RE: Holy Cross
I'm not going to say "I told you so" because quite frankly, those first couple exhibition games fooled me as well and I actually did have a brief bit of hope coming into this game but those hopes were quickly dashed.
Anyone thinking this was a "one time thing" needs to get that out of their system immediately. We were pushed around and trailed most of the game at home to a mediocre to poor Patriot league team that might not even go .500.
Where to begin? Bobby Hollywood needs to go or we might honestly have our first in house murder in
Ted Constant Center History. I can't take that d*uche yelling at me all game, it's just too awful for words. Seriously, that HAS to stop.
As for the team, sweet baby jesus that was some awful basketball. I can forgive the freshman turnovers and mistakes and I can even forgive Batten his sophomore mistakes because that was the first game we've played were he has been "the guy" before so I am ok with all that, but god d*mnit, Nick Wright might very well be the most disappointing player in ODU history. And no, that is not a freaking overstatement.
How many freaking times does he have to get stripped in the paint before Taylor sits him on the freaking bench???? He's a g*d damn red shirt senior!! He has no post moves and no touch whatsoever and he is a human turnover machine. Not only that, he can't box out properly and gets the ball ripped away from him anytime he gets it in traffic. I find it very hard to believe Anichebe is any worse than that! Of course, it doesn't hurt to keep him redshirted this season because we CLEARLY aren't going ANYWHERE this year, as I stated in my season predictions, I had us at 17-14 and I think I now might have been generous.
Now, as for Blaine freaking Taylor. What the hell is he possibly thinking forcing THIS TEAM to play half court, slow it down basketball???? Are you kidding me???? Nick Wrightis an undersized PF and I can see why Painter left NC State because he probably wouldn't have played but about 5 or 6 minutes a game on that team this year because he is NOT a Center, he's barely a PF and his touch around the rim is pretty bad.
If that's the best he can do against Holy Cross we might get destroyed by Delaware and Drexel, who have REAL big men. VCU, GMU, UVA and Murray State will absolutely run us off the court.
I understand we will just apparently never be a good free throw or 3 point shooting team under Blaine and that's fine, I get it, we play defense first and we did a good job, holding them to only 46 points, but jesus christ man, how on earth did we not press that freaking team once the entire game?????
We have quick athletes with fast hands all over the court and we didn't do a single press, trap, nothing the entire game until maybe the last minute.
We should have been trying to get as many easy baskets as possible with a full court press against a team that was slow and had a very small point guard that we could have doubled on and maybe ripped the ball away from at least a couple times and created some easy scores.
Playing a half court game all game long, with the current roster we have, is tantamount to throwing a basketball game. It really is criminal, I've long accused Blaine of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole but my good god, if that is going to be the gameplan all year long we might as well just not show up.
We are undersized in the frontcourt and will get absolutely crushed by teams like Drexel, VCU, Delaware etc. We might get crushed if we press them too, but at least it would utilize the strengths of our team, our athletic guards and their quick hands.
But running Larsen/Ross/Wright/Painter out there and trying to play half court set basketball is absolutely inexcusable.
And finally, let's get to my biggest pet peeve of all, Blaine Taylor's absolutely ABSURD substitution patterns. Jesus Blaine, these kids are college athletes, they can play more than 2 minutes at a time!!!
Not a single player on our team got in any kind of rhythm all night because they were constantly in and out, in and out, in and out. Not to mention our best scoring option, Batten, is riding the pine most of the night when it is absolutely clear to anyone with a brain that he is the guy we should be running our offense through!
Bacote should not be starting. A true freshman is starting over a redshirt sophomore who had dominant stretches last year, how does that make any sense??? I don't care if he is a slightly better defender, we need someone, anyone who can score the freaking basketball and Batten is our best pure scorer and he spent half the game on the bench! He played 21 total minutes while Bacote and Wright, the two worst guys out there tonight, played the most at 33 a piece.
Unreal how bad Blaine's substitution patterns and gameplan were tonight. Not pressing that team was absolutely inexcusable, not pushing the pace and immediately attacking the basket before they got a chance to set up their half court defense was also inexcusable but considering we have freshman guards I understand not pushing too much.
But hell, we turned it over 17 times in a half court offense so how much worse could it possibly be is we decided to press and run and gun?
