jjray Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Sloan picked up an early 3rd foul in the 2nd half and coach went to JJ who had not played in the 1st half but posted very solid minutes in the 2nd half on the defensive end. He battle Pittsnagle on the block and held his own. I much prefer seeing him to Varner and, I believe, JJ got more minutes than Varner in the 2nd half despite Ross starting. Frericks again played very few minutes in the 2nd half, no more than 5. At one point, JJ and Izik were playing the 4/5 and I liked what I saw out this tandem there tonight although WVa did not bring beaf in the post (although the WVa Fisher was a force scoring from the paint). With Frericks limited to playing time due to the asthma, I suppose coach is going to wait another 6 games and hope Ian brings some help in the front court. IMHO Ross should be limited to 15 minutes a game. IO and JJ have to play more at 4/5 while Frericks battles the asthma thing and we wait for Ian. After tonight's game, JJ might officially be out of coach's dog house. He had JJ in the game down at crunch with a few minutes left when we still in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidnark Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Since Deiner graduated, I haven't really stood on my soapbox and shouted out at any particular player, but Varner is sure doing his best to earn some shouts. Standing still with your arms in the air and allowing guys to take uncontested five footers is not good defense. Crashing into your teammates is not good rebounding. Missing the rim by two feet on open threes is not good shooting. I realize it is not Ross's fault; Romar brought him in, and Brad elects to play him. Ross is giving a complete effort, but he is just too limited in ability. Hopefully, by the end of the month JJ and Ian will be getting the bulk of the minutes off the bench in the post. I will give some credit to WV. They defended well, hustled, and shot the ball well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basketbill Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 nm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetorch Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 I don't think Frericks asthma was keeping him on the bench. Every time he was in WV put their inside guys on the perimeter and he is just too slow to handle mobile big men. Despite others on this board who believe Ross is a great hard working player, I have to say that enough is enough. Play JJ, we know what Ross can do and that is very little. WV is not that strong in the post but they ate up Ross. The only thing Ross brings to the game is 3 pt shooting. Otherwise he is hurting the team. Its great that he tries hard but at some point skill is needed and he has none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonka Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 I second that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WV_Billiken Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 I was at the game in Charleston and Frerick was definitely having problems. Everytime he went to the bench he immediately used his inhaler. He was clearly having breathing problems. This was the first time I saw the Billikens play this year and based on what I saw, the Billikens will have to win games with defense. We won't see much scoring in the paint as far as I can tell. West Virginia is not real physical but we had a tough time handling their big guys. Hopefully the Greek kid can help us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schasz Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 I'd have to think that Coach Soderberg made his points with Johnson, and it appears from several of the posts that this kid is coming around and responding to Coach's tactics. Hopefully, this will mean more and more minutes for him because from a pure athletic standpoint he wins hands down over RV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 fisher played a solid game. drejaj played a solid game. reggie started slow, but had a nice finish. sloan hustles his butt off and makes things happen. our problems do not lie with these young men. after that it goes down hill fast. one has to admit that each of varner, johnson, izik and frericks has shortcomings. it appears johnson has the most athletic ability, but twice in an effort to play hustling defense, he ran out straight to his man and sure enough his man beat him baseline. the correct procedure which i thought used to be taught about the freshman level, is to approach your man on the wing from an arc from the baseline thus if he drives, he most likely is headed back to your help defense. my point is, now that justin is apparently working harder, he now needs to work smarter. frericks had a couple of just stupid fouls. and unusual for him missed some bunnies. that said, the almost freaklike long armed fischer kid they had on the inside had them all spooked. no one was shooting their regular shot on the inside. izik was horrible. i now think of bonwich's question last week when he asked if maybe we shouldnt be thinking of seke when watching izik. we have seen flashes of brillance, but not tonite. he didnt do much of anything right. it spoke volumes when sloan fouled out and brad sent in the rarely used and inexperienced johnson instead. varner works his tail off, but as i have said before, left to play long stretches gives the opposing coaches time to direct their offensive attacks right at him. i agree if his stretches were limited to maybe two 3 or 4 minute appearances per half, he could be pretty effective. yeah he had an airball, but he also had a few nice looking shots as well. he is probably our best outside shooter of izik, frericks johnson and himself. but no argument from me that 30+ minutes of ross isnt going to spell success. those hoping the magic formula is going to be the eligibility of ian, are in for a disappointment i fear. right now, the best hope imo is for johnson to continue to improve and work hard and for izik to snap out of it. at this point, i am not convinced we have the frontcourt to finish much better than 500 at best. if we couldnt play credibly vs pittsnoogle and fischer, saturday has the makings of ugly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetorch Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Zona plays a little different than these guys. Channing is their big man and he has a straight up post game. I think frericks can push him around. I like our matchups against Zona more than the ones tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 i give lute more credit than that. plus, the level of talent will be about one million times