@Providence, Sat. Jan. 2, 3:30pm, FS1 & 570 AM
- Thread starter Knight
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Providence thoughts, such as they are:http://www.bigeastboards.com/
JackofVirginia
Active member
More signs of piss poor defense when Carthwright was left alone to pop two three pointers, went from 5 point lead to down one. It blows my mind when Balamou and Mussini go behind the pick and watch Dunn hit open threes.
Agreed with announcer Simpkins that Amar's foul against Bentil wasn't flagrant. Nice steady game again from Sima. Like Yakwe's athletic talent, needs to take jumper from foul line in.
beast of the east
Active member
In two Big East games, C Jones has logged just 15 and 18 minutes and didn't play particularly well. Too small a sampling to go out on a limb, but it appears that those declaring that Jones deserved major minutes last year a bit premature in harshly criticizing Lavin. Hope he reverses this slide, but I'm not too confident. Obviously if his minutes are shrinking the staff may not be too high on his ability to compete vs. the big boys.
B)
Yesterday he had 7 points and 6 boards in the 18 minutes he played. Not too shabby by any standards. Had he played 30 minutes at that pace he would have had a double double and we would be saying he is having a Dominic Pointer season.
Could it be the staff just want to see what they have in AA , Sima and Yakwe going forward and will allocate the bulk of the minutes to them ? Let them gain experience and grow ?
Yesterday he had 7 points and 6 boards in the 18 minutes he played. Not too shabby by any standards. Had he played 30 minutes at that pace he would have had a double double and we would be saying he is having a Dominic Pointer season.
Could it be the staff just want to see what they have in AA , Sima and Yakwe going forward and will allocate the bulk of the minutes to them ? Let them gain experience and grow ?
Every minute dom was off the floor was the worst of times for last year's team. Every minute CJ would have been on the floor dom would have been off or playing out of position. He played what he deserved and earned. Now if Sima was around last year that would have been nice.
beast of the east
Active member
Getting burned again and again doesn't show up in the box score. You made the very foolish comment of Lavin not playing Jones because he was focused on winning and making the NCAA's. So if you think Jone's play over the past 2 Big East games was good, why did the minutes drop from an average of 28 to 16.5. Well, in the Creighton game, in a 5 minutes sequence he got burned for 2 threes, lost his man twice for layups, and travelled. He did grab a rebound though, and still was deposited on the bench. You only look at the box score - which in basketball is a foolish thing to do. If Jones cannot compete against the big boys of the Big East, he will be watching lots of basketball this season despite a thin roster up front.
On this topic, a lot of old school coaches believe upperclassmen who have waited for the opportunity to play sitting behind older players be given a chance to show they don't belong on the court before they forfeit minutes to underclassmen. This could be Mullin's style, but it's too early to tell.
beast of the east
Active member
No. You play the players that give you the best opportunity to win. Mullin's objective is still to win every game. He isn't going to forfeit potential wins by not playing the guys who deserve to be on the floor. I know that you said that the Creighton game was the first game you watched all year. You can't analyze a game just by a box score, except by the final score. Even if you knew who Jones was guarding, you don't know how many times he was out of position, how many times he didn't switch, how many times he didn't box out, etc. I'm not proclaiming he did or didn't do any of those things, but failures that don't show up in the box score land players on the bench.
JackofVirginia
Active member
I don't like when he dribbles the ball upcourt during a press and passes weakly.
Since you asked, what I do actually is record the games and watch them in high definition, sometimes more than once, using slow motion, rewind and instant reply, all the while beguiled by the expert commentary of such basketball luminaries as Steve Lavin and Bill Walton and while I am doing that and afterwards consult various statistical metrics, including the box score, to see whether my first hand impressions comport with reality. And then after all that I assemble that information into a cohesive written presentation, much to the delight of my many readers and fans. As opposed to watching the game once, from one angle, from 50 feet away and believing that from that single eye witness viewing every detail of import has been revealed.
Question: if statistics are so misleading why is it that every sports program at every level from middle school to professional in every sport from field hockey to baseball keeps them and uses them to inform their approaches to the game. Why is it that certifiable sports geniuses like Bill Belichick and Mike Krwyzshewski employ dozens of informed professionals to watch game film and pore over statistics in an attempt to gain an advantage over their opponents. It seems to me that if you're right that its all a bunch of bushwa the industry could save billions of dollars by doing away with all those numbers and computers and analysis and so on and get you to sit in the stands and report back epiphanies such as Larry Washington is a starting point guard and D'Angelo Harrison is a thug and Durand Johnson is a chucker and Federico Mussini is the best shooter since Chris Mullin and all they'd have to do is keep you in M & Ms and sodee pop.
Disagree on what a generic coach should do and what Mullins objective is. When you literally have 0 chance to make NIT or NCAA (or likely any postseason tourney) a deserving senior like Christian jones certainly deserves some minutes BUT you build the program by developing your freshman and sophomores too. By game you may change your approach too - a close game that you can win and jones is playing very well - sure he may get the bulk of the minutes in the second half. Otherwise it may be better for the program to get freshman and sophomores experience and see what you have and what they are made of.
This is a very "different" year because of the circumstances and as many have said as fans of course we Hope for wins but more than that we should hope for development and improvement of the players and coaches regardless of record.