We have athletes. We have athletic guards. We have a high flyer like Richard Ross. USE THEM, USE THEM, USE THEM, USE THEM, USE THEM, USE THEM, USE THEM!!!!!! Good dear lord, this team cannot freaking play half court basketball all season long or we will continue to lose games to bad teams on our own court and get crushed on the road.
I tried to warn people Blaine's piss poor recruiting was going to catch up to us. He hit the jackpot luckily by finding guys like Loughton, Lee and Hassell who had no other offers. But good lord, with a team with no bigs, his entire "philosophy" becomes utterly worthless and he proved he truly is a "one trick pony" tonight because plan A. didn't work and there was absolutely no plan B. to speak of.
I can forgive the freshman turnovers.......I can forgive the poor shooting (0-13 from behind the arc, 9-18 from the line) because we are all used to it.......what I can't forgive is a redshirt senior being as weak a player as I've ever seen at ODU and turning it over every time he touched it and then getting 33 minutes and leading the team in minutes played and what I also can't forgive is a coach who has no idea how to properly utilize the type of team he has by using them properly and playing a style that allows them to play to the best of their ability.
How we've gone from an NCAA tourney team to losing to Holy Cross at home and only scoring 45 points in 2 years is absolutely unreal. I guess when you have 5 guys drop out of the program, have "big men" like Anton and Nick Wright and have to be bailed out by transfers like Hill and Painter to even field a mediocre team, that's how you do it, but it really is unbelievable.
No wonder Blaine wanted to leave for Wyoming. He saw the writing was on the wall. Just wait until next year when Anton, Painter and Wright are all gone and our frontcourt consists of a redshirt freshman who is a project at best and an undersized PF/SF in Ross and ummm.....who else???
Sweet lord is the cupboard bare right now. We won't be playing in Richmond this year, so we were supposedly playing out "tournament in every game". So is Blaine now 1-8 in the NCAA tourney? lol
That was absolutely embarrassing. We've scored less points before, we've lost to worse teams before, we've been beaten at home before by teams we should have beaten, but we were absolutely outplayed, outhustled and deserved to lose to Holy freaking Cross at home. I'm not sure we've ever played a worse TOTAL game, when you consider the circumstance, in ODU history.
Blaine has completely squandered any capital we built with the Notre Dame victory. In 3 short years since that win, we went back to the NCAA tourney the next year and lost on a heartbreaker, then went to the CIT in a very disappointing season, are now staring a .500 year directly in the face (if we are lucky) in a crappy watered down CAA and god knows how bad we will be in our first year in a tough tough CUSA with no frontcourt whatsoever.
No I told you so's........but just think long and hard about where you think this program is currently headed.......think long and hard about a coach who has no idea about how to properly utilize the type of team he currently has........think long and hard about a coach who can't recruit a big man to save his life unless he lands a complete crapshoot on guys like Lee and Loughton or manages to find the hardest working man in basketball in Frank Hassell who transformed himself from a complete project to a beast by putting in a ton of hard work........think about a coach who can't win a big time recruiting battle for any player being recruited by even half way decent mid majors despite the fact that we are supposedly a "mid major powerhouse" ourselves.
Think about what you saw tonight and think about what we return next year and ask yourself.....are we headed in the right direction? Is the one NCAA tourney victory in 13 years and current state of the program enough to keep renewing Taylor's contract?
I'm very glad the big time donors are putting pressure on Wood to put pressure on Blaine to do a better job. And quite frankly, he's just not getting it done. We just signed another 6"7 lanky PF with very few other offers to fit into a halfcourt system supposedly built on muscle and beef and pushing teams around. How does that make any sense at all?
I'm sorry, I literally just cannot say enough about how bad tonight's game was from a coaching standpoint. I'm not mad at the players (other than Nick Wright who is supposed to be a senior leader and he's as soft as toilet paper) because they are being forced to play a system that they aren't built for. I'm mad because all "all hat, no horse" coach can't figure out that an athletic, quick team with fast hands but no beef cannot play a slow down halfcourt game all season long against teams that are bigger and stronger than us.
We just can't do it. This wasn't some fluke game. It's gonna be like this all season long unless Blaine miraculously figures out that we can't keep playing the same style we have been if he wants to keep winning. We just played ourselves out of the NCAA tourney in game 1 (but let's face it, that was ALWAYS a pipe dream). But I don't even see us as a CIT team this year. That was ugly ugly basketball and unless we change the way we play, you guys better get used to it.
|
