GDT: SLU v. NC State

[cheeseman]

10 hours ago, Dr. Holly Hills said:

Just got done watching on replay.  Awful 2nd half.  I literally said out loud that ford should probably be in the locker room focusing on guarding the 3 instead of arguing with the refs because I doubt they miss all those wide open 3s in the 2nd half…

did we scout this team?  Because their strength was guard depth and on the ball defense and that’s exactly what crushed us.

also, our defense is so bad.  They look lost half the time.  I just don’t get it.

Hallelujah!  Holy sh#*!  Where’s the Tylenol!?

Normally an assistant coach does the scouting.  Now the next question is who hired the assistants who apparently did not do a good job of scouting - that's right TF.  Now once the scouting report is done then TF is the one who is responsible for deciding the game plan.  We all know what the elephant in the room is - TF but lets not be negative.

[billikenbill]

Aw heck, we’re going 13-5 in the league, lose in the A-10 semis, get that all-important 21st win and Ford’s extension will be in the mail. Once again, all will be right in Billiken world!!

BTW, don’t look now but the 12 pt. loss to NC State allowed us to climb 3 spots in kenpom to 196. Once we knock off Loy-Chi, we’ll zoom past the Steel 6 of LaSalle. Pow!!

[cheeseman]

6 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Our problem seems to stem from that noted inability to adjust ..... anot not so much defensively.  We get shut down offensively in the second half.  Stop me if you've heard this before ...... get out to (large) halftime lead and see it all evaporate almost immediately in the second half.  Many nights, it a double-digit lead; last night it was only three points.  The opposition seems to be able to immediately decipher our strengths at half time and then adjust right away.  Since we have no scorer who can create his own shot and score, we miss a few, they make a few, we start to press and panic, and boom, we are on the short end.  Ford's entire offensive scheme seems predicated on that gawd-awful weave.  Last night, NCState's guards were so physical that they manhandled Medley, Meadows and Hughes all over the back court and then the frontcourt.  We were trying to start our pitiful offense at the halfcourt line!  Zhang had a few high post posts well outside the three point arc.  NCState knew if you shut out Jimerson, we are in deep trouble.  

Not once did we set picks or screens to help the inbound ball receiver.  Not once did we run at Burns and force him to pass the ball out (well, maybe once and they got a three out of it).  Ford (and his teams) do what they do and that is it.  We don't have anyone we can rely to get us a score when we need it.  

I think NCState will be a bottom feeder int he ACC when all is said and done.  As Mrs. Taj said, that game was painful to watch.  

What usually happens even if you have good players is that a coach who has deficits ends up getting out coached as he moves up in competition.  We saw this with Matheny and the Cardinals when he took over. He had good players - good enough to win a WS but every time he came up against a very good coach in the playoffs he got out maneuvered.  We wasted that talent.  Same with TF - he had good players here but could not deliver because as he moved up the ladder of competition the opposing coaches were smarter and he ends up dropping the ball.

[TheA_Bomb]

12 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Our problem seems to stem from that noted inability to adjust ..... anot not so much defensively.  We get shut down offensively in the second half.  Stop me if you've heard this before ...... get out to (large) halftime lead and see it all evaporate almost immediately in the second half.  

It is a trend. I want to look back at scores and validate my assumption.

We're good enough to do well in the first half then collapse. You can say it's lack of adjustments. Which is true but I think there's even more to it. Maybe it's the personality of the players Ford recruits,maybe it's the way they run practice. It's not just 1 thing we can point to besides the coach.  If he was in his 5th year of being a grand head coach you could say he's still learning. But 27th season? I don't think he's going to improve.

[billikenfan05]

16 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Injuries happen.  We just have no depth and the talent is weak to begin with.

Not on this level.

[TheA_Bomb]

1 minute ago, billikenfan05 said:

Not on this level.

I think this assumption needs to validated too. Is there a site that tracks player injuries?  This could be observer bias as we pay more attention to SLU than other teams.

[3star_recruit]

Once enough pressure is applied we have a propensity to turn the ball over.  Teams usually turn up the pressure in the second half.  The only remedy to that is to have 1) two guys on the floor who can handle the ball against pressure  2) Have enough passing on the floor to punish teams once you break the pressure.

This is not a good passing team.  Even after Medley has more experience and Meadows is healthy, that will continue to be an Achilles heel.  Those are the guys we rely on to handle the ball against pressure and they are passing to poor passers who don't punish the defense.  Yuri was able to mask the poor passing of his teammates the past two years with his own absurd assist numbers.

That's the bad news.  The good news is: with a healthy Parker I believe we will be one the top 3 scoring teams in the conference by season's end.  In most games, Parker, Jimerson and Big Brad will have an advantage against their opponent.

