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(11-11-2022 07:26 PM)uabblazer2012 Wrote:  We are a team still getting to know each other. Tough lost be we will be ok.

Eh, live by the portal, die by the portal. AK is nearly exclusively using the portal to get his players, he needs to emphasize them knowing each other and how to play with one another by the time the season starts if this is how he’s going to recruit.

(11-11-2022 08:29 PM)FNblazer Wrote:  

(11-11-2022 07:10 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  My worst fears about Gaines have been realized..

He thinks he’s better than everyone, ball hogs, plays outside of the team, and is sloppy AF, all bc he gets gassed up for being an incredible athlete. Terrible start to the season for him.

It’s hard not to worry about your fear Answer—that Gaines might disrupt the chemistry and make a net negative impact. But it’s early and time will tell.

We’ll see. Early signs are really bad though. I thought he did show some very nice playmaking ability for teammates in the game against ASU though. Time to see what he’s made of.

He’s an A+ athlete and a C- player at best so far this season. Lazy, gambling, and sloppy on defense. Foul prone. Quick to get into tiffs with other players. Already ejected from a game. Can’t shoot to save his life. Plays totally out of sync with the rest of the team, tries to do too much, and tries to take over when he’s not good enough to do that. Worst of all, he acts and looks like he’s on his own team out there by himself. Showed no heart and no dog tonight Extremely disappointed in him so far.

I trust in AK though. These guys have barely played together. We can turn it around. But I absolutely do not like the early signs.

The final tally for Gaines 11 points on 12 shot attempts with 6 turnovers. Vomit inducing

(11-11-2022 08:39 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  The final tally for Gaines 11 points on 12 shot attempts with 6 turnovers. Vomit inducing

Yeah he really Westbrooked it tonight.

(11-11-2022 08:43 PM)BlazintheAtl1 Wrote:  

(11-11-2022 08:39 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  The final tally for Gaines 11 points on 12 shot attempts with 6 turnovers. Vomit inducing

Yeah he really Westbrooked it tonight.

That’s a very apt comparison for how he played tonight.

Thought we really missed Ertel and Quan tonight. You could count on Ertel getting you a good possession when you needed one. And you could count on Quan to clean up a lot of the long rebounds. Both of those things hurt us bad tonight.

And You could always count on them to play hard at a minimum. Not so much with this group from what I’ve seen.

The bright spots were Davis and lovan. They deserve to start IMO. Buffen and Jemison looked good, but they can’t stay on the court bc they’re absolute foul machines. Never seen players foul as much as they do.

Davis did some really good things but also missed 3-4 bunny opportunities by either missing the shot or not even getting off the shot because he dribbled unnecessarily 3 feet from the bucket. He also got lost on defense several times but I did like his activity level.

There was nothing I saw tonight that can’t be fixed with effort and attention to detail.

Only the second game of the season and the team is crashing from what I glanced

There's plenty of games ahead to play

I hope AK won't be the hardwood's Jimbo Fisher

Two regular season games. Not 22. Got some work to do.

(11-11-2022 09:19 PM)DuelingDragon Wrote:  Davis did some really good things but also missed 3-4 bunny opportunities by either missing the shot or not even getting off the shot because he dribbled unnecessarily 3 feet from the bucket. He also got lost on defense several times but I did like his activity level.

There was nothing I saw tonight that can’t be fixed with effort and attention to detail.

Davis jumped off the screen for me tonight. If he can start hitting shots around the basket, he’ll be a force.

Dang! We gave up 54 second half points, and couldn’t hit a thing during the second half. 54 second half points! The first 10 minutes of the second half did us in.

Statistically we shot the ball well from two (53%) and from the foul line (86%). We were a dismal 5-21 (24%) from three. We had 22 turnovers! We were called for 27 fouls!

What a disappointing loss. Really need to win the next five before the WVU game.

I’m 66 years old. I kind of enjoyed the broadcast, commentary, and entertainment. It was different.

Presbyterian is up next.

Just read on Twitter that the 22 turnovers were the most by UAB in the HCAK era, and the 27 fouls were the most as well in the HCAK era.

We were on pace to lose by 30 to a supposed peer team that we very well may be competing for a bubble spot against.

That was probably the worst half of basketball I’ve seen us play under AK - an absolute **** show.

A few positives are that we have looked good for stretches, it is still super early in the season, this team has a lot of experience and talent, And we have a good coach. The 40,000 foot view negative is that after tonight we are a LONG ways away from being the team we all thought we would be. I admittedly thought we would hit the ground running, and be a very good team From the beginning of the season. However, I clearly See after tonight that we will have to improve slowly and incrementally and gel as a team before we will hopefully reach our potential and our expectations.