that of the wva team tonite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bauman Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 I agree with many of the post re our shortcomings on the front line, but what concerned me even more was the reluctance of a "MP type" of player at the end of the game. It was painful watching a team behind by 6-9 pts. passing the ball all over the court because no one seemed to want to take a shot-it looked like they were all looking for MP to show up and take the shots. I'm not suggesting they throw up prayers, but they passed up many fairly open shots at in the last 2 minutes of the game. Someone has to step up and want to score w/o all 5 players looking for the other guy to do it. Overall, I don't think we should be too upset over a road loss to a Big East team this early in the season when we field a team with little experience playing together. In spite of another bad shooting half, we hung tough and stayed close. Although I look for us to get better as we play more games together, we all knew that this is not the most talented group of players to represent SLU. As JJ and Reggie get more comfortable in their roles, this hardworking group should continue to get better as the season progresses. Facing our first real competition of the year, and on the road, we did just about what I expected, but I still think we will be solid team by February. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schasz Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 If we keep the final score within double digits VS Arizona for this team and where we are now in our development, it will be a moral victory. We have zero chance of beating the GTech team on the road, as they are light years more athletic than WVa. Our hope is to see this team make progress to the point that we are playing our best basketball when conference play gets started. I think it was an easy prediction that we would struggle early on trying to meld players that had not played together. A little patience is the word of the day for this year's team. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 the bigger issue imo was that reggie didnt seem to be very active most of the night. he seemed to be waiting for the "defensive sea" to just open up and let him shoot. however later in the game he did seem to create space for himself and shoot the ball. reggie looks like he has the skills to be that guy. a side response to your post, i think we need to quit comparing reggie to marque. imo he isnt anything like marque. maybe a slighter justin love would be a more accurate comparison. just my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 after sleeping on it for a night, i blame the 3 zero games that the billikens played to this point. the billikens were not ready to play last night imo. they looked shocked that a team made a few shots and altered a few of their own shots. that said, we did outrebound them, if we could have made a few putbacks we win that game. my guess is we play that team at the end of the year i am betting we win. the key to billiken success this year is getting sloan help underneath. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slufanskip Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Roy ... I agree ... but with the situation, I think we were afraid we might be coming into this game with a loss. I thought we played a terrible first half ... the only exception might be CS. The last 15 minutes we battled and kept it a game. If we had made some shots in the first half we would not have been overcoming such a large deficit and might have pulled this game out. I hope this game helped AD get some confidence ... JJ continued to look good. I'd like to see if he can put the ball on the floor or get the ball inside and make something happen. So far his offense has been limited to 8-12 ft. jump shots. Official Billikens.com sponsor of H. Waldman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bauman Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 Roy, just to clarify your side response to me, I did not compare Reggie to MP. I was just pointing out that no one seemed willing to take a shot at the end of the game and I didn't limit that to Reggie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjray Posted December 3, 2003 Author Share Posted December 3, 2003 >>it appears johnson has the most athletic ability, but twice in an effort to play hustling defense, he ran out straight to his man and sure enough his man beat him baseline. the correct procedure which i thought used to be taught about the freshman level, is to approach your man on the wing from an arc from the baseline thus if he drives, he most likely is headed back to your help defense. my point is, now that justin is apparently working harder, he now needs to work smarter.<< Those are two poor defensive plays against other solid work on the defensive the rest of the 2nd half. JJ appeared hyped up to be out on the court for extended periods in a real game and this is what I chalk up the positioning problem to. This is something that can be easily fixed after studying the film. Remember JJ didn't play at all last year and, also, played sparingly in the preseason and cupcake games. I also agree with your and others comment that the 3 cupcake games (2 of them against cupcake light teams) did nothing to get us ready for a quality opponent. The Bryant suppension did not help at all either. The first half, Reggie looked like he was in a foreign land with teammates he didn't know. I think he will be fine with a few more games under his belt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quality Is Job 1 Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 >I hope this game helped AD get some confidence ... While I also hope that Anthony Drejaj gets it going from here on out, let me point out that I heard Bob Ramsey remark on last nights broadcast that there tends to be a trend that Drejaj shoots poorly at Savvis Center and better away from Savvis. I won't be able to verify that until later (probably tomorrow). >JJ continued to look good. I'd like to see if he can put >the ball on the floor or get the ball inside and make >something happen. So far his offense has been limited to >8-12 ft. jump shots. No, no, no. We don't want Justin Johnson EVER putting the ball on the floor this year. Maybe he'll be able to do that later in his career if he improves his ballhandling, but right now, he's got terrible hands. I've pointed out before that the ball seems to suddenly get slippery whenever JJ get's a hand on it. Any time he tries to handle it is likely to result in a turnover. No, what we WANT JJ to do is catch and shoot. That's how he'll be most effective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjray Posted December 3, 2003 Author Share Posted December 3, 2003 >> JJ continued to look good. I'd like to see if he can put the ball on the floor or get the ball inside and make something happen. So far his offense has been limited to 8-12 ft. jump shots.