one game out of the way,and a sobering result given some of the hype
the good:
Tone Hunter got to play most of game running offense, a blessing in disguise of Murray being out. The biggest question from last year was not the bigs filling in, it is replacing the ball control void left by Slater and Cobb leaving. We had 90-100 minutes a game played by Murray/Cobb/Slater which led (in conference) to one of the best ball-handling teams of the CDM era, the ability to win close games late, a modern isolation based spread out offense, and 3 solid perimeter defenders what could limit penetration AND cover the perimeter
what was learned?
#1) the team needs to replace what Cobb brought, a guy that played 30 minutes without ever needing to touch the ball (barring when it made sense for him to post up shorter defenders). hopefully the new players learned they don't need to do anything other than be role players, just need to defend, switch, and space.....which obviously will be a work in progress
#2) the bigs. 3 bigs played, and basically just need to get 40 minutes, a bunch of boards, and put-backs out of this group, hopefully hit their FTs (which they did) when fouled.
#3) it is no longer a game of what a 1,2,3,4,5 mean
basketball is 3 guards, 2 bigs, or even 4 guards and a big (as we proved with Traore last year at times), isolation and spacing. don't need scorers Murray can penetrate, so the likes of JOnes, Rotegaard, and Tshonis will get a lot more solid looks with Murray back
#4) the main problem in the game was the turnovers galore first half and Biola offenive rebounds, they simply had about 8-10 more possessions; the best sign was a less than handful of TOs after the first half, with Tone and AJ handling the ball better.
two weeks to hit the weights, get guys like Rootegaard and Tsonhis, Tone, and AJ to embrace a role to just be 'muscle' guys and defend/block is what will make this team get the team speed it needs to get to a top 100 D1 level. They are gonna have sputs of passing woes when they see D1 pressure; just so this team concentrates on defensive pressure on the perimeter
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