Halfway mark: what are your thoughts

[PimpMario]

Most improved player:

Biggest Surprise:

Biggest Disappointment:

 

How would you grade:
Offense:

Defense:

Special Teams:

 

Most improved player: Rey?  Really the only one I can think of.  He is getting better shots and has less pressure

Biggest Positive Surprise: Smith.  For my money he is our best and most important player.  Need 3 more of him.

Biggest Disappointment: Shields for obvious reasons but I am going to lump Webster into this category as well.  It might be unfair to Tai or too early but he hasn't taken over the point like I had hoped.

 

How would you grade
Offense: C+ We need to continue to establish and cultivate an identity and look for more open shoots.  We need more assists.

Defense: D+ It just hasnt been there.  We have gotten better at not fouling but in the process have not stopped anyone.  We lack an inside man and Miles has resorted to lots of zone; not where he or we wanted this team to be.

Special Teams: B- Our transition has been pretty good while our free throws haven't been as tragic as I was fearing.  

[MichHusker]

Lets see...

 

Most improved player:  Gonna have to go with Petteway. Any time someone can jump from like 3 ppg to 16, that shows tremendous improvement. He may have some questionable shot selection, but the kid is a warrior...I love having him on this team.

 

Biggest Positive Surprise: 1A) Leslee Smith. He plays pretty well in the post and has a nice big 10 body. He definitely already knows what he is doing and I did not expect that. 1B) Deverell Biggs. He is a much better scorer than i ever thought. He can make driving to the basket against 4 and 5 star guards look relatively easy sometimes, and from what I recall he finsihes more often than others on this team.

 

Biggest Disappointment: For me, it has to be Gallegos. He is supposed to be our best shooter, and he just seems to dissapear for long stretches of games. The only thing that really puts him a little bit behind Shields for me is that Shields is at least helping out in other areas such as rebounding. Its pretty close though. And as a side note, I think Webster may finally be at the point where he is turning the corner and will be more confident with his game.

 

Offense: B-  We average more than 10 points a game more than we did last year (I think) and we have a lot more threats to score. We have a legit big man who can score, a pure 3 point shooter, and several guys who can hit a mid range and also drive. With that said, we just need guys who are better in those areas and that can be either through recruiting or developing the talent we have.

 

Defense: C I think we are a lot closer than people think we are to being good defensively. From my eyes, in a lot of these games the guys seem to play good defense for 20-30 seconds, and then have a mental breakdown or something towards the end of the shot clock and I think that is more of an age and maturity thing than anything. But there are still too many errors like that and way too many errors of not finding the right guy or not stopping the ball in transition for my liking. I think we arent too far away though.

 

Special Teams: B  we look pretty good in transition (minus a few rushed Petteway 3's) and like PimpMario said, our free throw shooting has gotten a little bit better. I just wish we actually had a set inbound play or two to get somebody open or something. Im sick of watching our inbounder lob it all the way out to half court every time. I'll bet Coach Miles has something planned for OSU since they took it to us a few times on out of bounds plays last time.

[Creighton Fan]

Need some wins.

Need to share the rock. Stop the black holes and hero ball bs. Play as a team.

Gotta get the team culture in place so as new guys join the program, they have the right mindset and know what is expected.

[colhusker]

Petteway most improved

Smith as the biggest surprise

Shields, and Gallegos as the biggest disappointment

 

Offense:  C - to many droughts on the offensive end still

Defense C- - I think Michigan just scored on the pick and roll again.  Frustrating to watch teams run the same thing over and over and not see the light come on.  Also, we still have to many guys get beat off the dribble over and over.

Special Teams - A+  I think we have the best place kicker in the league

[Handy Johnson]

IF we had won the Michigan & Purdue games, I would be feeling OK about where we are. 0-4 is sorry. Petteway better than I had hoped. Pitchford and Webster, not so much.  I thought we'd overall be scoring at a much higher clip, and getting ALOT more off the bench. A couple wins would help us immensely.

[royalfan]

Pitchford the biggest disappointment for me as I was expecting him to be way better for some reason.  Shields has playing horrible basketball,  but I tend to think it is a slump more than ability going away. 

 

Not pleased at all with where we are at right now.  Don't see any scenarios where I would expect us to have more losses than this and many where we would have less losses. 

[Norm Peterson]

Pitchford the biggest disappointment for me as I was expecting him to be way better for some reason.  Shields has playing horrible basketball,  but I tend to think it is a slump more than ability going away. 

