The unofficial online home for fans of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(02-21-2022 09:33 AM)nachoman91 Wrote:  

(02-21-2022 09:12 AM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(02-21-2022 08:15 AM)nachoman91 Wrote:  This is not a well coached team. I have not been impressed with the coaching all season and its getting worse as the season wears on. The defense is falling apart. They don't defensive rebound well at all. And this is a Mick Cronin level designed offense. No ball movement, no fluidity, too much one-one-five, guys jacking up bad threes. Little to no in-game adjustments offensively or defensively.

Wes Miller grades a C- this season at best.

I'm not off the Wes Miller bandwagon yet. He needs to get a team full of his guys with his full system in place. And all the basketball gurus out there that are a lot smarter than me seem to love him. But for this season he has not impressed.

Interesting. I've liked what I've seen offensively as far as what they are trying to do (I just think there are big roster flaws). This teams biggest issue offensively is they can't finish at the rim. THey are something like 40% on layups during conference play. It's not that they can't get then, it's that they don't finish through contact. They are jump shot dependent because they don't finish the other stuff. That to me isn't a coaching issue.

I think we've seen improved ball movement and shot selection over the last 5 games (and prior to the Newman injury we were seeing it in the 5 games prior). They scored 70+ in 5 straight games. Of course, they are 2-3 in that stretch which is killer. The defensive drop off from where they were prior to the Houston game and since the Houston game is staggering. I don't know what to think about that. I really liked how they were playing defense early, which was an enormous improvement from last year. For much of the season UC basically closed off the lane and made teams shoot contested jump shots over them. The dropoff on that end has been sudden and disappointing.

I'll bet if you looked at the advanced metrics you'd see that UC is scoring more because they're playing faster and thus have more possessions. It won't be because they are more efficient.

For example: UC ranks 167th in points per possession. That's worse than John Brannen's first year.

I think this team plays hard. But they just play bad basketball. The shot selection is horrible. There's way way way too many plays where DDJ or MAW or JD just goes 1-on-5. And part of the reason they can't finish around the rim is because our guards are penetrating and taking terrible off balance forced shots or they're trying to shoot over much bigger defenders. And yes, our bigs can't finish. Ado has no offensive skills at all and Koval/Hensley aren't strong and athletic enough.

Not really. They started playing faster the first ECU game and have been playing reasonably fast since then. They have been over a point per possession each of the last 5 games, including as high as 1.23 points per possession against WSU. The prior 3 games they were .87 or lower in points per possession. That 3-game stretch came right after the Newman injury. Prior to that they were coming off another good offensive 5 game stretch.

They've definitely improved on offense. The defensive dropoff has been crazy though.