have made a huge national splash, and it seemed like they were so close until the Pirates offered his high school coach an assistant coaching gig. Sucked.
Season Stats: 11.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 3.1 assists in 25.3 minutes
Outlook: Good bet he's the Big East freshman of the year. He's extremely polished, as advertised, and though he's shooting just 37% this year it's a good bet he's going to challenge for BE player of the year before his career his over. Yeah, this one hurts.
SG J.P. Macura (Lakeville, MN)
247 Rank: #136 overall, #36 SG
Commit: Xavier
Close?: Tough to say, it was never really clear what the interest level was from either side.
Bummer?: Moreso now than then. Pitino had a lot of fires going and J.P. was lower priority, so he decided Xavier was more for him. After the whiffs on higher profile targets (so many whiffs) maybe making him a higher priority would have been the way to go. Hindsight, and all that.
Season Stats: 6 points and 1.5 rebounds in 13.9 minutes.
Outlook: His shooting has been pretty bad which isn't good when it's your #1 skill, but again, not unusual for a freshman. He's been coming on lately with 21 and 25 minutes played in X's last two games, and is starting to look like a quality four year player. I understand why Pitino didn't go hard after him early in the signing period, but man, it'd be nice to have a second young building block beyond Nate Mason right now.
SF Terry Larrier (Malvern, PA)
247 Rank: #23 overall, #4 SF
Commit: VCU
Close?: Not really
Bummer?: Not really. It was actually pretty exciting knowing a top 25 recruit from the east coast was considering the Gophers. Signaled a whole new recruiting world. Of pain. So far.
Season Stats: 7.0 points and 2.0 rebounds in 17.4 minutes
Outlook: Pretty good freshman numbers though, stop me if you've heard this before, his shooting kind of stinks at under 40%. Still, coming into a system like VCU's and grasping it as a freshman well enough to play 17 minutes per game speaks well of his future. No big whoop, since I don't think he was really ever close to signing with the Gophers.
PF Reid Travis (Minneapolis, MN)
247 Rank: #49 overall, #10 PF
Commit: Stanford
Close?: Agonizingly close.
Bummer?: Hurt so bad. Came right down to the wire and all reports the night before his press conference were that it was looking like the Gophers. Something changed. Still hurts, especially because I don't even think Stanford fans cared.
Season Stats: 6.7 points and 6.0 rebounds in 23.6 minutes
Outlook: Ugh. Look at those rebounds. His season got derailed a bit with a foot injury where he missed about a month and he's just now starting to get back into the swing of things, but leading a major conference team in rebounding as a freshman (pre-injury he as at 6.9 and the team leader)? Playing those kind of minutes on a team with a pretty solid frontcourt already? Gross. I kind of wish I hadn't done this now, or at least skipped this one.
SF Djuan Piper (Seattle, WA)
247 Rank: #153 overall, #36 SF
Commit: North Idaho College
Close?: Uh. Yeah. He was basically all ready to commit and then stupid academics got in the way.
Bummer?: Yeah. It was pretty late in the recruiting game at this point and the Gophers were hopefully about to get a decent player late.
Season Stats: I can't find anything, but he's often mentioned in game recaps and there are pictures of him playing and stuff.
Outlook: Tough to say when I can't find tangible stats. The impression I got from looking for nearly five minutes is that, at a minimum, he's a rotation player, and Idaho is, believe or not, a pretty good JuCo hoops area so that's good. I also found a reference to him being suspended for at least one game, so that's bad. Stay tuned.
PF Abdoulaye Gueye (Birmingham, AL)
247 Rank: #301 overall, #77 PF
Commit: Georgia Tech
Close?: I think this was a case of Gueye willing to commit, but the Gophers holding him off and then he went elsewhere.
Bummer?: No. He was always more of a back-up plan, or at least that's the vibe I got.
Season Stats: 0.3 points and 0.7 rebounds in 3 minutes per game.
Outlook: He's only played 6 games this year and has only a total of 18 minutes played (what, no redshirts at G-Tech?). It doesn't bode well that he couldn't get more PT than that at Georgia Tech, but who knows what the future holds?
C Anas Mahmoud (Orlando, FL)
247 Rank: #87 overall, #9 C
Commit: Louisville
Close?: Maybe? They were at least in the mix.
Bummer?: Kind of. Everything happened so fast there was no real build up time to the heartbreak, plus losing out on him to Louisville is kind of like supposed to happen once they're involved.
Season Stats: 1.2 points and 1.9 rebounds in 9.7 minutes
Outlook: Had a brief burst of consistent playing time in the non-conference, but he's seen that trail off to spot duty and he hasn't broken the 10 minute mark in playing time since Louisville's first ACC game in early January. Clearly, Rick Pitino doesn't know how to properly use him and he should look to transfer somewhere he already felt comfortable when he visited and has a desperate need for post players. (TRANSFER TRANSFER TRANSFER! FREE ANAS!)
And then there's a handful of players who were once Gophers (on some level) who left:
SG Alvin Ellis
Who?: Gophers signee of Tubby, transferred after the coaching change, although rumor was he would have stayed if anybody had bothered to talk to him.
Where?: Michigan State
Class?: Sophomore
Season Stats: 1.5 points and 0.6 assists in 9.4 minutes
Summary: His stats are actually worse than his freshman year, mainly due to his inability to make a basket (6-30 shooting this year). I haven't noticed him when I've taken in a Spartan game so I don't know if he's overmatched, but his 2-year results don't look good.
PF Alex Foster
Who?: Gophers signee of Tubby, transferred after the coaching change. Seemingly made his college choice based on playing for Tubby.
Where?: Texas Tech
Class?: Sophomore
Season Stats: 1.1 points and 0.9 rebounds in 6.3 minutes
Summary: He's basically completely failed to crack the rotation in two seasons in Lubbock, and this for teams that have gone 14-18 and 12-13. Tubby's playing a deep bench this year with 10 guys averaging at least 10 minutes per game, and Foster not being one of them is not a real good sign for the future.
SF Joe Coleman
Who?: You remember him. Played two decent, if uneven, seasons for the Gophers before bolting when Richard Pitino got hired, even though Pitino's system probably would have been really good for him.
Where?: St. Mary's
Class?: Junior
Season Stats: 3.0 points and 1.0 rebounds in 14 minutes
Summary: Played in one game for the Gaels before a leg injury caused him to shut it down. I seriously can't find any more information on him than "leg injury." Hopefully it's not too serious and he'll get two more years as a Gael to show the world what he can do.
SG Chip Armelin
Who?: The hyper athletic, somewhat wild but deserved more of a chance shooting guard who played for Tubby for two years before transferring to get more playing time. Yes he's still around.
Where?: Southern Miss
Class?: Senior
Season Stats: 15.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in 34.3 minutes
Summary: He's having a fantastic senior season, leading the Golden Eagles in scoring. Southern Miss had a pretty solid year for them last year before being bested by the Gophers in the NIT quarters, and with their five top players graduating there was going to be a scoring void, which Armelin stepped into admirably. Of course, Southern Miss is 6-16 and 1-10 in a terrible C-USA and recently self-imposed a postseason ban (lol) because of questions around former coach Donnie Tyndall's recruiting practices. Nice to see him have some personal success though. I always liked him.
Also Better Call Saul has been awesome so far.
PG Tyus Jones (Apple Valley, MN)
247 Rank: #8 overall, #2 PG
Commit: Duke
Close?: Not really
Bummer?: Not really, it was known
Season Stats: 11.3 points and 5.3 assists in 31.5 minutes.
Outlook: He's basically been everything everyone said he would be. Maybe the only point guard the Gophers looked at last year who has a clearly brighter future than Nate Mason. He should die.
PG Ja'Quan Newton (Philadelphia, PA)
247 Rank: #42 overall, #7 PG
Commit: Miami (FL)
Close?: Maybe?
Bummer: He jumped on a Miami offer so quickly it was hard to get too excited. Still, kind of a bummer.
Season Stats: 3.5 points and 1.3 assists in 12 minutes.
Outlook: Typical freshman point guard line so far, and his shooting has been pretty bad (not rare for a freshman). Having Angel Rodriguez there (transfer from Kansas State) has really cut his potential minutes down.
PG Lourawls Nairn (Wichita, KS)
247 Rank: #85 overall, #17 PG
Commit: Michigan State
Close?: Yes, until Izzo got involved.
Bummer?: Yes. After a whole bunch of misses he looked like he might be the big time recruit Pitino would finally sign. Then Tom Izzo called.
Season Stats: 2.0 points and 2.5 assists in 16.7 minutes.
Outlook: I was surprised his minutes are this high because I rarely notice him when I watch the Spartans, but that's probably pretty much what Izzo wants on a team with Travis Trice, Denzel Valentine, and Branden Dawson. His 2.5-to-0.9 assist to turnover ratio is nice for a freshman. Interested to see if he can add any offense next year, since he pretty much never shoots.
SG Riley LaChance (Brookfield, WI)
247 Rank: #133 overall, #34 PG
Commit: Vanderbilt
Close?: At least somewhat.
Bummer?: Not really. Just as his buzz was starting to build he suddenly committed to Vandy.
Season Stats: 12.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.6 assists in 33.3 minutes.
Outlook: Basically a starter from day 1 and looking like a pretty big recruiting steal for Vandy. He's the team's second leading scorer, has hit double figures in 17 of 23 games this year, gashed Purdue for 26 points, and is hitting 40% of his threes. Maybe wasn't a bummer to lose out on at the time, but he sure is now.
SG Rashad Vaughn (Henderson, NV)
247 Rank: #13 overall, #5 SG
Commit: UNLV
Close?: Not really
Bummer?: Yeah, but we knew it was coming, particularly after the move to Nevada.
Season Stats: 17.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in 32.2 minutes.
Outlook: Dude loves to shoot. He takes 33% of the Rebs shots when he's on the floor and hits a respectable enough 44%. The one and done looks like it's not going to happen (hopefully for the kid) since NBADraft.net ranks him 65th and DraftExpress ranks him 37th (14th among freshman), but he's definitely a talented kid. Another year in college should help polish his game and can only help.
SG Isaiah Whitehead (Brooklyn, NY)
247 Rank: #10 overall, #3 SG
Commit: Seton Hall
Close?: Painfully close. Close enough I watched his press conference hopefully until twitter broke the news.
Bummer?: Extreme bummer. Would have made a huge national splash, and it seemed like they were so close until the Pirates offered his high school coach an assistant coaching gig. Sucked.
Season Stats: 11.9 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 3.1 assists in 25.3 minutes
Outlook: Good bet he's the Big East freshman of the year. He's extremely polished, as advertised, and though he's shooting just 37% this year it's a good bet he's going to challenge for BE player of the year before his career his over. Yeah, this one hurts.
SG J.P. Macura (Lakeville, MN)
247 Rank: #136 overall, #36 SG
Commit: Xavier
Close?: Tough to say, it was never really clear what the interest level was from either side.
Bummer?: Moreso now than then. Pitino had a lot of fires going and J.P. was lower priority, so he decided Xavier was more for him. After the whiffs on higher profile targets (so many whiffs) maybe making him a higher priority would have been the way to go. Hindsight, and all that.
Season Stats: 6 points and 1.5 rebounds in 13.9 minutes.
