Hey all,

here are my two cents.

on defense, we were not very consistent. There would be stretches where we would fill the passing lanes and give St Francis's players fits. but, there were also a lot of breakdowns. We missed Riley in the middle, but it also seemed like Ward, Okoloji, Price and Nazione (the baseline players in the '3' of the 2-3 zone) were up higher than normal. that allowed a lot of passes to big #50 underneath the basket for St Francis. they had a lot of success sneaking him down the baseline. Lee was very active in the zone, but he also ended up behind the play too often. St Francis also deserves credit for some nice passing. I think if they would have played #33 instead of either #23 or #30 the game would have been even more close.

on offense, there was good movement around the perimeter. Lee, in particular, was very good about moving the ball before driving to the hoop. there were a lot of possessions with 4-5 passes. that's an improvement over the typical Murphy offense. we'll see if that continues against better teams. i'm still worried that we will only score on the break, 3s or iso plays for Lee and Talley.

Alvano looked composed to me, but he still didn't spark the offense the same way that Talley does. the difference in scoring ability between the two is striking. If Alvano does end up as a starter this year, Talley should still get 30+ minutes/game. anything less than that doesn't make sense to me.

i think we'll see Price at the 3 more often than the 2. it doesn't seem like he is able/willing to drive to the hoop, and our offense desperately needs that from the 2.

Our centers all have bad hands. Say what you will about Riley (lots of warranted criticism), but he had great hands. there were so many rebounds yesterday that should have been ours, but instead bounced off the hands of Ajayi or Samuels to a St Francis player.

i think we'll go as far as Lee's offense takes us this year. we'll need him to be a consistently elite scorer to have a shot at winning the MAC. he has the talent, he just needs to use it consistently.