GET TO KNOW THE OPPOSITION

Q: What do you call a Pitt Panther with a ring?

A: a Thief!

Zing!  That’s even better than the Pink Panther joke I was considering making, but not as good as giving all the Seton Hall players Jersey Shore style nicknames (something that definitely would have happened had I not been away for the holidays).

Just a few really quick thoughts on the Seton Hall game.

First, I’d give Scoop and Joseph co-mvp’s.   Scoop came off the bench in the first half and absolutely carried us with a really gutsy and inspired performance when it looked like we could have been blown away.

Higgins got whistle happy late in the game and Boeheim played him like a fiddle, putting Joseph in the game and telling him to attack the basket with reckless abandon.   Joseph’s ability to hit clutch free throws ultimately got us the win.

Brandon, again, handled the press perfectly, but this time he really struggled in the half court.  He hurt his back early in this game and it hurt both his play and our team.

Seton Hall played a really good game overall.  Forget the 38 points, Hazell was the best defender we have seen all year long.  He made everyone he guarded look absolutely foolish.  I’ve never seen Rautins have such a bad game in his career and the reason he played so bad was that Hazell pushed him farther away from the basket than he wanted to operate and made him play at a faster pace than he was comfortable with.

I’m not sure there is too much to take away from that game other than the fact that we committed 20 turnovers and still beat a top half Big East team on the road.  Lets move on to the Pitt game.

HALFTIME THOUGHTS

Here are some quick thoughts that I jotted down at halftime.  It might be interesting to compare them with the full game analysis.

“Pitt does not have enough offense to beat us.  We would be up by 10 or 15 at least if Jackson could hit a shot.  Really bad game from him.   Rautins is back to his old self after a terrible game against Seton Hall.  Get the ball to AO more.”

ANATOMY OF AN UPSET

Yes, this was a fairly sizable upset.  Don’t let Pitts good record fool you.  Pitt has a really difficult stretch of games coming up that they are not going to fair very well in.  As much as people love to throw out superlatives about this years SU team – superlatives that more often than not involve words like “mature” and “dominant,” don’t forget that these are still college kids and as a result are prone to having off nights every once in a while – especially the day after a holiday.  Keep that in mind.

I’m sure a lot of people will try to make this loss into more than it is by pointing out “structural flaws” in the team that will lead to its demise as the year plays out.  But all that talk is nothing more than the usual hyperbole you get after every loss – and get more of after the first loss.  After all the hyperbole comes and goes, this loss will be attributed to one thing.  Lack of execution.

Our game plan coming in was to pound the ball down low and exploit our size advantage.  Especially the advantage Jackson had over the 6’5 player who was guarding him.

Hard to argue with that strategy, right?

The problem is, Jackson was not able to come through for us.  But by that time we had established that we wanted to get the ball down low, so the 3 point shot should have been available to us, and it was – but we couldn’t seem to hit any of those.  So, we tried to get the ball to Johnson down low against a 6’4 defender. He did ok, but also turned the ball over a few times and was hardly dominant.

See a pattern?  There was a lack of execution on all levels.  Especially the places where we should have had the biggest advantages.

This is where Boeheim made a rather risky call. He knew that Dixon and Gibbs were Pitts two best players, and in fact, the only two players capable of scoring on us with any regularity.  He also knew that while they form a potent backcourt, neither one is a true point guard and ball handling is a weakness.  So he unleashed the press thinking that it might throw them off their game, and knowing that the press is something we have used successfully against Pitt in the past.

It worked for a while, but it was fools gold.  Pitt may be vulnerable to a good press, but we are not a good pressing team, and eventually ours was figured out (with a little help from whistle happy refs) which pretty much sealed the upset.

In the end this was a bit of a perfect storm loss.  We had what seemed like hundreds of lay ups and 3 pointers rim around just to fall out.  We got into foul trouble, and Pitt hit a few difficult deep shots.

We actually had four more offensive rebounds than they did (although I don’t think we rebounded well, stats just don’t give an accurate picture of how the game was played). And we had 5 fewer turnovers.  These are positive things.

This loss came down to not making shots.  Will it turn into a chronic problem?  I don’t think so.  I’ve seen these guys make too many shots in the past to write them off after one bad performance.

Boeheim mentioned toughness/physicality exactly 14 times in his post game press conference.  He’s mad that our big guys missed shots because smaller guys pushed them.  Again, this is not a chronic problem.  Onuaku actually dominated until we started pressing and trying to push the tempo (that’s just not his game) and Jackson has shown in the past that he can get it done against some pretty imposing Big East frontcourts.  Jackson also mentioned being embarrassed by the loss after the game.  I hope, and think, this loss will light a fire under him and the rest of the team, and I look forward to seeing them play Memphis.

PLAYER RATINGS

Triche – Didn’t turn the ball over, but didn’t make any shots either.  He showed a lot of heart trying to pick the team up down the stretch, but ended up just missing more shots.  I didn’t think his defense was great.  He took too long to fight through Pitts numerous moving screens.  Ranking: 4

Rautins – Did a great job generating offense by picking apart Pitts defense with passing Peyton Manning style in the first half.  Back to the old Andy after a terrible game against Seton Hall.  Unfortunately, most of his passes turned into missed lay ups, and Andy couldn’t hit any shots of his own from deep.  Once we started pressing he sat the bench a lot in favor of Brandon and Scoop who are better suited to the press.  Ranking: 5

Johnson – Has shown that he is going to get his points one way or another.  Because of that tendency I am starting to see him as the absolute perfect second fiddle type player in that he is a star in his own right, but he does not dominate the ball so he can play alongside another star.  Today we needed someone to step up and be that other star alongside Johnson but nobody did.  Ranking: 6

Jackson:  Played badly against Seton Hall.  Played much worse against Pitt, to the tune of having as many turnovers as points.  Terrible result from the guy who was suppose to be the focal point of our offense in this game.  He is going to have to fix that soon or he’s going to spend a lot of time on the bench, to the determent of the entire team.  Ranking: 2

Onuaku – Made Pitts big strong center look small and weak until we started running, then struggled to keep up.  In a normal game for us where we only push tempo in certain specified bursts he would have been the best player out there.  Ranking: 6

Joseph – Should have played fewer minutes tonight than normal because we wanted to go with the twin towers of Arinze and Rick.  Unfortunately he played 30 minutes out of necessity.   Solid on D and O, I want to see the ball in his hands more often.  Ranking: 6

Jardine – Seems comfortable in scrappy games like this, which is good because we need more scrappers.  Would have probably looked even better if other people had picked up the scoring, but as it was put in 15 points we needed badly.  Ranking – 6

Jones – Did not play enough to really get comfortable.  Looked pretty good in the press, but missed 2 free throws.  Ranking – 5

HOLIDAYS

I should be back to writing regular articles now that the Holiday’s are over.  Mine were very pleasant . . . if you want to know more, a semi-conscious Bill Simmons like minute by minute live break down of the New Years Eve party I went to is located here.

Hope your holiday season went just as swimmingly, and to all you Georgetown fans out there, don’t let this happy time of year get you down.  I’m sure Satan Appreciation Day, or something like it, is coming up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 5:10 pm by Paul C. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.