Outlook: His shooting has been pretty bad which isn't good when it's your #1 skill, but again, not unusual for a freshman. He's been coming on lately with 21 and 25 minutes played in X's last two games, and is starting to look like a quality four year player. I understand why Pitino didn't go hard after him early in the signing period, but man, it'd be nice to have a second young building block beyond Nate Mason right now.
SF Terry Larrier (Malvern, PA)
247 Rank: #23 overall, #4 SF
Commit: VCU
Close?: Not really
Bummer?: Not really. It was actually pretty exciting knowing a top 25 recruit from the east coast was considering the Gophers. Signaled a whole new recruiting world. Of pain. So far.
Season Stats: 7.0 points and 2.0 rebounds in 17.4 minutes
Outlook: Pretty good freshman numbers though, stop me if you've heard this before, his shooting kind of stinks at under 40%. Still, coming into a system like VCU's and grasping it as a freshman well enough to play 17 minutes per game speaks well of his future. No big whoop, since I don't think he was really ever close to signing with the Gophers.
PF Reid Travis (Minneapolis, MN)
247 Rank: #49 overall, #10 PF
Commit: Stanford
Close?: Agonizingly close.
Bummer?: Hurt so bad. Came right down to the wire and all reports the night before his press conference were that it was looking like the Gophers. Something changed. Still hurts, especially because I don't even think Stanford fans cared.
Season Stats: 6.7 points and 6.0 rebounds in 23.6 minutes
Outlook: Ugh. Look at those rebounds. His season got derailed a bit with a foot injury where he missed about a month and he's just now starting to get back into the swing of things, but leading a major conference team in rebounding as a freshman (pre-injury he as at 6.9 and the team leader)? Playing those kind of minutes on a team with a pretty solid frontcourt already? Gross. I kind of wish I hadn't done this now, or at least skipped this one.
SF Djuan Piper (Seattle, WA)
247 Rank: #153 overall, #36 SF
Commit: North Idaho College
Close?: Uh. Yeah. He was basically all ready to commit and then stupid academics got in the way.
Bummer?: Yeah. It was pretty late in the recruiting game at this point and the Gophers were hopefully about to get a decent player late.
Season Stats: I can't find anything, but he's often mentioned in game recaps and there are pictures of him playing and stuff.
Outlook: Tough to say when I can't find tangible stats. The impression I got from looking for nearly five minutes is that, at a minimum, he's a rotation player, and Idaho is, believe or not, a pretty good JuCo hoops area so that's good. I also found a reference to him being suspended for at least one game, so that's bad. Stay tuned.
PF Abdoulaye Gueye (Birmingham, AL)
247 Rank: #301 overall, #77 PF
Commit: Georgia Tech
Close?: I think this was a case of Gueye willing to commit, but the Gophers holding him off and then he went elsewhere.
Bummer?: No. He was always more of a back-up plan, or at least that's the vibe I got.
Season Stats: 0.3 points and 0.7 rebounds in 3 minutes per game.
Outlook: He's only played 6 games this year and has only a total of 18 minutes played (what, no redshirts at G-Tech?). It doesn't bode well that he couldn't get more PT than that at Georgia Tech, but who knows what the future holds?
C Anas Mahmoud (Orlando, FL)
247 Rank: #87 overall, #9 C
Commit: Louisville
Close?: Maybe? They were at least in the mix.
Bummer?: Kind of. Everything happened so fast there was no real build up time to the heartbreak, plus losing out on him to Louisville is kind of like supposed to happen once they're involved.
Season Stats: 1.2 points and 1.9 rebounds in 9.7 minutes
Outlook: Had a brief burst of consistent playing time in the non-conference, but he's seen that trail off to spot duty and he hasn't broken the 10 minute mark in playing time since Louisville's first ACC game in early January. Clearly, Rick Pitino doesn't know how to properly use him and he should look to transfer somewhere he already felt comfortable when he visited and has a desperate need for post players. (TRANSFER TRANSFER TRANSFER! FREE ANAS!)
And then there's a handful of players who were once Gophers (on some level) who left:
SG Alvin Ellis
Who?: Gophers signee of Tubby, transferred after the coaching change, although rumor was he would have stayed if anybody had bothered to talk to him.
Where?: Michigan State
Class?: Sophomore
Season Stats: 1.5 points and 0.6 assists in 9.4 minutes
Summary: His stats are actually worse than his freshman year, mainly due to his inability to make a basket (6-30 shooting this year). I haven't noticed him when I've taken in a Spartan game so I don't know if he's overmatched, but his 2-year results don't look good.
PF Alex Foster
Who?: Gophers signee of Tubby, transferred after the coaching change. Seemingly made his college choice based on playing for Tubby.
Where?: Texas Tech
Class?: Sophomore
Season Stats: 1.1 points and 0.9 rebounds in 6.3 minutes
Summary: He's basically completely failed to crack the rotation in two seasons in Lubbock, and this for teams that have gone 14-18 and 12-13. Tubby's playing a deep bench this year with 10 guys averaging at least 10 minutes per game, and Foster not being one of them is not a real good sign for the future.
SF Joe Coleman
Who?: You remember him. Played two decent, if uneven, seasons for the Gophers before bolting when Richard Pitino got hired, even though Pitino's system probably would have been really good for him.
Where?: St. Mary's
Class?: Junior
Season Stats: 3.0 points and 1.0 rebounds in 14 minutes
Summary: Played in one game for the Gaels before a leg injury caused him to shut it down. I seriously can't find any more information on him than "leg injury." Hopefully it's not too serious and he'll get two more years as a Gael to show the world what he can do.
SG Chip Armelin
Who?: The hyper athletic, somewhat wild but deserved more of a chance shooting guard who played for Tubby for two years before transferring to get more playing time. Yes he's still around.
Where?: Southern Miss
Class?: Senior
Season Stats: 15.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in 34.3 minutes
Summary: He's having a fantastic senior season, leading the Golden Eagles in scoring. Southern Miss had a pretty solid year for them last year before being bested by the Gophers in the NIT quarters, and with their five top players graduating there was going to be a scoring void, which Armelin stepped into admirably. Of course, Southern Miss is 6-16 and 1-10 in a terrible C-USA and recently self-imposed a postseason ban (lol) because of questions around former coach Donnie Tyndall's recruiting practices. Nice to see him have some personal success though. I always liked him.
Also Better Call Saul has been awesome so far.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Iowa 77, Minnesota 75
It's a good thing I had pretty much already written this season off, because the Gophers found a new way to lose a game as brutally as possible. Getting blown out, crawling back, taking the lead, losing the lead, and tying it up at the buzzer which oops was actually after the buzzer is a new level of losing. It was clear he was late, clear enough to me at least that we just left after the buzzer instead of waiting for the ref's review. Sucks. Here are some things. I might get to ten I'm not sure. They're also probably going to be short because it's not very fun.
1. Dre Hollins still can't shoot. I consider myself a fairly analytical basketball mind, but there's really no rational reason for Hollins to continue to miss at this level (2-12 last night). I still think he's settling for jumpers to much and not getting to the rim, but it's not a huge shift from last year (14.1% of shots at rim this year vs. 16.8% last year) and if he's not 100% that could be the reason, but he's just flat missing even the wide open looks. I wish I knew more about stuff like shooting form and balance and release points and all that, because at this point it's gotta be mechanical. Or at least I hope so, because if it's mental it's going to be tough for him to pull it together after so many, many, misses.
2. Carlos Morris and Nate Mason were offensive superstars. The duo accounted for 38 of the Gophers' points on 14-25 shooting - that's good! Both have been showing off multi-faceted offensive games recently, and that only bodes well for the future. Wait, let me rephrase. The Gopher offense should score a lot of points next season, and points are fun. The defense right now looks to me like it will be absolutely dreadful. We're getting pretty used to it, but there's a very good chance it's going to be worse next year. Much worse.
3. If they make their free throws at the end of the game, they probably win. This is something people want to focus on and it's tough to blame them. Yeah, there were tons of other things that could have changed the game's outcome and the Gophers shot 12-16 from the line for the game, but missing the front end of two one-and-ones with a slim lead in the final two and a half minutes is pretty tough to ignore. I, and plenty of others, said if the poor free throw shooting didn't improve from earlier in the year it would cost this team at least one game, and here it probably did. Weird to say in a game they shoot 75% from the stripe, but tough to ignore that situation.
4. Pitino's new starting lineup didn't matter. Another thing I heard some whining about is how Pitino's different starting lineup (Eliason-Buggs-King-Hollins-Mason) screwed the team because they started the game in a 10-2 hole. Just shut up. That didn't matter. First, it was so early in the game that an eight point lead is not really close to insurmountable. Second, nobody on this team is so good compared to his replacement that his not being on the floor is going to make any significant difference. The only change that would make any difference long term would be Eliason in for Mo Walker, and it looks like Walker came in at about the seventeen and a half minute mark (we missed about the first five minutes or so because Macs was SO slow bringing the food out). This is a dumb point. He tried something kind of dumb to "spark the team" because that kind of dumb stuff sometimes works. This time it didn't, but it had little bearing on the team's loss.
5. Pitino's offense seems to have lost its edge. Remember when the Gophers ran some cool plays? Good enough stuff that I would point some of them out here? What happened? I know the base offense is kind of to let the players create and not have a pet play (like Tubby's flex) but the Gophers don't really have the types of players who can do that consistently. It works at Louisville and Florida because those guys are really, really good (Florida this year excepted). There needs to be a little bit more of a plan on the offensive end, especially when Mathieu is running rough.
6. Maybe Mathieu should have shot a pull up at the end. I guess in hindsight yes he definitely should have since he couldn't get the lay-up off, but he's fast and he's used to get where he's going and it's not like he was late by some huge amount of time. He saw a lane, he got to it, and it almost worked. He shares plenty of blame for what's gone on this season, and I have no idea what's going on with his dribbling which was near flawless last year but seems to have gone to hell, but don't put a whole lot of blame on him for running out of time. I saw some classy chap on twitter call him dumb. He makes a lot of dumb turnovers, sure, but this is the kind of thing that just sucks. It happens.
7. I thought the defense on Iowa's last shot was fine. I haven't rewatched it, which I probably would have if this season was going any where but it's not so I really don't feel like it, but my first impression was the defense was there, Uthoff just made a tough shot. I don't want to look at it again. If I'm wrong, it's probably the first time so give me a break.
8. Joey King is like, trying to be unlikable. He hit two monster threes in the second half. After both he did some cocky thing with his shooting hand like, simulating a ball going down into the hoop. Don't do that.
9. It may be time to let the kids play. This season is in oof status, and I'm not advocating a wholesale benching of the seniors or anything it's probably time to at least start glancing towards next year. With both Mo and Eliason gone that means Buggs, Bakary Konate, and Gaston Diedhiou are going to have to log a lot of minutes next season (gulp). Time to let them get more than a little taste and at least get some idea of what you have going into next season. Also probably time to be hitting the Juco, late signee, and transfer ranks pretty hard.
10. Well now what? I don't believe this team is anywhere near as bad as an 0-5 Big Ten team usually is, flaws notwithstanding, Kenpom still has them ranked #50 in the country, which kind of seems silly right now, but on the other hand they've mostly blown out bad teams and played good teams close, which is a recipe Kenpom generally likes. Unfortunately there are other metrics out there that mean more to the NCAA Selection committee such as RPI (#106) and Strength of Schedule (#103) which have pretty much now reached a level where anything the Gophers do short of nearly running the table isn't going to be enough to reach the tournament, and there's even some work to be done to go back to the NIT. Time to just try to have some fun with the rest of the year and watch the guys develop for next season and beyond. Luckily, I had already tricked my brain into thinking that way after Purdue. Even so, this season has been a disappointment on a level that I don't know if I've ever experienced.
