Butler Game

[paultzman]

Home teams are 9-1 so far in conference play. St. John's only home loss so far.

It's always hard to figure out if your opponent played well, or your team helped them look good. I will say that both Seton Hall and Butler played very well against us. Butler outrebounded us 30-23, made 48% of their shots (we made 46%) but also made 58% of their 3's. I don't think even at full strength do we make 58% of our threes wide open in practice. Dunham was the kind of opponent you'd love to hate, but he played a near perfect game for Butler including being composed and quiet - all done without fanfare. their other guard, 5-11 Bartow, also played a perfect game as well - 15 pts and 6 rebounds, making perfect decisions to take it to the hole when we were napping. They are well coached, and them winning on our floor was no fluke.

Butler is not a bad team at all. They beat North Carolina and Georgetown already. That being said it was a bad loss for us at home. We will need to beat them now at their place to make up for it.

I suggest we look short term for the moment. Our 0-5, "peaking in February" start last year killed us. Lose to Nova & we likely will be 1-4, ( PC on road a tough one), not exactly a springboard to success. Beating Nova is critical. Hopefully the "drama" is behind us & we can demonstrate we are team deserving of a NCAA bid.

 

[logen]

Really appreciate the effort from the players on Saturday. Effectively playing with a 5 man rotation is almost not doable against this type of competition, and they almost pulled it off.

With Rysheed it's probably a W, and that's unfortunate knowing how precious every game is for this group's hopes this season. Need to go 11-5 to get to 11-7 in conference, and that's a tall order. A win against Nova would really inject some life back into this season, but will be making that attempt after two games in five days where the minutes ask of the starters was enormous. Nova had the same schedule, but has a much more balanced and typical 8-man rotation. We'll have to dig deep to summon what it will take to win this game, and the crowd could really do us a solid here.

Difficult to provide any critique under Saturday's circumstances, but the defensive approach the last two games has defied logic. Alex Barlow is probably not a Big East player. All you have to do is stay in front of him and he's going east/west all game. The only way he can beat you north/south is if you gamble, which plays right into his strengths of ball protection and good decision making.

With this in mind we spent almost 40 minutes on Saturday trying to pick his pocket 35+ feet from the basket, which lead to defensive breakdowns all over the place. And for what? He turned the ball over once, late in the game, on a bad pass. Zero turn overs off the dribble. Down the stretch he got two of the most uncontested layups he'll see all season, and the dagger from Dunham came because D'Angelo - probably tired of watching the uncontested layups - helped after yet another gamble at half court on Barlow.

I am all for us speeding up the game, but there is not a single team in the conference who is going to succumb to that kind of unintelligent pressure. You have to play solid defense first, and pick your spots to take chances within that context. If I were the staff, I would put a line of tape across the court 25 feet from the basket on both ends today. Make everyone play D inside that line. Because Arcidiacano is going to DESTROY us tomorrow night if we try the same nonsense on him we tried on Barlow and Sina/Gibbs the last two games.

That is an on the money post; we made scorers out of both Barlow and Sina simply because we could not stay disciplined but rather went for the grandstand block/steal against both of them.

 

[paultzman]

Really appreciate the effort from the players on Saturday. Effectively playing with a 5 man rotation is almost not doable against this type of competition, and they almost pulled it off.

With Rysheed it's probably a W, and that's unfortunate knowing how precious every game is for this group's hopes this season. Need to go 11-5 to get to 11-7 in conference, and that's a tall order. A win against Nova would really inject some life back into this season, but will be making that attempt after two games in five days where the minutes ask of the starters was enormous. Nova had the same schedule, but has a much more balanced and typical 8-man rotation. We'll have to dig deep to summon what it will take to win this game, and the crowd could really do us a solid here.

Difficult to provide any critique under Saturday's circumstances, but the defensive approach the last two games has defied logic. Alex Barlow is probably not a Big East player. All you have to do is stay in front of him and he's going east/west all game. The only way he can beat you north/south is if you gamble, which plays right into his strengths of ball protection and good decision making.

With this in mind we spent almost 40 minutes on Saturday trying to pick his pocket 35+ feet from the basket, which lead to defensive breakdowns all over the place. And for what? He turned the ball over once, late in the game, on a bad pass. Zero turn overs off the dribble. Down the stretch he got two of the most uncontested layups he'll see all season, and the dagger from Dunham came because D'Angelo - probably tired of watching the uncontested layups - helped after yet another gamble at half court on Barlow.

I am all for us speeding up the game, but there is not a single team in the conference who is going to succumb to that kind of unintelligent pressure. You have to play solid defense first, and pick your spots to take chances within that context. If I were the staff, I would put a line of tape across the court 25 feet from the basket on both ends today. Make everyone play D inside that line. Because Arcidiacano is going to DESTROY us tomorrow night if we try the same nonsense on him we tried on Barlow and Sina/Gibbs the last two games.

Solid post as usual SJU 15. Barlow observation is right on point.