Embarrassing.

(11-11-2022 10:50 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  We were on pace to lose by 30 to a supposed peer team that we very well may be competing for a bubble spot against.

That was probably the worst half of basketball I’ve seen us play under AK - an absolute **** show.

A few positives are that we have looked good for stretches, it is still super early in the season, this team has a lot of experience and talent, And we have a good coach. The 40,000 foot view negative is that after tonight we are a LONG ways away from being the team we all thought we would be. I admittedly thought we would hit the ground running, and be a very good team From the beginning of the season. However, I clearly See after tonight that we will have to improve slowly and incrementally and gel as a team before we will hopefully reach our potential and our expectations.

Embarrassing.

Agreed.

(11-11-2022 10:50 PM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  We were on pace to lose by 30 to a supposed peer team that we very well may be competing for a bubble spot against.

That was probably the worst half of basketball I’ve seen us play under AK - an absolute **** show.

A few positives are that we have looked good for stretches, it is still super early in the season, this team has a lot of experience and talent, And we have a good coach. The 40,000 foot view negative is that after tonight we are a LONG ways away from being the team we all thought we would be. I admittedly thought we would hit the ground running, and be a very good team From the beginning of the season. However, I clearly See after tonight that we will have to improve slowly and incrementally and gel as a team before we will hopefully reach our potential and our expectations.

Embarrassing.

What does this even mean? I know you lose your mind at the first sign of adversity in any UAB sport, but this is quite a stretch.

The rest I agree with. I also have zero doubt Kennedy will be riding these guys to play harder and reach their potential the rest of the season. The effort was embarrassingly bad at times. We even had a few chances to close the lead inside 3 minutes and just played wild and out of control. It felt like one of our guys just ran into three of theirs and hoped something would happen.

At the end of the day we cannot have Jelly and Gaines combining for 10 ast and 11 turnovers. If we can’t fix that, we will be in trouble against good teams.

Bertram was very active on the offensive end, and I actually think he can bring a lot to the team this year. I wish he would have at least attempted a shot. We need that second guy who can break a scoring drought, and it’s clear we didn’t have that figured out last night.

It means we looked worse in that half than I ever saw us look all of last season.

It was one game in a long season. A lot of our problems are fixable and I know we'll play better. My issues with this team are less related to how we played last night and more with the roster itself.

1. We basically have no bench when it comes to the back court. Toney hasn't improved much at all since he stepped on campus and after him we only have Budda who is a freshman.

2. Our front court is only effective offensively about 5 feet from the basket and in. There are no 4's or 5's with any shooting range. Lovan can play the 3 or 4 but he's no threat from the perimeter either. With really only two decent outside threats (Jelly and Brewer), teams are gonna do like Toledo and jam the paint to cut off driving lanes and angles for passes into the post.

Just as an example, WKU had 6 players that made 3's in their win at Eastern Kentucky Thursday night. They went 10-17 from 3pts.

AK can only play who is on the roster and it seems to have some serious holes.

(11-12-2022 08:43 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  It means we looked worse in that half than I ever saw us look all of last season.

The bolded part.

(11-12-2022 09:36 AM)BlazerGreen Wrote:  It was one game in a long season. A lot of our problems are fixable and I know we'll play better. My issues with this team are less related to how we played last night and more with the roster itself.

1. We basically have no bench when it comes to the back court. Toney hasn't improved much at all since he stepped on campus and after him we only have Budda who is a freshman.

2. Our front court is only effective offensively about 5 feet from the basket and in. There are no 4's or 5's with any shooting range. Lovan can play the 3 or 4 but he's no threat from the perimeter either. With really only two decent outside threats (Jelly and Brewer), teams are gonna do like Toledo and jam the paint to cut off driving lanes and angles for passes into the post.

AK can only play who is on the roster and it seems to have some serious holes.

I think we need to play Butta and take our lumps for a number of reasons at this point. He may be very important for us this season. I also think we need to get Bertram involved. I was disappointed to see him not get a shot up, but he was very active on the offensive end. We also have to find a way to keep Jelly out of defensive mismatches. That happened far too often last night.

I might move Buffen to our sixth man at this point. He brings a lot of energy, and that’s huge off the bench. It might need to be like Ertel was last year for a while.

I agree with what you are saying here. We don’t have a true PG once again, and backcourt depth is very thin.