I do think they'll smoke Rutgers on Saturday though.
1. Dre Hollins still can't shoot. I consider myself a fairly analytical basketball mind, but there's really no rational reason for Hollins to continue to miss at this level (2-12 last night). I still think he's settling for jumpers to much and not getting to the rim, but it's not a huge shift from last year (14.1% of shots at rim this year vs. 16.8% last year) and if he's not 100% that could be the reason, but he's just flat missing even the wide open looks. I wish I knew more about stuff like shooting form and balance and release points and all that, because at this point it's gotta be mechanical. Or at least I hope so, because if it's mental it's going to be tough for him to pull it together after so many, many, misses.
2. Carlos Morris and Nate Mason were offensive superstars. The duo accounted for 38 of the Gophers' points on 14-25 shooting - that's good! Both have been showing off multi-faceted offensive games recently, and that only bodes well for the future. Wait, let me rephrase. The Gopher offense should score a lot of points next season, and points are fun. The defense right now looks to me like it will be absolutely dreadful. We're getting pretty used to it, but there's a very good chance it's going to be worse next year. Much worse.
3. If they make their free throws at the end of the game, they probably win. This is something people want to focus on and it's tough to blame them. Yeah, there were tons of other things that could have changed the game's outcome and the Gophers shot 12-16 from the line for the game, but missing the front end of two one-and-ones with a slim lead in the final two and a half minutes is pretty tough to ignore. I, and plenty of others, said if the poor free throw shooting didn't improve from earlier in the year it would cost this team at least one game, and here it probably did. Weird to say in a game they shoot 75% from the stripe, but tough to ignore that situation.
4. Pitino's new starting lineup didn't matter. Another thing I heard some whining about is how Pitino's different starting lineup (Eliason-Buggs-King-Hollins-Mason) screwed the team because they started the game in a 10-2 hole. Just shut up. That didn't matter. First, it was so early in the game that an eight point lead is not really close to insurmountable. Second, nobody on this team is so good compared to his replacement that his not being on the floor is going to make any significant difference. The only change that would make any difference long term would be Eliason in for Mo Walker, and it looks like Walker came in at about the seventeen and a half minute mark (we missed about the first five minutes or so because Macs was SO slow bringing the food out). This is a dumb point. He tried something kind of dumb to "spark the team" because that kind of dumb stuff sometimes works. This time it didn't, but it had little bearing on the team's loss.
5. Pitino's offense seems to have lost its edge. Remember when the Gophers ran some cool plays? Good enough stuff that I would point some of them out here? What happened? I know the base offense is kind of to let the players create and not have a pet play (like Tubby's flex) but the Gophers don't really have the types of players who can do that consistently. It works at Louisville and Florida because those guys are really, really good (Florida this year excepted). There needs to be a little bit more of a plan on the offensive end, especially when Mathieu is running rough.
6. Maybe Mathieu should have shot a pull up at the end. I guess in hindsight yes he definitely should have since he couldn't get the lay-up off, but he's fast and he's used to get where he's going and it's not like he was late by some huge amount of time. He saw a lane, he got to it, and it almost worked. He shares plenty of blame for what's gone on this season, and I have no idea what's going on with his dribbling which was near flawless last year but seems to have gone to hell, but don't put a whole lot of blame on him for running out of time. I saw some classy chap on twitter call him dumb. He makes a lot of dumb turnovers, sure, but this is the kind of thing that just sucks. It happens.
7. I thought the defense on Iowa's last shot was fine. I haven't rewatched it, which I probably would have if this season was going any where but it's not so I really don't feel like it, but my first impression was the defense was there, Uthoff just made a tough shot. I don't want to look at it again. If I'm wrong, it's probably the first time so give me a break.
8. Joey King is like, trying to be unlikable. He hit two monster threes in the second half. After both he did some cocky thing with his shooting hand like, simulating a ball going down into the hoop. Don't do that.
9. It may be time to let the kids play. This season is in oof status, and I'm not advocating a wholesale benching of the seniors or anything it's probably time to at least start glancing towards next year. With both Mo and Eliason gone that means Buggs, Bakary Konate, and Gaston Diedhiou are going to have to log a lot of minutes next season (gulp). Time to let them get more than a little taste and at least get some idea of what you have going into next season. Also probably time to be hitting the Juco, late signee, and transfer ranks pretty hard.
10. Well now what? I don't believe this team is anywhere near as bad as an 0-5 Big Ten team usually is, flaws notwithstanding, Kenpom still has them ranked #50 in the country, which kind of seems silly right now, but on the other hand they've mostly blown out bad teams and played good teams close, which is a recipe Kenpom generally likes. Unfortunately there are other metrics out there that mean more to the NCAA Selection committee such as RPI (#106) and Strength of Schedule (#103) which have pretty much now reached a level where anything the Gophers do short of nearly running the table isn't going to be enough to reach the tournament, and there's even some work to be done to go back to the NIT. Time to just try to have some fun with the rest of the year and watch the guys develop for next season and beyond. Luckily, I had already tricked my brain into thinking that way after Purdue. Even so, this season has been a disappointment on a level that I don't know if I've ever experienced.
I do think they'll smoke Rutgers on Saturday though.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Rube Roundtable, Year 3
Every year around this lull in the year, ZipsofAkron from the much smarter than mine blog From the Barn sends some Gopher related questions out to blogger types. Most years I remember to answer them. This is one of those years. My answers are below. I will post a link to his blog when he compiles all the answers from us nerds.
1) So, uh, we're down to 9 scholarship players and a Kendal Shell. Your thoughts?
1) So, uh, we're down to 9 scholarship players and a Kendal Shell. Your thoughts?
Well, it's better than 8 scholarship players and no Kendal Shell. With or without Diedhiou, they have enough non-horrible players to come up with a playable rotation, even if it means heavier than you'd like minutes for some guys. The real problem is going to come if there's foul trouble, and you know there will be foul trouble. There are going to have to be a couple new walk-ons here soon, if only to have the bodies to weather a worst case type scenario. And walk-ons are always fun in blowouts. They think they're people.
7) In the same vein, what does this program need to do to take the next step?
College basketball, in my opinion, is ruled by recruiting. A good game coach (game plan and/or in game) can help elevate a team, but the disparity in talent between the top players and the rest is insurmountable by any coach, so that's the key. Pitino has the team moving in the right direction in this arena, but the rumors of his leaving every off season to take a "better" job are only going to get louder if he continues to build the program up (or hell, as long as he doesn't burn it to the ground). In order to continue to build their talent and keep creeping up the recruit ladder they need to keep Pitino. If he is hired away, it's likely because he's had success here so they need to make a hire who can keep that going, although I'm not sure where you can find someone young and hungry enough to take this job and work that hard who is also somewhat of a known commodity based on household name recognition. So I guess the answer is to give him as many blank checks as needed so he never leaves. Pretty simple.
Coming soon: Some baseball talk. Maybe a live movie blog.
2) Last year the Gophers won the NIT. What are your expectations this year?
This has already changed three times for me. At the beginner of the year I was thinking they definitely need to make the NCAA Tournament for this season to be a success. Then, after the preseason NIT or whatever I thought this team was way too dumb to end up making the tournament and figured the season was heading for a train wreck. Now, however, Big Ten teams are dropping games left and right - at home - to terrible teams. I figure if the Big Ten is as down as it seems, and the Gophers are at least mostly taking care of business, they should be able to get to 10 conference wins and, no matter how terrible terrible terrible terrible terrible the non-conference schedule was I can't see a 10 win Big Ten team getting bounced. Thus, I believe this should be an NCAA Tournament team. I reserve the right to change this when they get their doors blown off at Purdue.
3) What do you miss most about Maverick Ahanmisi?
The angst he caused. The twitter meltdowns. The clueless threads on Gopherhole (turns out I can still find plenty of those on a myriad of other topics). By the end of his career he had turned himself into a halfway decent, albeit streaky, spot up outside shooter who deserved a chance against zones to see if he was hot. Should he ever have been allowed to dribble? No, of course not. Did he do a lot of really dumb stuff with the basketball? Yes, almost constantly. Could he play defense? Very little. Wait, what was the question again?
4) What about Gopher basketball is going to give you an ulcer this year?
Easy answer is Carlos Morris, but when you go the JuCo route a certain amount of chuckery and undisciplined ball is expected so I'll give him a pass and say Joey King, and I don't really want to say Joey King, but it's Joey King. He clearly works hard. He's got a really nice shot fake, he's a much better rebounder than he was, he's even developed himself some semblance of a post up game, a far cry from the perimeter offense only type he was when he first arrived. That's all great, but he just does some horrible things. Nobody has ever been worse in the open court, ever, and he still likes to put up a really dumb shot at least once or twice a game. He also constantly uses that shot fake to get his defender of his feet, but then doesn't do anything with that advantage (that alone is enough to give me an ulcer). Of course there's nothing he can do when he's overpowered or out-athleticked, but the mere fact that's he's basically the team's only option is ulcer-worthy as well.
5) Maryland and Rutgers are real Big Ten members. How do you feel about this from a hoopsball perspective?
I love conference expansion because I love getting a chance to see new teams and players in person, and given the traditional home non-conference schedule for this program that doesn't happen very often. I still don't understand why they can't schedule home and homes with like, Colorado or Oklahoma State, or Seton Hall or other mid-tier big conference schools, but I digress.
I like seeing new teams. I don't care about exposure or tv sets in new markets or blah blah blah, but I'm also not wrapped up in "traditional rivalries are being destroyed" or any of that stuff that always sounds like it's being yelled by an old man in a bath robe who is shaking his fist at a newspaper. New teams are fun. Maryland is fun. Rutgers exists.
6) Real talk. Are we on the up and up or is this just another foray into unmet expectations and mediocrity?
Every time one administration flops and a new coach comes in there is always plenty of blind optimism, and I'm as guilty as anyone. So far, that optimism hasn't lasted, and there's another flop and the cycle continues. I'm hoping this one is for real, because I'm hoping Richard Pitino is for real. Being mentored by Rick Pitino and Billy Donovan is about as good an education as you could ask for, and Pitino (and his staff, can't forget McHale and Kimani) are tireless workers on the recruiting trail. Their in game schemes, plays, and game plans are inventive and exciting. Mo Walker's improvement suggests they may be good at player development, which would make this staff 3-for-3 in what you need from a college coach. Monson was hamstrung by needing to rebuild a shattered program, Tubby was looking to go out in a cushy job where he could half ass it (my perception), but Pitino should be good to go. So I guess I think we're on the up and up. I'm so stupid.
College basketball, in my opinion, is ruled by recruiting. A good game coach (game plan and/or in game) can help elevate a team, but the disparity in talent between the top players and the rest is insurmountable by any coach, so that's the key. Pitino has the team moving in the right direction in this arena, but the rumors of his leaving every off season to take a "better" job are only going to get louder if he continues to build the program up (or hell, as long as he doesn't burn it to the ground). In order to continue to build their talent and keep creeping up the recruit ladder they need to keep Pitino. If he is hired away, it's likely because he's had success here so they need to make a hire who can keep that going, although I'm not sure where you can find someone young and hungry enough to take this job and work that hard who is also somewhat of a known commodity based on household name recognition. So I guess the answer is to give him as many blank checks as needed so he never leaves. Pretty simple.
