Minnesota, Fri. Nov. 18, 9pm, BTN/570AM

[Section9]

After three games I'm sure our future opponents have gone to school on the two-man offensive bandwagon. This is in no way a criticism of the dynamic duo, just an observation that every decent team, including our conference foes, are going to be gearing their defenses to stopping our backcourt. Now there are going to be games when they'll be able to score and we'll win our fair share (15), but we need to get other options on the offensive end from our frontcourt and Fed/Freud.

That being said, it is way way too early for anybody to be pushing the panic button. I plan on sitting back and watching the fun and games, just remember what last season was like by comparison.

Oh is it not too much to ask for just a tad more on the defensive end?

 

[Class of 72]

If you look at Whitehead, he had a lot of games like Lovett did against Minnesota. That is the nature of a scorer. If we can improve our defense, we will improve. Lovett and Ponds are real good.

Respectfully, regarding Whitehead, so what? Going outside the offense as a point guard is not good basketball, nature of a scorer or not.

Agree. This is why I said pre-season that I thought Seton Hall would be good and was under rated. Whitehead great talent, chemistry killer. If we had played any defense and played the team ball we did in the first 3 games, and still lost I'd have been a lot happier and it would have bode well for the future. I love that Ponds and Lovett can score effectively. That one shot from the corner by Ponds was amazing. But to be a good team we can't be a Jarvis style team that relies on one guy. Big reason for that is simply that Jarvis taught defense. Our guys aren't playing any.

I agree our defense is a work in progress but this is a team that relies on 3 guys for the bulk of the scoring and they did their job against the Gophers. In reality, it WAS one player that beat us in freshman Amir Coffey. We won't come across many 6'8 guards who can simply post up our shorter guards. This was as much on the coaches as the players. Mullin should have dedicated a player to preventing Coffey from getting the ball so easily. Without his record 30 points we win the game. This loss, as will be a few future losses, will have more to do with coaching inexperience than player inexperience.

 

[mjmaherjr]

If you look at Whitehead, he had a lot of games like Lovett did against Minnesota. That is the nature of a scorer. If we can improve our defense, we will improve. Lovett and Ponds are real good.

Respectfully, regarding Whitehead, so what? Going outside the offense as a point guard is not good basketball, nature of a scorer or not.

Agree. This is why I said pre-season that I thought Seton Hall would be good and was under rated. Whitehead great talent, chemistry killer. If we had played any defense and played the team ball we did in the first 3 games, and still lost I'd have been a lot happier and it would have bode well for the future. I love that Ponds and Lovett can score effectively. That one shot from the corner by Ponds was amazing. But to be a good team we can't be a Jarvis style team that relies on one guy. Big reason for that is simply that Jarvis taught defense. Our guys aren't playing any.

I agree our defense is a work in progress but this is a team that relies on 3 guys for the bulk of the scoring and they did their job against the Gophers. In reality, it WAS one player that beat us in freshman Amir Coffey. We won't come across many 6'8 guards who can simply post up our shorter guards. This was as much on the coaches as the players. Mullin should have dedicated a player to preventing Coffey from getting the ball so easily. Without his record 30 points we win the game. This loss, as will be a few future losses, will have more to do with coaching inexperience than player inexperience.

agree with most of what you say but just as Coffey beat us if we played even some semblance of a defense we would have won even if Coffey got most of his points when you factor in how many fast break points they got.

That was the thing that bothered me the most. Not even closing out the 3 point shooters which we never have seemed to do the last year and a half but not even remotely hustling back on D. Simply no excuse for not getting back and preventing all those fast break points