[slufan13]

NC State isn't good but I'm not terribly upset with a 12 point road loss to an ACC team. I know that's simplifying things and we should be able to compete with a bottom tier ACC team but it's not the end of the world. How we performed in the second half is the very discouraging thing though. Again, Ford gets his guys to play hard. Level of effort/intensity is important but it can only take you so far. There are other glaring deficiencies that eventually take over.

Getting Parker back will make a difference although I definitely think it's going to be a battle to have him back anywhere near 100% healthy. Even if you look at a guy like Kwamain who I think broke his foot preseason in 2012, he was good, but not himself once he came back. It's just a really tough injury for a basketball player to come back from. 

Brad, Parker, and Jimerson are a heck of a trio (offensively). There are some solid supporting pieces too. But this team is awful defensively and there isn't much "team" offense. 

I haven't paid a ton of attention to the rest of the A10 this year but if I had to guess, we are looking at somewhere between a 7th-11th place finish. I think there's enough individual talent to avoid the bottom 4. But just not enough to get any sort of favorable finish heading into Brooklyn. I also can see this being a team that beats one or two of the top teams in the conference only to lose to the bottom 2 teams as well. 

[ACE]

Gibby 0-5 from 3 and 1-8 overall including a missed bunny, but the killer was the turnover on the press in the corner with about 10 minutes to go, we were only down by 4, they hit a 3 off that turnover and floodgates opened. A 5th year senior has to step up on the road against an ACC team if you are gonna have a chance.

[slu92]

If Fred and BoT aren’t putting together a short list for AD and a new coach right now this program is truly cursed by stupidity. I hear so many saying once they get healthy watch out, going to be a good team, etc. I’m sorry I don’t see it or expect it to happen. Parker is a fine player but on a decent team he’s coming off the bench, here he is SLU’s overhyped version of LeBron. So not fair to the kid. Typical for the AD to over promise and under deliver. He’s never been called out, ever at slu by higher ups. I guess we will watch what happens during conference play but I don’t care if our entire team is healthy, we still lose a lot of games in A10. Not ACC, SEC, B10…..A10. The let’s wait and see approach on Ford and May is about  as realistic as when this team getting healthy it’ll be a force to recon with. Fantasyland.

[3star_recruit]

6 minutes ago, ACE said:

Gibby 0-5 from 3 and 1-8 overall including a missed bunny, but the killer was the turnover on the press in the corner with about 10 minutes to go, we were only down by 4, they hit a 3 off that turnover and floodgates opened. A 5th year senior has to step up on the road against an ACC team if you are gonna have a chance.

I can pretty much predict which teams Jimerson is going to have a horrific game against.  His weaknesses are his weaknesses.  I've learned to live with them.  He has enough 20-point games against other teams to make up for it.

[DirtyRican]

13 minutes ago, ACE said:

Gibby 0-5 from 3 and 1-8 overall including a missed bunny, but the killer was the turnover on the press in the corner with about 10 minutes to go, we were only down by 4, they hit a 3 off that turnover and floodgates opened. A 5th year senior has to step up on the road against an ACC team if you are gonna have a chance.

I like Ford, I want him to be the guy but I understand he might not be.  This however is hard to blame him for.  Your best player has an off game on the road against a team with a pulse you will not win.  Ford didn't go 1-8 last night.

[Cowboy II]

23 minutes ago, ACE said:

Gibby 0-5 from 3 and 1-8 overall including a missed bunny, but the killer was the turnover on the press in the corner with about 10 minutes to go, we were only down by 4, they hit a 3 off that turnover and floodgates opened. A 5th year senior has to step up on the road against an ACC team if you are gonna have a chance.

-multiple things wrong with that turnover include a pass into the corner (again, didn't seem like we were prepared for their pressure even though CFord mentioned it pregame), a pass to a non-ballhandler and TJH not going to the pass but his movement was to the other basket allowing the steal and to me this last point might be the most egregious as it could have overcome the other deficiencies 

-to add insult to injury, their make got the crowd going

[Dr Bird]

You need to attack pressure.   We are too passive.  Remember Yuri making a full court pass after an opponent made basket to a streaking Gibby for a layup?  I haven't seen an attempt all year.  Everyone just jogs down the court.  Very boring.

[billikenfan05]

3 minutes ago, Dr Bird said:

You need to attack pressure.   We are too passive.  Remember Yuri making a full court pass after an opponent made basket to a streaking Gibby for a layup?  I haven't seen an attempt all year.  Everyone just jogs down the court.  Very boring.

I agree. I don't know if we have a guy that can really do that. We also did something adjacent to it against LATech. They ran that full court zone trap and we were able to find a man at the arc. We just didn't keep attacking toward the basket. 