 

Not pleased at all with where we are at right now.  Don't see any scenarios where I would expect us to have more losses than this and many where we would have less losses. 

Caught a bit of the Miles show last night and the host asked Miles about Shavon and how/whether his knee is effecting him.  (this was towards the end of the show.)  Miles just kind of laughed a little in disbelief at the question and said to just watch the FGCU game again and see the difference between Shavon then and Shavon now.  But, he said, he's working through it and he'll be back in form and that the week off will do him some good.

 

Miles said we're resting a number of players for a few practices this week, but I am gathering Shavon was definitely one of them. 

 

So, this is what I meant when I said we on the message boards don't have a lot of the inside info that would be necessary to answer some of the questions we ask ourselves.  We don't, for example, know how much Shavon's knee might be bothering him lately and limiting his productivity.  Certainly he was better earlier in the year.  I don't think he's just forgotten how to play.

[atskooc]

I wonder, though, if the injury is bad enough that he's affecting the team negatively because of it.  If that's the case, shouldn't his minutes get trimmed?  Obviously, Miles has noticed the same significant difference in his play the rest of us have (as he mentioned in his radio show).  Is his considerably limited offensive abilities (due to injury) right now hurting the team more than his defense and rebounding are helping?

 

Miles thinks Biggs' defensive lapses are hurting the team more than his offense is helping, so he pulls the kid. 

 

Give that, I guess Miles believes Shields is still helping more than he's hurting.

[HB]

I wonder, though, if the injury is bad enough that he's affecting the team negatively because of it.  If that's the case, shouldn't his minutes get trimmed?  Obviously, Miles has noticed the same significant difference in his play the rest of us have (as he mentioned in his radio show).  Is his considerably limited offensive abilities (due to injury) right now hurting the team more than his defense and rebounding are helping?

 

Miles thinks Biggs' defensive lapses are hurting the team more than his offense is helping, so he pulls the kid. 

 

Give that, I guess Miles believes Shields is still helping more than he's hurting.

 

He may also feel he has more options at guard.

[GoBigRed]

Most improved player: Petteway (From what he put up as a freshman at Texas Tech, to now, unbelievable change in production).

 

Biggest Surprise: Petteway (I thought he was going to be more a David Rivers type. Way off. I also had a DI coach tell me in the summer that Leslee Smith was definitely a Big Ten big man, so I have not been surprised by him, although I've been very pleased the assessment was right.

 

Biggest Disappointment: Shields. Was expecting him to be a mini star. My biggest concern is, was last year a fluke? Is he really a mid-major talent (athletically he is) that had some great games last season when people were trying to shut down Talley and Ubel? He went off for 29 against a horrible Penn State team, then had a strong Big Ten tournament against Purdue (19 pts, 6 rebs) and Ohio State (14 pts, 5 rebs). In his other 25 games last season he averaged 7.1 ppg and 5.1 rpg. If you take out his 2 best games this year (Florida Gulf Coast and Creighton), he's averaging 8.9 ppg and 5.3 rpg. Now, he has played a lot more minutes and his shooting percentages are down, but maybe he is really just an average player capable of blowing up for 25+ a couple times a season. Maybe his game isn't versatile enough to get 16 every game like Petteway can do. Florida Gulf Coast was overmatched, he had 28. Creighton is not very athletic, he had 22. His other best games this year are Arkansas State and The Citadel. I would really, really like to see him stop trying to be Petteway and get to the rim every time he has the ball. Shields' worst games this year are not coincidentally against the ones with the best major conference-caliber athletes. Dude, take the open 10 footer. We have faith in you to shoot it! You've hit 6-14 (43%) from 3 since December 8, that is a fine percentage! Petteway is 14-37 (38%), Pitchford is 7-26 (27%), Gallegos is 17-45 (38%) in that same time frame. Pitch has taken 12 more 3s and hit 1 more! We need you to trust your jump shot!

[Norm Peterson]

To answer the question in the subject line, sure, I wish we were doing better right now.  Would have been nice to pick up wins against Michigan and at Purdue as well as gain a win early against UAB and maybe steal one at Cincy.  And, sure, we're 0-4 and tied for last in the conference.

 

I still do not believe last is where we end up even though last is where we've been picked.  And everyone agreed going into this season that there wasn't really any reason for the national media -- the pickers -- to pick us any better than last.  Too many unknowns.  And, as it turns out, too little experience and a lot of challenges trying to blend a bunch of new players together.