Coming soon: Some baseball talk. Maybe a live movie blog.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Gophers finished third in NIT Tip-Off! (out of 4).
First they were in total charge of the St. John's game, until they weren't, and ended up losing. Then they were in total charge of the Georgia game, until they weren't, but ended up winning. Overall the event did more to make me pessimistic about the rest of the season than optimistic, but that doesn't mean there weren't some positives. Up front I will tell you I watched the St. John's game at the bar which is a much less conducive environment to trying to make semi-interesting or fairly entertaining observations, so much of this will refer more to the Georgia game. It's doubtful it's semi-interesting or fairly entertaining anyway, as per usual. Anyway, here's ten things.
1. Free throws are killing me. I'm talking both sides of the ball here. After FT shooting nights of 9-16 against St. John's and 12-23 versus Georgia, the Gophers are now shooting a robust 55.2% for the season. That 55.2% ranks 343rd in the entire NCAA. There are 351 teams in Division I. UNLV is the only other major conference team anywhere near the Gophers in terms of being that horrible at free throws which, in case you'rs unsure, are completely unguarded shots by rule. There's more. The Gophers rank 318th in opponents FT attempts per FG attempt, which means they are constantly putting their opponents at the free throw line where they get to shoot without any defense. Usually this kind of profile belongs to an undersized, undermanned team and all the teams near the Gophers here are small schools or crappy teams like Oregon State and Boston College. The Gophers are giving up a ridiculous amount of free points while failing to take advantage of the same. Opponents are scoring 27% of their points at the line (rank #309), while the Gophers score 17% of their points from there (290th). This is a really good way to lose a lot of games you probably shouldn't, and is a major, major red flag. I'm pretty scared. Keep an eye on this one.
2. Nate Mason continues to impress. He led the team in scoring against the Red Storm with 15 and though he struggled shooting against Georgia he chipped in with 3 assists and 3 rebounds and has clearly emerged as the top player off the bench. Much of what he does is obvious when you watch him, but I want to point out something that might not stand out - he's an incredible rebounder. He's averaging 4.3 per game, and considering he's not playing starter's minutes it's even more impressive. His defensive rebounding rate is 20.8%, meaning he grabs one out of every five missed shots on the defensive end when he's on the court. That number ranks 216th in the country and I don't mean just for guards, I mean for everyone, and he's a 6-1 guard. He's probably going to average a triple double his senior year, if he's not already in the NBA.
3. Richard Pitino's beloved pressure defense is working. Mostly, at least, as the Gophers rank 31st in the country in defensive efficiency, giving up just .92 points per possession. They're mainly winning by causing turnovers, ranking 10th in the country and turning over their opponents 27.1% of the time, a ridiculous number that's just behind Rick Pitino and Louisville's 27.5%. The Gophers are also playing at the pace of 70.2 possessions per game (52nd in the country) which is identical to Louisville, so I think it's safe to say the system is pretty much in place. How well it ends up working against B10 competition is up in the air as it can lead to easy shots by the opponent as the Gophers rank just 127th in opponents' two point FG percentage, but as long as the turnovers keep coming you can handle a little trade off there. Georgia certainly did their part by giving the ball away 18 times, as did St. John's on Wednesday. It's a fun brand of basketball, and even more fun when they win.
4. Another thing that is fun so far is how well the Gophers are passing the basketball. With one glaring, notable exception (see below) the Gophers are moving the ball really well and it's fun to watch. Dre Mathieu is one of the best in the country at getting into the lane because he's so quick, and he's been exceptional this year at hitting open teammates when he does. Mason has mostly been a pass first kind of guy this year, Dre Hollins is an excellent passer when he wants to be, and both Joey King and Mo Walker are above average passers for big men. This has led to the Gophers registering an assist on 64.5% of their baskets this year, a number that ranks 21st in the nation and (somehow) 4th in the Big Ten behind Iowa, Purdue (?), and Michigan State. Of course, there's someone who is trying to destroy all that fun.
5. Pitino has got to reign in Carlos Morris. Last year writing about DeAndre Matheiu I said I like my guards a little bit out of control, and I do, but Morris is not a little bit out of control he's just straight up damaging when he's on the court. Poor defensive rotations, ball stopping, and bad shots are three of the most harmful things you can bring to a team and he's an expert at all three. His only good game this year was against Franklin Pierce, he's taking one shot attempt per point this year, and has as many turnovers as assists. It hasn't been good, though I'm not ready to give up because he has serious athletic potential, it just needs to be harnessed. There was one possession in the Georgia game where the team was moving the ball around the perimeter pretty well until it got to Morris at the top of the key. His defender was playing off him just enough to dare him shoot so Morris did, but not before holding the ball and just staring at the defensive dude for like 3 seconds, no joke. Naturally the result of the shot was an airball. The whole thing was a perfect encapsulation of his season so far. Let's hope we can look back on this as growing pains by year's end, because Morris is going to get a ton of minutes, and the less damage he can do the better.
6. Charles Buggs could be a solid contributor. I don't think there have ever been any questions about his shooting and he's shooting well again this season (5-10 on threes), but for Buggs to really crack the rotation he needed to work on other things. With the McNeil situation he's going to get a lot more rope, and he's going to get time at the 3 spot which, to me, is more his natural fit if he can play defense. So far this year he's looked better defensively, though not a standout by any means but he's not getting lost nearly as often. He's rebounding a little bit better, and most importantly he's slashed his turnovers from a horrendous 27% to an outstanding 10%. He's even grabbed a couple of steals (literally two) and gone to the line a handful of times. Buggs was pretty clearly a long term project from the moment he stepped on campus, but he's looked considerably better this year to the point where he might be able to give them 10-15 minutes per game which is going to be badly needed now. What more could you ask for?
7. I actually really like Bob Knight as an announcer. Sure he gets stuck on certain ideas and won't let them go, such as shot fakes and not having Eliason or Walker set picks so far away from the basket, but I really like the coach's perspective he brings to being the color man. I know plenty of other announcers are former coaches, but they all seem to have at least shifted some towards "being entertaining" from "being informative" (with varying degrees of success) but Knight is still in coach/educator mode. He's always pointing out positioning on defense or rebounding or discussing plays more in depth than your average guy, and he does it in a deadpan voice that pretty much tells you he's not interested in being your trained monkey there for entertainment. I also like how he kept referring to Walker and Eliason as "the big kids." I don't know. I dig it.
8. Dre Hollins has turned into a turnover machine. And I don't like it one bit. Twelve turnovers in the two tournament games bring his season total to 18 against 19 assists. His assist rate is actually up this year compared to last after plummeting from his sophomore season, which is to be expected with Mathieu on board and taking up most of the point guard minutes, but his turnover rate has absolutely sky rocketed to 27%, worse even than his wild freshman year. The only players in the conference who play major minutes with a worse turnover rate are ball handlers new to the league (Lourawls Nairn (34%), freshman), Tai Webster (30%, his second year), Bishop Daniels (28%, juco transfer)) or big men with questionable handles (A.J. Hammons (28%), Mo Walker (29%), Ross Travis (28%)). I mean, that's a really crappy number. Take that turnover number and add in 41% shooting from the floor and that's an awful lot of wasted possessions. He's in chucker territory. Please stop doing that.
9. I finally made sriracha fried rice and it was awesome. I've had it at a couple of Thai places and it's like, the best thing ever, so I finally decided to give it a shot and I'm damn glad I did. It's one of the most delicious things ever. It's great too, because for the veggies you can just use whatever you have. One time I had green pepper so I used it, another time (yes I made it twice this weekend) we were out of pepper so I used about a quarter bag of frozen peas and it worked out just fine. Here's the recipe. You're welcome.
2 c. cooked rice (I just used minute rice)
2 celery stalks, chopped or slivered
1 carrot, peeled and chopped or slivered
1/2 green pepper, diced
1/4 bag frozen peas
1/4 t dried ginger (if you have fresh it's probably better, I didn't)
1 t toasted sesame oil
2 T soy sauce
2 T sriracha
1-2 garlic cloves
some green onions, chopped with the white and green separated
1. Heat a skillet or wok on medium high until hot, pour in some olive oil and garlic and saute for 30 seconds
2. add the veggies except the green part of the green onion and saute for about 3 minutes
3. add the rice and ginger and saute about 3 minutes, rice should start to change color a little
4. add the soy sauce, sesame oil, and sriracha and mix until everything is combined
5. remove from heat and eat.
So good.
10. This Wake game is the last one that's going to matter for a while. I'm not really sure if Wake Forest is any good (tune in tomorrow) but it's the last threat to the Gophers for about a month, and the last game that will could potentially have any positive impact on the Gophers' future NCAA Tournament resume. The next six games after the Deacons are just brutal. The best teams according to kenpom are teams like Western Carolina, Seattle, and UNC-Wilmington who aren't even contenders in their own conferences and who rank in the mid-200s. The NCAA selection committee doesn't use kenpom at all (I don't think) but I'm pretty sure there's some sort of correlation when it comes to RPI and none of these clown shoes teams are going to help. One huge advantage Tubby's staff had over Pitino's is they had figured out how to make a schedule full of non-threatening games which still kept their SOS and RPI in good shape. i don't think this schedule is going to do that. Which means the Big 10 season is going to be even more important than in previous years, which terrifies me. Beat Wake.
1. Free throws are killing me. I'm talking both sides of the ball here. After FT shooting nights of 9-16 against St. John's and 12-23 versus Georgia, the Gophers are now shooting a robust 55.2% for the season. That 55.2% ranks 343rd in the entire NCAA. There are 351 teams in Division I. UNLV is the only other major conference team anywhere near the Gophers in terms of being that horrible at free throws which, in case you'rs unsure, are completely unguarded shots by rule. There's more. The Gophers rank 318th in opponents FT attempts per FG attempt, which means they are constantly putting their opponents at the free throw line where they get to shoot without any defense. Usually this kind of profile belongs to an undersized, undermanned team and all the teams near the Gophers here are small schools or crappy teams like Oregon State and Boston College. The Gophers are giving up a ridiculous amount of free points while failing to take advantage of the same. Opponents are scoring 27% of their points at the line (rank #309), while the Gophers score 17% of their points from there (290th). This is a really good way to lose a lot of games you probably shouldn't, and is a major, major red flag. I'm pretty scared. Keep an eye on this one.
2. Nate Mason continues to impress. He led the team in scoring against the Red Storm with 15 and though he struggled shooting against Georgia he chipped in with 3 assists and 3 rebounds and has clearly emerged as the top player off the bench. Much of what he does is obvious when you watch him, but I want to point out something that might not stand out - he's an incredible rebounder. He's averaging 4.3 per game, and considering he's not playing starter's minutes it's even more impressive. His defensive rebounding rate is 20.8%, meaning he grabs one out of every five missed shots on the defensive end when he's on the court. That number ranks 216th in the country and I don't mean just for guards, I mean for everyone, and he's a 6-1 guard. He's probably going to average a triple double his senior year, if he's not already in the NBA.
