Post season look at the Cougars
In multiple ways, the Cougars season looks terrible. There weren't many wins, that’s true.
But that doesn’t tell the complete story of what I watched this season.
First, they had a new coach and an almost entirely new team. Second, they had an impossibly hard non con schedule loaded with completely out of reach games. Third, there were a number of injuries on an already slim roster. Some starter was out nearly every single game. Those are some of the unavoidable parts.
Now, some of them problems the team simply didn’t overcome. First, their offense was just bad. They were running a pretty simple offense that wasn’t all that effective. Some of that is just a new team and coaches and not having players used to each other and not having developed some more complex sets that might be harder to defend against.
Second, it was a poor shooting team. I’m sure some of that ties in with the offense I described above. They weren’t able to get great shots, so that lead to poor shooting team. But without a true 5, that also lead to a lot of jump shots, and a lot less shots around the rim. Big men sometimes have some really high shooting percentages, so some of the total shooting percent stems from lack of a big man who is getting shots at the rim and at least a few easy put backs each game.
Offensive rebounding was not good. Again, running an offense mostly on the perimeter, you wont get as many offensive rebounds, ditto with all the wild drives into the lane…that leads offensive guys to back up a step and clear out a little and almost never have great rebounding position. I’d say the team got beat in offensive rebounding in all but a few games, if not every game.
Inconsistency was an issue too. Not sure how to fix that. It seems like they would play well part of a game, then start playing very poorly long enough to get in a big hole, and have fight annd claw to get back into the game and keep it close. But they weren’t able to play too many complete game where I felt like they were really hitting on all cylinders.
While offense was a problem, the defense was actually pretty stout. It may not show in the overall season stats because of the tough non con schedule, but for the most part, and particularly in conference, defense was mostly solid and carried the team at times. Also, they were a good shot blocking team and got a lot of steals. Those are stats I’d say they stick up favorably in in a majority of conference games.
The double edge sword was a lack of a true go to guy on offense. It was never clear who had the hot hand sometimes. There wasn’t a standard go to guy. There were a lot of different leading scorers over the course of the season, but no one was really consistent game to game. Jalen Forrest did start to take that role, but later in the season. But as soon as he had some big game, Quincy Allen was back in the lineup, and once he got in rythym he was taking on a larger scoring roll. But it didn’t seem to ever quite compound enough to ensure consistency overall.
Considering the the slim win count, the Cougars were in many of the games, particularly conference games. A few may have gotten out of hand late, but even then, more often than not the Cougars were within reach of most games. They beat the league runner up, and took champion CCSU down to the wire late in the season.
If they can hang on to most players, and add a few new guys, I think the Cougars will take a big step forward next season.
With a bit easier early schedule with some more winnable games on it, possibly a few non D1 home games like many teams have, I think they will show big progress next season. That will show in the win column and the league standings.
(This post was last modified: 03-09-2025 03:08 AM by Todor.)
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