Great win. Agree with the sentiment that although there were a lot of problems with the way we approached the 2nd half, fighting off that kind of rally from Providence, on the road, in a game that had some heat both ways, shows serious guts. We have finally increased the pace, and nobody is benefity from it more than Sampson and Jordan. Both seem unstoppable in transtion and are beaming with confidence in the half-court as a result. Fun to watch.
If we could eliminate (1) out of bounds plays for both teams, and (2) the time Phil Greene spends on the court, we'd have won the game by 30, as we had to be at least -20 in those situations. In all seriousness, if we are just going to throw the ball to halfcourt on every OOB play, we have to at least make sure to take away the opposition's primary option on their OOB plays. We gave Providence exactly what they wanted 4-5 times last night and that could be the difference in closer games. Small item that really needs to be tightened up.
Can't wait for Sunday.
In terms of the second half, I try not to be too analytical. How many teams consistently are able to sustain two halves of great basketball? Providence is a good team, on a decent roll, and I expected they'd have something to say about the outcome before it was over. They had a great second half run, because good teams don't fold. They ran out of steam, we firmed up - Sampson hit a huge jumper from the right baseline off a pretty dish from Jordan, and we stopped the bleeding. Providence did a really nice job of managing the clock in the last two minutes, making an impossible task look doable at times.
You make a terrific point and I comletely agree. The single most important takeaway from the second half is what you pointed out: a good Providence team made a run at home, and we held them off for a critical win.
But if I was going to slice it more finely I would make this one distinction: I didn't have an issue with Providence making a run at us (as you say, that's going to happen), but I didn't like us falling quasi-trap to the dredded "go away from what got you the lead in the first place". We got conservative, stopped pressing, and tried to milk a lead between the 16 and 8 minute timeouts. That resulted in 20 points in the first 18:17 of the 2nd half until we started making free throws, and it almost cost us the game.
I don't really agree with any team playing more conservtively with a lead (how many times have we seen it cost a game?), but we definitely aren't built to play that way. We have to go until the game is completely wrapped up.
To Lav's credit, he didn't wait for the 8 minute TV timeout, he called one of his own, got D'Angelo back in the game, and started to have us be the aggresor again at 69-63 with 8:12 to play and it never got closer than that.