3. Richard Pitino's beloved pressure defense is working. Mostly, at least, as the Gophers rank 31st in the country in defensive efficiency, giving up just .92 points per possession. They're mainly winning by causing turnovers, ranking 10th in the country and turning over their opponents 27.1% of the time, a ridiculous number that's just behind Rick Pitino and Louisville's 27.5%. The Gophers are also playing at the pace of 70.2 possessions per game (52nd in the country) which is identical to Louisville, so I think it's safe to say the system is pretty much in place. How well it ends up working against B10 competition is up in the air as it can lead to easy shots by the opponent as the Gophers rank just 127th in opponents' two point FG percentage, but as long as the turnovers keep coming you can handle a little trade off there. Georgia certainly did their part by giving the ball away 18 times, as did St. John's on Wednesday. It's a fun brand of basketball, and even more fun when they win.
4. Another thing that is fun so far is how well the Gophers are passing the basketball. With one glaring, notable exception (see below) the Gophers are moving the ball really well and it's fun to watch. Dre Mathieu is one of the best in the country at getting into the lane because he's so quick, and he's been exceptional this year at hitting open teammates when he does. Mason has mostly been a pass first kind of guy this year, Dre Hollins is an excellent passer when he wants to be, and both Joey King and Mo Walker are above average passers for big men. This has led to the Gophers registering an assist on 64.5% of their baskets this year, a number that ranks 21st in the nation and (somehow) 4th in the Big Ten behind Iowa, Purdue (?), and Michigan State. Of course, there's someone who is trying to destroy all that fun.
5. Pitino has got to reign in Carlos Morris. Last year writing about DeAndre Matheiu I said I like my guards a little bit out of control, and I do, but Morris is not a little bit out of control he's just straight up damaging when he's on the court. Poor defensive rotations, ball stopping, and bad shots are three of the most harmful things you can bring to a team and he's an expert at all three. His only good game this year was against Franklin Pierce, he's taking one shot attempt per point this year, and has as many turnovers as assists. It hasn't been good, though I'm not ready to give up because he has serious athletic potential, it just needs to be harnessed. There was one possession in the Georgia game where the team was moving the ball around the perimeter pretty well until it got to Morris at the top of the key. His defender was playing off him just enough to dare him shoot so Morris did, but not before holding the ball and just staring at the defensive dude for like 3 seconds, no joke. Naturally the result of the shot was an airball. The whole thing was a perfect encapsulation of his season so far. Let's hope we can look back on this as growing pains by year's end, because Morris is going to get a ton of minutes, and the less damage he can do the better.
6. Charles Buggs could be a solid contributor. I don't think there have ever been any questions about his shooting and he's shooting well again this season (5-10 on threes), but for Buggs to really crack the rotation he needed to work on other things. With the McNeil situation he's going to get a lot more rope, and he's going to get time at the 3 spot which, to me, is more his natural fit if he can play defense. So far this year he's looked better defensively, though not a standout by any means but he's not getting lost nearly as often. He's rebounding a little bit better, and most importantly he's slashed his turnovers from a horrendous 27% to an outstanding 10%. He's even grabbed a couple of steals (literally two) and gone to the line a handful of times. Buggs was pretty clearly a long term project from the moment he stepped on campus, but he's looked considerably better this year to the point where he might be able to give them 10-15 minutes per game which is going to be badly needed now. What more could you ask for?
7. I actually really like Bob Knight as an announcer. Sure he gets stuck on certain ideas and won't let them go, such as shot fakes and not having Eliason or Walker set picks so far away from the basket, but I really like the coach's perspective he brings to being the color man. I know plenty of other announcers are former coaches, but they all seem to have at least shifted some towards "being entertaining" from "being informative" (with varying degrees of success) but Knight is still in coach/educator mode. He's always pointing out positioning on defense or rebounding or discussing plays more in depth than your average guy, and he does it in a deadpan voice that pretty much tells you he's not interested in being your trained monkey there for entertainment. I also like how he kept referring to Walker and Eliason as "the big kids." I don't know. I dig it.
8. Dre Hollins has turned into a turnover machine. And I don't like it one bit. Twelve turnovers in the two tournament games bring his season total to 18 against 19 assists. His assist rate is actually up this year compared to last after plummeting from his sophomore season, which is to be expected with Mathieu on board and taking up most of the point guard minutes, but his turnover rate has absolutely sky rocketed to 27%, worse even than his wild freshman year. The only players in the conference who play major minutes with a worse turnover rate are ball handlers new to the league (Lourawls Nairn (34%), freshman), Tai Webster (30%, his second year), Bishop Daniels (28%, juco transfer)) or big men with questionable handles (A.J. Hammons (28%), Mo Walker (29%), Ross Travis (28%)). I mean, that's a really crappy number. Take that turnover number and add in 41% shooting from the floor and that's an awful lot of wasted possessions. He's in chucker territory. Please stop doing that.
9. I finally made sriracha fried rice and it was awesome. I've had it at a couple of Thai places and it's like, the best thing ever, so I finally decided to give it a shot and I'm damn glad I did. It's one of the most delicious things ever. It's great too, because for the veggies you can just use whatever you have. One time I had green pepper so I used it, another time (yes I made it twice this weekend) we were out of pepper so I used about a quarter bag of frozen peas and it worked out just fine. Here's the recipe. You're welcome.
2 c. cooked rice (I just used minute rice)
2 celery stalks, chopped or slivered
1 carrot, peeled and chopped or slivered
1/2 green pepper, diced
1/4 bag frozen peas
1/4 t dried ginger (if you have fresh it's probably better, I didn't)
1 t toasted sesame oil
2 T soy sauce
2 T sriracha
1-2 garlic cloves
some green onions, chopped with the white and green separated
1. Heat a skillet or wok on medium high until hot, pour in some olive oil and garlic and saute for 30 seconds
2. add the veggies except the green part of the green onion and saute for about 3 minutes
3. add the rice and ginger and saute about 3 minutes, rice should start to change color a little
4. add the soy sauce, sesame oil, and sriracha and mix until everything is combined
5. remove from heat and eat.
So good.
10. This Wake game is the last one that's going to matter for a while. I'm not really sure if Wake Forest is any good (tune in tomorrow) but it's the last threat to the Gophers for about a month, and the last game that will could potentially have any positive impact on the Gophers' future NCAA Tournament resume. The next six games after the Deacons are just brutal. The best teams according to kenpom are teams like Western Carolina, Seattle, and UNC-Wilmington who aren't even contenders in their own conferences and who rank in the mid-200s. The NCAA selection committee doesn't use kenpom at all (I don't think) but I'm pretty sure there's some sort of correlation when it comes to RPI and none of these clown shoes teams are going to help. One huge advantage Tubby's staff had over Pitino's is they had figured out how to make a schedule full of non-threatening games which still kept their SOS and RPI in good shape. i don't think this schedule is going to do that. Which means the Big 10 season is going to be even more important than in previous years, which terrifies me. Beat Wake.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Louisville 81, Gophers 68
Say la vee. Anyone expecting the Gophers to win was probably a raging homer so this doesn't really come as a surprise, and they kept it from a being a blowout against a Final Four contender so that's a positive. It's tough to get a true read on a game like tonight since there were one million fouls called and Louisville made free throws and the Gophers didn't, but there's still some things we can learn. Here are 10 things I liked and didn't like about the Louisville game, with the caveat that this opponent was probably the best team the Gophers will face all season.
1. Dre Hollins looked good. Or should I say Andrew Hollins, which is what the pregame announcer called him during lineups. Dre led the team with 22 points, and more importantly did it by getting to the rim as well as jump shots which was a slight concern I still had. He took six threes versus nine twos which is a better ratio of 2s to 3s than he's had in his career and a sign that maybe he's decided attacking the rim is the way to go, which it is. He hit a couple of floaters in the lane which is a shot I don't remember him having in his repertoire before and is a positive. It also looks like he'll be playing strictly off the ball this year with Mathieu and Mason doing the ball handling. This might be a negative for his NBA potential, but a definite positive for the Gophers and should lead to more and better scoring chances coming off picks.
2. Mo Walker has a chance to be a real force. Man did he look good. Like basically every Gopher who matters he spent a chunk of the game in foul trouble so his numbers were maybe suppressed a bit (10 pts, 4 rebs on 5-7 shooting) but he is tough when he's in the paint. A nice drop step and a nice looking lefty jump hook that could become a nice pet move, and his footwork combined with his size make it really hard for a defender to get into, and even more stay into, a good guarding position. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but there's a chance Walker has become the type of player you can't defend one-on-one. We won't know until he plays legit competition again which is in like a month, but I'm extremely positive on Mo right now.
3. Nate Mason is legit. He was probably pressed into more minutes than Pitino (Richard not Rick) would like due to foul trouble (I guess) but the kid looked like a player. He was a little shaky with the ball early which made me think he was a nervous freshman in a big spot, but he quickly overcame that and flashed some high level skills and a tremendous amount of confidence. His first collegiate bucket came taking the ball basically coast-to-coast including a stutter step move that allowed him to blow right by quality defender Wayne Blackshear, and he's good enough already on the defensive end to stick with Chris Jones - or at least as well as anybody can. He had five rebounds in 20 minutes, which is tremendous for a guard, and after some free throw troubles settled down to hit 6-10 on the night. If he can give you that kind of defense and rebounding and continue getting to the line he's going to be an absolute steal for the Gophers.
4. It's ok to play guys with more fouls than you'd like earlier than you'd like when needed. I HATE THIS. It's not just our Pitino to be sure since most coaches follow the sit down a guy with 2 fouls in the first half mantra, but it's not necessary. When the offense has completely stagnated because your top two shot creators in Mathieu and Morris are both on the bench with two fouls you need to get them back in before Louisville goes on a 15-2 run. I recognize it's prudent to try to keep your best players from becoming disqualified and not being around for crunch time, but sometimes it's more important to take a chance so maybe you can get to crunch time in a competitive position. Ugh.
5. Montrezl Harrell is ridiculous. How unfair was it when Harrell hit that three pointer as the first basket of the game? I practically did a double take. Harrell's game was always pretty much paint oriented, but I guess he worked his ass off to become a jump shooter and man that just isn't fair. He went 3-4 from three and hit at least one other jumper, all in addition to complete dominating the glass and the paint on his way to a 30 point, 7 rebound night. Granted, the Gophers don't have anyone who can match up with him as the only guy who could maybe do it physically is a freshman and everyone else is either too small (King) or too slow (Walker and Eliason), but he certainly took advantage. Then again, there aren't too many players who can match up with him in the nation period. He could very well be the best player in the country. Super impressive.
6. Carlos Morris is going to be an adventure. When I wrote after the UMD exhibition game I said that Morris looks like he believes he can score on every position, but that I meant that in a good way. I still hold that same sentiment, even after an off game. He shot just 3-9 in this one and took some horrendous shots along the way, not to mention forcing drives where they weren't going to work. It's hard as hell going from JuCo defenders and UMD to Louisville so it wasn't a surprise watching Morris struggle, but a big key to the season might be if Morris can adjust his game to be a more efficient and effective scorer against better defenses. The Gophers still need his ability to create offense, but he just has to do it in the flow of the offense, transition or half court. And no more contest long twos.
