rath v2.0 Wrote:Sykes' airhead pass leading to the easy basket to give them the lead by one was the death rattle, IMO.
I disagree. I watched the game last night and on the out of bounds pass, Bishop got shoved out of the way by Notre Dame's #42 (whoever that is). #42 scooped it up and got an easy layup. It was so blatant I was surprised it wasn't called.
I will recant my bad officiating comment. Watching it the first time, you get caught up in the game and want to blame someone - and the officials are always a good target.
My opinion after re-watching it is that UC doubled down in the first half on Harangody but managed to still cover the three point shooters. In the second half, they would double down, but weren't doing anything about the open man. Also, offensively, UC was making quick crisp passes and had good ball movement on offense.......in the second half, they resorted to alot of one on one - and basically bad shot selection. Vaughn was considerably horrible - he had like 4 or 5 unforced errors that were converted into points for Notre Dame, in the second half alone. Easily Deonta's worst game of the year.
Warren actually had some luck attacking the basket. He scored like 6 points driving into the low post, but had a couple of times he lost the ball.
And Harangody got most of his points from the FT line. He had a couple of good shots.......one where Adam was guarding him pretty well, and he turned and did a fade-away jump shot that swished. He also turned out of the double team and did a reverse layup to score. And then Kurz got double teamed in the low post leaving Harangody wide open under the basket, Kurz passed to him for an easy 2. But other than that...........Harangody traveled on that fast break layup he got..........and he made an ugly shot from just inside the FT line where he quickly turned and threw the ball toward the basket....it clanged across the rim, rolled around and went in......and Harangody was laughing with his teammates running down the court knowing it was ugly and lucky it went in. Everything going their way. He made a couple of shots like that. He mostly did a good job passing out of the double team or living at the FT line.
Even Biggie had good defense on Kurz late in the game. Kurz got the ball for a layup, Biggie put up his hands, Kurz jumped up with the ball, Biggie got his hands on the ball pushing down, Kurz started going back down from the peak of his jump and double pumped the ball against the backboard and it went in. Biggie just lowered his head in frustration.
The second half low post defense was actually pretty good. Harangody had to pass out of it most of the time. The frustration was with McAlarney and Zeller nailing all those wide open three's.
And our unforced errors just killed us.
Positives:
1. Low post defense is improved. Need to work on covering the three or recovering out of a double team.
2. Belton - gave hope that he can actually contribute
3. McClain - made a couple of short jumpers in the low post.
4. Score was worse than the actual game. Offense needs to keep up the good ball movement of the first half.
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Notre Dame Recap