[billikenfan05]

25 minutes ago, DirtyRican said:

I like Ford, I want him to be the guy but I understand he might not be.  This however is hard to blame him for.  Your best player has an off game on the road against a team with a pulse you will not win.  Ford didn't go 1-8 last night.

If you are serious about a double bye, you have to put together a team that can collectively make up for your best player's off night. And I won't entertain the injury excuse. Dayton is cooking without Mali Smith. 

[DirtyRican]

1 minute ago, billikenfan05 said:

If you are serious about a double bye, you have to put together a team that can collectively make up for your best player's off night. And I won't entertain the injury excuse. Dayton is cooking without Mali Smith. 

I don't care what you entertain, lol.  I was just talking about last night and not the roster situation as a whole.  

[Soderball]

1 minute ago, billikenfan05 said:

If you are serious about a double bye, you have to put together a team that can collectively make up for your best player's off night. And I won't entertain the injury excuse. Dayton is cooking without Mali Smith. 

It's just the same tired Ford defense -- from the same people that used to defend Crews. Look at the post history.

Same people, same excuses, same lame performance.

Crews' worst teams both won over 10 games. Booooo.

[billikenfan05]

14 minutes ago, DirtyRican said:

I don't care what you entertain, lol.  I was just talking about last night and not the roster situation as a whole.  

Context is necessary. 

[ACE]

11 minutes ago, DirtyRican said:

I don't care what you entertain, lol.  I was just talking about last night and not the roster situation as a whole.  

In game threads, we're not allowed to talk about injuries or poor player performances - especially if it is Gibby or Hughes Jr. (although dumping on Yuri was totally cool) - these are all just "excuses." Every topic must circle back to fire Ford, because we haven't heard it enough.

[cheeseman]

57 minutes ago, slu92 said:

If Fred and BoT aren’t putting together a short list for AD and a new coach right now this program is truly cursed by stupidity. I hear so many saying once they get healthy watch out, going to be a good team, etc. I’m sorry I don’t see it or expect it to happen. Parker is a fine player but on a decent team he’s coming off the bench, here he is SLU’s overhyped version of LeBron. So not fair to the kid. Typical for the AD to over promise and under deliver. He’s never been called out, ever at slu by higher ups. I guess we will watch what happens during conference play but I don’t care if our entire team is healthy, we still lose a lot of games in A10. Not ACC, SEC, B10…..A10. The let’s wait and see approach on Ford and May is about  as realistic as when this team getting healthy it’ll be a force to recon with. Fantasyland.

Basically we lose games in the A10 with a good roster.  Why do you think we never finish higher than 4th and that usually requires some tie breaking oddity.  I think people are thinking about the WY game where Parker was killing them before the injury and they hope with him back we will be some offensive juggernaut especially with Brad.  The problem is if you are counting on out scoring your opponent every game then you will be disappointed especially if you have a porous defense.  Every good coach says your offense flows out of your defense.  So our poor defense will also hamper our ability to score.  Catch 22

[slu92]

54 minutes ago, DirtyRican said:

I like Ford, I want him to be the guy but I understand he might not be.  This however is hard to blame him for.  Your best player has an off game on the road against a team with a pulse you will not win.  Ford didn't go 1-8 last night.

In past 8 seasons….saw these stats on X last night.

0 tops 25 wins

0 at large bids

0 A10 regular season championships

0 wins on road @ VCU and Dayton

7-17 overall against VCU and Dayton

Had one team get hot over a 4 day tournament to make NCAA where they went on to get bounced first round. 
 

Totally agree Ford didn’t play last night but the buck ends with him, I wanted him to be the guy too. These stats are damning. $2.5 million a year what’s the ROI? 

[slu92]

16 minutes ago, ACE said:

In game threads, we're not allowed to talk about injuries or poor player performances - especially if it is Gibby or Hughes Jr. (although dumping on Yuri was totally cool) - these are all just "excuses." Every topic must circle back to fire Ford, because we haven't heard it enough.

It does go back to fire Ford because he’s the one who created this mess. All roads good or bad lead back to the $2.5 million a year coach of the Billikens. Who else is to blame the players who were put in this position who aren’t talented enough or the people/person who put them in position? 

[gobillsgo]

20 minutes ago, ACE said:

In game threads, we're not allowed to talk about injuries or poor player performances - especially if it is Gibby or Hughes Jr. (although dumping on Yuri was totally cool) - these are all just "excuses." Every topic must circle back to fire Ford, because we haven't heard it enough.

Only thing that’s gonna fix this program, unfortunately. Makes sense for most topics to circle back to it.

[ACE]

The previous two posts prove my point...