7. Crappy long 2-point jumpers are not how you win games. A lot of this is due to Louisville's stellar defense, but man did the Gophers take a lot of crappy shots. When the Gophers got out in transition and ran they did fine, but in the half court it was pretty brutal. The worst was when Mathieu, Walker, and Morris were all on the bench with two fouls in the first half (the horror!) and the Gophers simply could not initiate any kind of offense. Hollins came around in the second half just fine, but in the first he was very passive (I actually made the note "Hollins passive" but the second half wiped it out) and there was just no offense going on at all. Seemed more like a Tubby offense than a Pitino offense, but I suppose it doesn't really matter what you draw up if nobody can get inside that damn defense. Though it would be nice to at least work the ball around a bit rather than throwing that crappy long 2 up with 20 seconds left on the shot clock (*coughMorriscough*).
8. Josh Martin and Bakary Konate had rough intros to college ball. Granite, making your debut in a modified aircraft hanger in stifling hot weather in a foreign country against one of the best teams in the country is probably pretty tough, but yikes. They only played 10 total minutes, but in that time managed a couple of turnovers, a few bad fouls, several horrible defensive rotations, and Konate put up the single worst shot of the night by throwing up a half contested 18.5 foot jumper that shockingly didn't go in. I'm not worried about either freshmen as I'm sure they'll be fine against normal, human teams, I'm just saying it wasn't pretty. Even if it's understandable ugly is still ugly. Like a chick hit in the face with a frying pan.
9. The free throws, my god the free throws. The Gophers ended up hitting 20 of 33 free throws which is a horrible 61%, and they only got to that number by getting hot at the end. In a game with one billion fouls called it was maddening every time the Gophers got a chance at the line to help narrow the gap and ended up clanging away two free points again and again and yes I'm looking at you Nate Mason. I think the team was 8-18 at one point, and even if I'm making that up it was something similarly horrible to that. I'm sure it's stupid for a middle aged white nerd sitting on his couch to say how easy free throws are, but I'm going to anyway because I hit 83% in my high school career. I guess what I'm saying is, I probably could have played division I high major college ball. Probably.
10. I don't know what to say about Joey King. He clearly tries hard. He's changed himself from a perimeter obsessed mincing nancy to someone who does his best to be a real life power forward, and that's really admirable. He tries to bang around in the lane, tries to be a big time rebounder, gives it his all defensively, and has actually become a halfway decent scorer in the lane, and he still has his not horrible jumper. He really tries, but man there are times when his physical limitations are just glaring, like against Louisville. Anyone the Cardinals ran out there just ran and jumped circles around King, or pushed him around, or in the case of Harrell did all three. I've stopped hating him, but man it can be tough to watch when he's just getting brutalized and there's nothing he can do about it.
All in all the Gophers stuck pretty close with a Final Four contender and didn't roll over and die when it would have been pretty easy to just give up. I don't know how anyone can't be happy with that. Now we move on. Three games this week, but only Western Kentucky in the home opener Tuesday night is likely to put up any kind of fight. Then comes the big Thanksgiving tournament in New York, where they'll play St. John's and either Georgia or Gonzaga. Need to go 1-1 at worst.
I'll try to get a preview up for WKU, but no promises. I will not be doing a preview for Bernard Pierce or Mildred Pierce or whatever. I do have some standards.
1. Dre Hollins looked good. Or should I say Andrew Hollins, which is what the pregame announcer called him during lineups. Dre led the team with 22 points, and more importantly did it by getting to the rim as well as jump shots which was a slight concern I still had. He took six threes versus nine twos which is a better ratio of 2s to 3s than he's had in his career and a sign that maybe he's decided attacking the rim is the way to go, which it is. He hit a couple of floaters in the lane which is a shot I don't remember him having in his repertoire before and is a positive. It also looks like he'll be playing strictly off the ball this year with Mathieu and Mason doing the ball handling. This might be a negative for his NBA potential, but a definite positive for the Gophers and should lead to more and better scoring chances coming off picks.
2. Mo Walker has a chance to be a real force. Man did he look good. Like basically every Gopher who matters he spent a chunk of the game in foul trouble so his numbers were maybe suppressed a bit (10 pts, 4 rebs on 5-7 shooting) but he is tough when he's in the paint. A nice drop step and a nice looking lefty jump hook that could become a nice pet move, and his footwork combined with his size make it really hard for a defender to get into, and even more stay into, a good guarding position. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but there's a chance Walker has become the type of player you can't defend one-on-one. We won't know until he plays legit competition again which is in like a month, but I'm extremely positive on Mo right now.
3. Nate Mason is legit. He was probably pressed into more minutes than Pitino (Richard not Rick) would like due to foul trouble (I guess) but the kid looked like a player. He was a little shaky with the ball early which made me think he was a nervous freshman in a big spot, but he quickly overcame that and flashed some high level skills and a tremendous amount of confidence. His first collegiate bucket came taking the ball basically coast-to-coast including a stutter step move that allowed him to blow right by quality defender Wayne Blackshear, and he's good enough already on the defensive end to stick with Chris Jones - or at least as well as anybody can. He had five rebounds in 20 minutes, which is tremendous for a guard, and after some free throw troubles settled down to hit 6-10 on the night. If he can give you that kind of defense and rebounding and continue getting to the line he's going to be an absolute steal for the Gophers.
4. It's ok to play guys with more fouls than you'd like earlier than you'd like when needed. I HATE THIS. It's not just our Pitino to be sure since most coaches follow the sit down a guy with 2 fouls in the first half mantra, but it's not necessary. When the offense has completely stagnated because your top two shot creators in Mathieu and Morris are both on the bench with two fouls you need to get them back in before Louisville goes on a 15-2 run. I recognize it's prudent to try to keep your best players from becoming disqualified and not being around for crunch time, but sometimes it's more important to take a chance so maybe you can get to crunch time in a competitive position. Ugh.
5. Montrezl Harrell is ridiculous. How unfair was it when Harrell hit that three pointer as the first basket of the game? I practically did a double take. Harrell's game was always pretty much paint oriented, but I guess he worked his ass off to become a jump shooter and man that just isn't fair. He went 3-4 from three and hit at least one other jumper, all in addition to complete dominating the glass and the paint on his way to a 30 point, 7 rebound night. Granted, the Gophers don't have anyone who can match up with him as the only guy who could maybe do it physically is a freshman and everyone else is either too small (King) or too slow (Walker and Eliason), but he certainly took advantage. Then again, there aren't too many players who can match up with him in the nation period. He could very well be the best player in the country. Super impressive.
6. Carlos Morris is going to be an adventure. When I wrote after the UMD exhibition game I said that Morris looks like he believes he can score on every position, but that I meant that in a good way. I still hold that same sentiment, even after an off game. He shot just 3-9 in this one and took some horrendous shots along the way, not to mention forcing drives where they weren't going to work. It's hard as hell going from JuCo defenders and UMD to Louisville so it wasn't a surprise watching Morris struggle, but a big key to the season might be if Morris can adjust his game to be a more efficient and effective scorer against better defenses. The Gophers still need his ability to create offense, but he just has to do it in the flow of the offense, transition or half court. And no more contest long twos.
7. Crappy long 2-point jumpers are not how you win games. A lot of this is due to Louisville's stellar defense, but man did the Gophers take a lot of crappy shots. When the Gophers got out in transition and ran they did fine, but in the half court it was pretty brutal. The worst was when Mathieu, Walker, and Morris were all on the bench with two fouls in the first half (the horror!) and the Gophers simply could not initiate any kind of offense. Hollins came around in the second half just fine, but in the first he was very passive (I actually made the note "Hollins passive" but the second half wiped it out) and there was just no offense going on at all. Seemed more like a Tubby offense than a Pitino offense, but I suppose it doesn't really matter what you draw up if nobody can get inside that damn defense. Though it would be nice to at least work the ball around a bit rather than throwing that crappy long 2 up with 20 seconds left on the shot clock (*coughMorriscough*).
8. Josh Martin and Bakary Konate had rough intros to college ball. Granite, making your debut in a modified aircraft hanger in stifling hot weather in a foreign country against one of the best teams in the country is probably pretty tough, but yikes. They only played 10 total minutes, but in that time managed a couple of turnovers, a few bad fouls, several horrible defensive rotations, and Konate put up the single worst shot of the night by throwing up a half contested 18.5 foot jumper that shockingly didn't go in. I'm not worried about either freshmen as I'm sure they'll be fine against normal, human teams, I'm just saying it wasn't pretty. Even if it's understandable ugly is still ugly. Like a chick hit in the face with a frying pan.
9. The free throws, my god the free throws. The Gophers ended up hitting 20 of 33 free throws which is a horrible 61%, and they only got to that number by getting hot at the end. In a game with one billion fouls called it was maddening every time the Gophers got a chance at the line to help narrow the gap and ended up clanging away two free points again and again and yes I'm looking at you Nate Mason. I think the team was 8-18 at one point, and even if I'm making that up it was something similarly horrible to that. I'm sure it's stupid for a middle aged white nerd sitting on his couch to say how easy free throws are, but I'm going to anyway because I hit 83% in my high school career. I guess what I'm saying is, I probably could have played division I high major college ball. Probably.
10. I don't know what to say about Joey King. He clearly tries hard. He's changed himself from a perimeter obsessed mincing nancy to someone who does his best to be a real life power forward, and that's really admirable. He tries to bang around in the lane, tries to be a big time rebounder, gives it his all defensively, and has actually become a halfway decent scorer in the lane, and he still has his not horrible jumper. He really tries, but man there are times when his physical limitations are just glaring, like against Louisville. Anyone the Cardinals ran out there just ran and jumped circles around King, or pushed him around, or in the case of Harrell did all three. I've stopped hating him, but man it can be tough to watch when he's just getting brutalized and there's nothing he can do about it.
All in all the Gophers stuck pretty close with a Final Four contender and didn't roll over and die when it would have been pretty easy to just give up. I don't know how anyone can't be happy with that. Now we move on. Three games this week, but only Western Kentucky in the home opener Tuesday night is likely to put up any kind of fight. Then comes the big Thanksgiving tournament in New York, where they'll play St. John's and either Georgia or Gonzaga. Need to go 1-1 at worst.
I'll try to get a preview up for WKU, but no promises. I will not be doing a preview for Bernard Pierce or Mildred Pierce or whatever. I do have some standards.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Gophers vs. Louisville Preview
Well here we go. Nothing like hitting the ground running someone said once probably. Friday brings the coolest opener the Gophers have ever participated in when they take on #8 Louisville in Puerto Rico.
Louisville has basically turned into a basketball machine and this year should be more of the same, but there are some questions, particularly in the back court. Russdiculous is gone and he was basically the team's rock (not to mention leading scorer at 18.2 per game), and Luke Hancock is gone from the back court as well and he was the team's third leading scorer (12.3ppg) is gone as well. Those two hit 138 threes between the two of them last season, almost half the Cardinals' total.
Chris Jones is back though, and he's a nearly perfect guard for a Rick Pitino team. He's absurdly quick, and if the Gophers play a lot of zone he's going to absolutely murder them by getting into the lane over and over - you watch. He also ended up with the 8th best steal rate in the country, so he could wreck some shit, particularly against a Gopher team that struggles taking care of the ball. Wayne Blackshear returns as well and should jump into Hancock's role as wing bomber.