<< If we have a big man who can play solid d, grab a modicum of rebounds on both ends, and make 8-12 ft. jump shots, that would be a huge upgrade. JJ is active on the defensive end and on the boards but has some learning to do on positioning. That will come. As he gets bigger over his career, I also think he shall develop a post-up, back to the basket game ... just not this year (which is no knock on him). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 i personally dont care what our 5 guy scores or how. i want him to first and foremost to neutralize the middle and rebound. second get offensive rebounds and convert putbacks as much as possible. but to even think about justin doing stuff offensively away from the basket is crazy considering the fine guards this team has. stay close to home and be ready to take what comes to you is what i say johnson or frericks needs to do offensively. but again, they have to keep the game away from the opposing inside centers. pittsnoodle and fischer combined (they shared the center spot for the entire nite) scored 23 pts, 13 rebs, 4 blocks, and shot 9-9 from the field. i.e. they did whatever they wanted all night long. what happens when we face highly touted centers? also, i called in to kfns this morning and asked frank about izik. imo, if izik is injured, let him sit and get well. (god knows his game is ill right now) i asked if izik was truly hurt or what. frank said without hesitation, izik is not hurt. he said his problem is he committs the two biggest coach brad sins. turnovers and no defense. i suggest izik get with it asap as we need his skills now. if izik is a bust, this team is quickly becoming limited. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 i know bauman. and i apologize if it appeared i was going off specifically on you. i know that reggie's sister has 3rd hand communicated to us that reggie doesnt like being compared to marque, and rightfully so. that said, i totally agree that reggie appears to be the guy that is capable of stepping up and taking the shot, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjray Posted December 3, 2003 Author Share Posted December 3, 2003 Roy, I wonder if we are not highlighting Izik's weaknesses by attempting to play him away from the basket at the wing. Everyone agrees that Izik has a lightning first step. The first dribble or two looks fine ... then something goes awry. I prefer to see him catch the ball closer to the basket so that it is one step, a dribble, and then up with it. Further, I think Izik would be served by pulling up short of the basket for a little 5-10 footer rather than trying to finish at the hoop. Once he gets into traffic around the rim, again, bad things happen. On the defensive end, I don't think Izik looks so bad as long as the opposing players are not substantially beafier than he. WVa did not bring the beaf and Izik was able to hold his own. Izik had 3 rebounds in 12 minutes against WVa. BTW Fish has 9 rebounds against WVa to lead both teams. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted December 3, 2003 Share Posted December 3, 2003 jjray said, "Further, I think Izik would be served by pulling up short of the basket for a little 5-10 footer rather than trying to finish at the hoop. Once he gets into traffic around the rim, again, bad things happen." i had lunch today with mike owens, our real pa announcer. he said the same thing about izik and i concur as well. izik pulls up for the mid-range jumper and starts to hit that, it will open up the drive to the basket even more. now of course, we see that, so you got to believe our coaches have seen that as well. so the $64,000 question is, "why isnt he doing it?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetorch Posted December 4, 2003 Share Posted December 4, 2003 Izik appears rattled, he has had chances to take short jump shots but he looks around for a defender and then the oppurtunity is gone. Izik loses control on drives, he still has not acclimated himself to the physical US style. He always just looks for the foul. The amount of times he has gone to the hoop this season, I believe he has only drawn one foul. That is unacceptable, he has to physically take it to the other teams. He has not learned how to do that. If I was him I would take it to the basket and dunk, he twists and turns and pump fakes and scoops, and the ball goes out of bounds rather than in the hoop. Once he gets by his man just go up for a dunk, if you take it strong you will draw fouls, cutesy stuff do not get you any calls. I would like to see Izik in the postmore as well. He has awsome post moves, he just has to finish or draw fouls. Izik is no Kenny Brown, but he has worked hard on the defensive end and rebounded slightly better. I have not seen Izik get beat this year without putting up a decent effort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brehms13 Posted December 4, 2003 Share Posted December 4, 2003 Guys, I know everyone on this board will express their feelings and that's cool. While I don't like the comparisons to MP, I don't want anyone walking on eggshells. I love the insight, I love the comments, I trip off of this board. I do think that its do or die for Reg, "stop passing the freakin ball and shoot it"!!!(Sorry I get excited . I definitely saw too much of that last night. Not only on Reg's part but all of the shooters it was like, no one wanted to put up a shot. I'd rather the guys shoot and miss then not to shoot at all and waste our time looking at passes all night. But i'm also the die hard optimist. I think, the game wasn't the worst ever. I believe the team is a great one. I don't think we should panic just yet. We can definitely hate on how the team plays(not the players), but let's not stress just yet. I think it's premature to be so harsh about the players and this one game. Again not just this thread but some of the others I've read as well. Don't kill me guys but I was pleasantly surprised at the camaraderie the guys had toward and for one another. Even when mistakes were made, they still cheered each other on, after the game as well....It just showed me that this team is a family and they all want the same things. I think they'll work their butts off to get what they want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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