Then there's the newcomers who can help fill in - PG Quentin Snider andwing Shaqquan Aaron. Snider was ranked by ESPN as the #5 incoming point guard for 2014 (he also briefly may have considered the Gophers). He's going to be ridiculous by the time he leaves Louisville, hopefully he'll be shaky given that it's his first game. When he gets his feat under him he and Jones could be the next Napier/Boatright or Smith/Siva back court with two 1.5's rather than a true 1 or 2. Aaron is a big guard who was genetically engineered for the fast break. I read one possible issue is he's so used to having the ball in his hands from his high school days he may struggle moving without the ball in a new role. Hopefully he'll stand around a lot and do mostly nothing. [NOTE: looks like he'll do nothing. Nailed it.]
In the paint the Gophers will probably get physically murdered by Montrezl Harrell who could have gone to the NBA and right now I wish he would have. He's an absolute monster at 6-8, 240 lbs. of pure muscle who averaged 14 points and 8.5 rebounds per game last year while shooting north of 60%. He doesn't exactly have a jump shot, but when you look like Mr. Sandman you don't need one.
The Gophers who have the size to check him are Eliason, Walker, and Martin (though I would be hesitant to use the freshman on him much), but next to Harrell Louisville can roll out 6-10 Mangok Mathiang or any one of a trio of talented freshmen in 6-10 Chinanu Onuaku (#9 center in the class per ESPN), 7-1 Anas Mahmoud (#12 center and possibly almost a Gopher), or 7-2 Matz Stockman (the #19 center), not to mention 6-9 freshman Jaylen Johnson (#24 PF). Granted these guys mostly freshmen and unproven (Mathiang played about 15 minutes per game last year), but as Benjamin Franklin once said you can't teach size, and somebody is going to have to handle a very tall man. Assuming Pitino (the good one) wants to avoid playing Eliason and Walker together that means either Joey King or Martin will have to guard Harrell or a gigantic center, depending on how he wants to split it. This is a thing I am not looking forward to, as I'm pretty sure Harrell could dunk over King without actually noticing he was there.
Basically Louisville has the size advantage and the speed advantage (the Gophers are getting better, but they aren't there yet), and their pressing, attacking defense causes a whole boat load of turnovers (#2 in the country last year) while the Gophers, despite an experienced back court, were a turnover machine last season. But I still think our favorite team has a chance. Louisville has a solid foundation in Jones and Harrell, but they're folding in a lot of new pieces this year while the Gophers are relatively stable. In order to run the kind of system both Pitinos like you need good communication and a good grasp of where to go and where to be, especially against another team who is willing and able to run and gun, or you end up out of position and giving up easy shots in transition (remember the lay-up line that was Arkansas last year?). The Gophers best hope is probably to run with Louisville and hope they're better prepared than the Cardinals.
Will it happen? Although it's possible I don't see it. The two teams want to play the same way, but one team has the better athletes, more size, the better coach (FOR NOW!), and simply fit the system better. The Gophers only advantage is more continuity, but much of that is negated by Pitino Sr's coaching, because he's still one of the best. I keep picturing that Arkansas game I mentioned above, but I keep seeing the Gophers as the Gophers, not as Arkansas.
Louisville 88, Minnesota 74.
[note: just learned Shaqquan Aaron is not eligible as of yet for Louisville. This changes nothing, except for how this preview now looks stupid like your face and your mom.]
Louisville has basically turned into a basketball machine and this year should be more of the same, but there are some questions, particularly in the back court. Russdiculous is gone and he was basically the team's rock (not to mention leading scorer at 18.2 per game), and Luke Hancock is gone from the back court as well and he was the team's third leading scorer (12.3ppg) is gone as well. Those two hit 138 threes between the two of them last season, almost half the Cardinals' total.
Chris Jones is back though, and he's a nearly perfect guard for a Rick Pitino team. He's absurdly quick, and if the Gophers play a lot of zone he's going to absolutely murder them by getting into the lane over and over - you watch. He also ended up with the 8th best steal rate in the country, so he could wreck some shit, particularly against a Gopher team that struggles taking care of the ball. Wayne Blackshear returns as well and should jump into Hancock's role as wing bomber.
Then there's the newcomers who can help fill in - PG Quentin Snider and
In the paint the Gophers will probably get physically murdered by Montrezl Harrell who could have gone to the NBA and right now I wish he would have. He's an absolute monster at 6-8, 240 lbs. of pure muscle who averaged 14 points and 8.5 rebounds per game last year while shooting north of 60%. He doesn't exactly have a jump shot, but when you look like Mr. Sandman you don't need one.
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| This is basically him. |
Basically Louisville has the size advantage and the speed advantage (the Gophers are getting better, but they aren't there yet), and their pressing, attacking defense causes a whole boat load of turnovers (#2 in the country last year) while the Gophers, despite an experienced back court, were a turnover machine last season. But I still think our favorite team has a chance. Louisville has a solid foundation in Jones and Harrell, but they're folding in a lot of new pieces this year while the Gophers are relatively stable. In order to run the kind of system both Pitinos like you need good communication and a good grasp of where to go and where to be, especially against another team who is willing and able to run and gun, or you end up out of position and giving up easy shots in transition (remember the lay-up line that was Arkansas last year?). The Gophers best hope is probably to run with Louisville and hope they're better prepared than the Cardinals.
Will it happen? Although it's possible I don't see it. The two teams want to play the same way, but one team has the better athletes, more size, the better coach (FOR NOW!), and simply fit the system better. The Gophers only advantage is more continuity, but much of that is negated by Pitino Sr's coaching, because he's still one of the best. I keep picturing that Arkansas game I mentioned above, but I keep seeing the Gophers as the Gophers, not as Arkansas.
Louisville 88, Minnesota 74.
[note: just learned Shaqquan Aaron is not eligible as of yet for Louisville. This changes nothing, except for how this preview now looks stupid like your face and your mom.]
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Fare thee Well, Zach Lofton
We hardly knew ye.
News broke last night that Lofton was dismissed from the Gopher basketball team for failing to live up to the expectations and obligations of the team. Who knows what that might mean, and speculation is of course rampant, both legit and all in good fun:
Maybe the reason will come out, maybe it won't, but the main thing is, as the second worst announcer in history likes to say, he gone.
It probably shouldn't be a huge surprise, given Lofton's behavior issues at this previous stop. It was also reported that his body language and behavior at the Gophers' open scrimmage on Sunday was somewhere between terrible and bizarrely horrible, so perhaps whatever prompted this move was already in motion, or perhaps that pushed everything over the top, but now signing him is a clear mistake with consequences both past and future. Wow that was one long run-on sentence. I need an editor.
One issue is 2015-2016 where Lofton was supposed to be able to step in right away and be a big-time scorer since both Dre Mathieu and Dre Hollins will be gone. Not like the team is going to bereft of guard talent with Nate Mason, Carlos Morris, Daquein McNeil, Kevin Dorsey, Dupree McBrayer, and Jarvis Johnson on board, but take a look at those names: as of right now only McNeil has played actual D1 college basketball. Again, not really too worried since Mason, Morris, and McNeil will have this season to learn and those three freshman should be fine, but it'd be nice to have Lofton around and know what you're getting - a moody gunner who can shoot and score. Hopefully somebody morphs into this role, although they can feel free to leave moody at the door.
Perhaps the bigger consequence, and yes hindsight is 20-20 they say, is that by using a scholarship on Lofton the Gophers ended up running out of space before Alex Illikainen had committed. Of course there is no guarantee he would have become a Gopher, but the fact that he chose the stupid Badgers very quickly after the Gophers used their last scholarship offer on Johnson is highly suggestive that he was down to Minnesota and Wisconsin. A choice between Lofton and Illikainen was probably a toss up, and now it's obvious which would have been the preferred outcome. A strong 2015 class backs a solid 2014 class, so losing one player won't hurt the team too much, even one as talented as Lofton. This also gives Pitino another scholarship for 2015, though he's likely lost a lot of momentum on anyone he was chasing given that the team was all full up at one time. I expect that will be banked for 2016 or for a transfer of some sort - hopefully a more reliable one than Lofton.
Here is the spot where I admit to being totally and completely wrong. Here is what I wrote when Lofton was first announced as a future Gopher. Whoops. I still maintain my stance that overall it's worthwhile taking a chance on talented players with questionable mental make-up, but in this case it clearly didn't work out. I said with a number of transfers out at Illinois State a lot of Lofton's problems were likely the coach's fault. I would like to retract that. I also said that if Lofton was acting up and acting like a general shithead that I trust Pitino would handle it. That he did.
That he did.
News broke last night that Lofton was dismissed from the Gopher basketball team for failing to live up to the expectations and obligations of the team. Who knows what that might mean, and speculation is of course rampant, both legit and all in good fun:
Sources: Zach Lofton introduced Asian Carp to Minnesota waters. Dismissed from Gopher bball team.
— jdmill (@jdmill) October 30, 2014
Zach Lofton thinks a hot dog is a sandwich. Dismissed from Gophers.
— Cthulu Skullson (@FrothyGopher) October 30, 2014
I can’t believe Lofton was dismissed for running an illegal railroad monopoly!!!
— mVAMPIREofDEADTHINGs (@MVofDT) October 30, 2014
Maybe the reason will come out, maybe it won't, but the main thing is, as the second worst announcer in history likes to say, he gone.
It probably shouldn't be a huge surprise, given Lofton's behavior issues at this previous stop. It was also reported that his body language and behavior at the Gophers' open scrimmage on Sunday was somewhere between terrible and bizarrely horrible, so perhaps whatever prompted this move was already in motion, or perhaps that pushed everything over the top, but now signing him is a clear mistake with consequences both past and future. Wow that was one long run-on sentence. I need an editor.
One issue is 2015-2016 where Lofton was supposed to be able to step in right away and be a big-time scorer since both Dre Mathieu and Dre Hollins will be gone. Not like the team is going to bereft of guard talent with Nate Mason, Carlos Morris, Daquein McNeil, Kevin Dorsey, Dupree McBrayer, and Jarvis Johnson on board, but take a look at those names: as of right now only McNeil has played actual D1 college basketball. Again, not really too worried since Mason, Morris, and McNeil will have this season to learn and those three freshman should be fine, but it'd be nice to have Lofton around and know what you're getting - a moody gunner who can shoot and score. Hopefully somebody morphs into this role, although they can feel free to leave moody at the door.
Perhaps the bigger consequence, and yes hindsight is 20-20 they say, is that by using a scholarship on Lofton the Gophers ended up running out of space before Alex Illikainen had committed. Of course there is no guarantee he would have become a Gopher, but the fact that he chose the stupid Badgers very quickly after the Gophers used their last scholarship offer on Johnson is highly suggestive that he was down to Minnesota and Wisconsin. A choice between Lofton and Illikainen was probably a toss up, and now it's obvious which would have been the preferred outcome. A strong 2015 class backs a solid 2014 class, so losing one player won't hurt the team too much, even one as talented as Lofton. This also gives Pitino another scholarship for 2015, though he's likely lost a lot of momentum on anyone he was chasing given that the team was all full up at one time. I expect that will be banked for 2016 or for a transfer of some sort - hopefully a more reliable one than Lofton.
Here is the spot where I admit to being totally and completely wrong. Here is what I wrote when Lofton was first announced as a future Gopher. Whoops. I still maintain my stance that overall it's worthwhile taking a chance on talented players with questionable mental make-up, but in this case it clearly didn't work out. I said with a number of transfers out at Illinois State a lot of Lofton's problems were likely the coach's fault. I would like to retract that. I also said that if Lofton was acting up and acting like a general shithead that I trust Pitino would handle it. That he did.
That he did.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Welcome Aboard Jarvis Johnson!
As I clairvoyantly stated in my welcome Jonathan Nwankwo post, the Gopher hoop team having just one open scholarship (in theory) for 2015 racheted up the pressure on at least one of the Minnesota boys with Jarvis Johnson committing to the Gophers today in a ceremony at De La Salle that went significantly better than the last one.
Johnson, the fourth Pitino commit for 2015, has fallen out of a favor a bit with the recruiting services post AAU season, dropping out of ESPN's top 100 and Rivals Top 150, but still ranks as the 103rd best player by 247 (17th point guard) and 168th by their industry composite number (28th PG). Johnson is a terrific fit in Pitino's offense as a super athletic point guard who excels at getting to the rim and should be, at worst, an average defender right from the get go with significant potential to excel in that department. He also brings the ability to get teammates involved and is the closest thing to a pure point guard who looks to be on the roster in 2015 and between Johnson, Nate Mason, and Kevin Dorsey they'll have three guys who can run an offense and handle the ball, and that doesn't address the depth when you add Daquein McNeil, Carlos Morris, Dupree McBrayer, and Zach Lofton on the wing. Sounds pretty good.
Being a Minnesota kid, Johnson has been a target of both the fan base and the school for quite sometime, and as much as I detest the "we must have all Minnesota kids" mentality it is nice to see one, and a highly ranked one at that, actually want to play for the Gophers. It also brings up some big ole questions about the other Minnesota kid. I find it hard to believe the Gophers would just stop recruiting Alex Illikainen, especially if he's given them indication that he's at least considering committing (all indications are the Gophers are still on the list and I think they flew out to his prep school to visit him this week), however at this point the Gophers don't have a spot for him if everything works out with Gaston Diedhiou. The good news is that this is big-time (relatively) college basketball, and these things have a way of working out in favor of talent. If Illikainen decides he wants to be a Gopher, he will be, one way or another.
If not, the Gophers still have a hell of a class that ranks somewhere in the low 20s nationally. That'll slide down some as more top kids start signing, but it should end up in the top 50 at worst and that's a major step in the right direction. Not to mention that the Gophers are now in a situation where their roster is full in the fall period and they may have to turn down a talented kid who wants to play here (they won't, but just having that conversation says a lot) rather than staring at open roster spots in the Spring and begging anyone with a pulse to come to Minnesota. That's pretty awesome.
I may have some minor concerns about shooting considering all four signees for 2015 have some questions about that part of their game, but it's obvious what kind of team Pitino is trying to build and all four fit the bill. And with Jarvis Johnson on board he has his Russ Smith.
Johnson, the fourth Pitino commit for 2015, has fallen out of a favor a bit with the recruiting services post AAU season, dropping out of ESPN's top 100 and Rivals Top 150, but still ranks as the 103rd best player by 247 (17th point guard) and 168th by their industry composite number (28th PG). Johnson is a terrific fit in Pitino's offense as a super athletic point guard who excels at getting to the rim and should be, at worst, an average defender right from the get go with significant potential to excel in that department. He also brings the ability to get teammates involved and is the closest thing to a pure point guard who looks to be on the roster in 2015 and between Johnson, Nate Mason, and Kevin Dorsey they'll have three guys who can run an offense and handle the ball, and that doesn't address the depth when you add Daquein McNeil, Carlos Morris, Dupree McBrayer, and Zach Lofton on the wing. Sounds pretty good.
Being a Minnesota kid, Johnson has been a target of both the fan base and the school for quite sometime, and as much as I detest the "we must have all Minnesota kids" mentality it is nice to see one, and a highly ranked one at that, actually want to play for the Gophers. It also brings up some big ole questions about the other Minnesota kid. I find it hard to believe the Gophers would just stop recruiting Alex Illikainen, especially if he's given them indication that he's at least considering committing (all indications are the Gophers are still on the list and I think they flew out to his prep school to visit him this week), however at this point the Gophers don't have a spot for him if everything works out with Gaston Diedhiou. The good news is that this is big-time (relatively) college basketball, and these things have a way of working out in favor of talent. If Illikainen decides he wants to be a Gopher, he will be, one way or another.
If not, the Gophers still have a hell of a class that ranks somewhere in the low 20s nationally. That'll slide down some as more top kids start signing, but it should end up in the top 50 at worst and that's a major step in the right direction. Not to mention that the Gophers are now in a situation where their roster is full in the fall period and they may have to turn down a talented kid who wants to play here (they won't, but just having that conversation says a lot) rather than staring at open roster spots in the Spring and begging anyone with a pulse to come to Minnesota. That's pretty awesome.
I may have some minor concerns about shooting considering all four signees for 2015 have some questions about that part of their game, but it's obvious what kind of team Pitino is trying to build and all four fit the bill. And with Jarvis Johnson on board he has his Russ Smith.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Welcome Aboard, Jonathan Nwankwo!
I sort of feel like he has one too many Ws in his name, but it doesn't matter because those are now our Ws as Jonathan Nwankwo committed to your favorite basketball team over the weekend after registering for an account on Gopher Hole during his official visit and chatting with fans all weekend, then breaking the news on the message board. He's a 6-10, 245 lb. center with a Big Ten ready body and a 7-2 wingspan who shores up the Gophers' big man situation in case things continue to go south with Gaston Diedhiou. Not that he's any kind of back-up plan, considering he ranks as the #17 center and #147 overall by 247sports, and #23/#214 by the industry composite and by all accounts is rising up the ranks.
His highlight videos all seem to be like "oh you don't want me to dunk this basketball? Well I am very strong and jumpy and I am going to dunk this basketball and you can't stop me." I watched nearly two minutes of a highlight video and I'm not seeing a lot of offensive skills, which isn't really true because being an unstoppable dunking machine is a skill, but you know what I mean. Plus, Nwankwo fits Pitino's type. And in this case I don't mean a super athletic dude, although he is, but I mean the late blooming type who is shooting up rankings and everyone who is supposed to be an expert says things like "great get for the Gophers" and stuff like that. Assuming these guys all work out it's a great thing. Of course it could also mean that Pitino is just getting over aggressive offering guys who aren't that good. We'll find out. Right now I feel good, and I still have trust in Pitino. Because he's so freaking sweet.
The three signings - Nwakwo, Kevin Dorsey, and Dupree McBrayer - leave the Gophers with one open scholarship for 2015 (again, depending on what happens with Diedhiou) which has some people all in a tizzy because both of the top rated Minnesota kids - Jarvis Johnson and Alex Illikainen - are still out there. Seriously though, who cares? I mean, I would love the Gophers to get one or both because they're rated in the top 100-150 range depending on where you look, but as far as them being from Minnesota? Big whoop.
The whole point of recruiting home town kids is that you're supposed to have an advantage in snagging them, but how's that been working out lately? Minnesota kids have always known they can string the Gophers along and if things don't break the way they hope use them as their fall back option, partially because the fan base is so rabid in "keeping Minnesota kids home" because well, that's how this state generally thinks (why do you think Jason Kubel and Matt Guerrier were signed by the Twins this year?). Rather than holding off on signing comparable players and holding out hoping the home town kids stay home, Pitino is signing whoever he likes who is willing to sign. According to rankings Alex Illikainen is better than Jonathan Nwankwo, but why take a chance on losing both just to satisfy some bizarre yearning to build the team out of all Minnesota kids? (this ain't hockey) After all, a bush in hand is worth two birds who may end up at other schools I always say.
This being (relatively) big time basketball, nothing is guaranteed so it's possible both Johnson and Illikainen end up in maroon and gold. If they both want to be Gophers they likely will with a surprise transfer opening up a slot or something along those lines - it's a reality of big-time (relatively) college sports, and I'm ok with it. In the meantime, however, assuming Pitino doesn't have a strong positional preference at this time this puts pressure on them both to hurry up and commit. If things stay strong at only 4 new players for 2015 that means only one of them can get in, which means the Gophers said no to a quality Minnesota player because he took too long to make a decision. That's a message I can get behind, so move your ass Amir Coffey.
As of right now the Gophers have the #23 class in the country according to 247sports, and the #5 class in the Big Ten. This will likely move down as more of the high profile programs continue signing players and fill out their classes, but it's a big step the right direction for the program. Potentially, I suppose, but I'll take it.
His highlight videos all seem to be like "oh you don't want me to dunk this basketball? Well I am very strong and jumpy and I am going to dunk this basketball and you can't stop me." I watched nearly two minutes of a highlight video and I'm not seeing a lot of offensive skills, which isn't really true because being an unstoppable dunking machine is a skill, but you know what I mean. Plus, Nwankwo fits Pitino's type. And in this case I don't mean a super athletic dude, although he is, but I mean the late blooming type who is shooting up rankings and everyone who is supposed to be an expert says things like "great get for the Gophers" and stuff like that. Assuming these guys all work out it's a great thing. Of course it could also mean that Pitino is just getting over aggressive offering guys who aren't that good. We'll find out. Right now I feel good, and I still have trust in Pitino. Because he's so freaking sweet.
The three signings - Nwakwo, Kevin Dorsey, and Dupree McBrayer - leave the Gophers with one open scholarship for 2015 (again, depending on what happens with Diedhiou) which has some people all in a tizzy because both of the top rated Minnesota kids - Jarvis Johnson and Alex Illikainen - are still out there. Seriously though, who cares? I mean, I would love the Gophers to get one or both because they're rated in the top 100-150 range depending on where you look, but as far as them being from Minnesota? Big whoop.
The whole point of recruiting home town kids is that you're supposed to have an advantage in snagging them, but how's that been working out lately? Minnesota kids have always known they can string the Gophers along and if things don't break the way they hope use them as their fall back option, partially because the fan base is so rabid in "keeping Minnesota kids home" because well, that's how this state generally thinks (why do you think Jason Kubel and Matt Guerrier were signed by the Twins this year?). Rather than holding off on signing comparable players and holding out hoping the home town kids stay home, Pitino is signing whoever he likes who is willing to sign. According to rankings Alex Illikainen is better than Jonathan Nwankwo, but why take a chance on losing both just to satisfy some bizarre yearning to build the team out of all Minnesota kids? (this ain't hockey) After all, a bush in hand is worth two birds who may end up at other schools I always say.
This being (relatively) big time basketball, nothing is guaranteed so it's possible both Johnson and Illikainen end up in maroon and gold. If they both want to be Gophers they likely will with a surprise transfer opening up a slot or something along those lines - it's a reality of big-time (relatively) college sports, and I'm ok with it. In the meantime, however, assuming Pitino doesn't have a strong positional preference at this time this puts pressure on them both to hurry up and commit. If things stay strong at only 4 new players for 2015 that means only one of them can get in, which means the Gophers said no to a quality Minnesota player because he took too long to make a decision. That's a message I can get behind, so move your ass Amir Coffey.
As of right now the Gophers have the #23 class in the country according to 247sports, and the #5 class in the Big Ten. This will likely move down as more of the high profile programs continue signing players and fill out their classes, but it's a big step the right direction for the program. Potentially, I suppose, but I'll take it.
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