 

So, I'm a little disappointed with our W/L record.  But I can't fault the effort.  And we've won enough that I really can't say we've underperformed or underachieved.  This isn't a great team yet.  It could be pretty good before the end of the season but it's still a work in progress right now.

[Norm Peterson]

Here's another general thought.

 

A tip-in against Michigan and a better last 7 minutes against Purdue, where we had a lead and gave it back, and we're not having this discussion, right?  Everyone would be amped up and excited.

 

This is still a young team figuring out how the pieces fit together.  They're not in sync with each other yet and, as a result, I think they're experiencing the opposite of synergy.  With synergy, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  With this team, I think the whole is less than the sum of the parts because the challenge to the players of getting the pieces to fit together is negatively impacting all of them. 

 

Take Shavon Shields.  We say he's in a slump, but why?   I've said since the beginning of the season that I think he's struggling to find his role.  Look at his production while Biggs and Gallegos were out during their suspensions at the beginning of the year.  He was doing well.  But you add those guys back in and it throws off the balance and you have two extra guys fighting for touches.

 

We know he's a better shooter than how he's been shooting the ball this year.  So is Webster, for that matter, and so are Hawkins and Pitchford, etc.  You see this same phenomenon in free throw shooting where good free throw shooters start missing in games if their teammates aren't hitting.  And I think the same thing is happening with the aforementioned shooters from beyond the arc.  They aren't hitting what they should be. 

 

It's a team-wide thing and I think it goes back to ball sharing, getting more of a team involvement in the offense, worrying more about the team winning than about your own stat line, so that the offense flows.  I think we still have a bit of that problem even though the shot selection seems to be improving.  We might not be rushing perimeter shots early in the clock so much, but we still see a lot of guys attempting one-on-one moves on their own.

 

Michigan, for comparison purposes, got a lot of offense sharing the ball and going at the basket.  When we start getting easy baskets through team work rather than a lot of individual moves, then I think it's going to indicate that we're getting better flow of our offense, our guys are more in sync with each other, and I'll bet the shooting percentages -- even from beyond the arc -- start improving.

 

Defense is a problem, too.  Guys getting out of position, not communicating, etc.  But I think the problems on D are symptoms of the same problems we're seeing on offense.  And fix the moving parts so that they operate like a well-oiled machine and I think we're likely to see more success all the way around.

[PimpMario]

Here's another general thought.

 

A tip-in against Michigan and a better last 7 minutes against Purdue, where we had a lead and gave it back, and we're not having this discussion, right?  Everyone would be amped up and excited.

 

Of course we are having this conversation.  It is a bye week so I would have started a thread asking what everyone thought of the state of the program.

 

The biggest change for me would be upping my grade of the offense.  We would have a tip in against Michigan and probably had to put up another 7-10 points to beat Purdue but more importantly not have a 7 minutes FG drought to end the Purdue game.  

 

I also take issue with the "close call" mentality.  There are no moral victories in my opinion and that is especially true in basketball.  It is a tough sport but a 1 point win is as valuable as a 10 point win.  

[hhcmatt]

 

Here's another general thought.

 

A tip-in against Michigan and a better last 7 minutes against Purdue, where we had a lead and gave it back, and we're not having this discussion, right?  Everyone would be amped up and excited.

 

Of course we are having this conversation.  It is a bye week so I would have started a thread asking what everyone thought of the state of the program.

 

Norm's point is that your subject line would have been about making the NCAA tournament, not the state of the program.

[SOB]

Most improved player: Rey

Biggest Surprise: Selfish play, lack of chemistry, lack of defined roles.

Biggest Disappointment: Poor Defence

 

How would you grade: D
Offense:  C-

Defense:  D

Special Teams: D

 

you can say what you want about a tip-in away from a W over Meesshigen what lost the game was their ability to shoot a season high FG avg. There was no D.

 

As for Purdue, Gaps in production reflect youth and a lack of pourpose. Lots of shooters, lots of shooters. Taking the shot at the right time???? not happening. Assists are low, shots are at bad times and locations.

 

D - Who is going to dig out a rebound? Who is going to lock down the other teams best player? Do they know how to box out?

 

sorry for a blunt first post but its the truth. There is not a current player here who is safe for next year. Miles is already looking at a juco PG.... that tells me he has doubts about his best recruit so far.

[jimmykc]

Really looking forward to more of your posts. There is always room for another sunshine pumper on the board.

[PimpMario]

Really looking forward to more of your posts. There is always room for another sunshine pumper on the board.

 

The strange thing about this board is it usually makes me feel better.  I come here start a couple threads or post, people respond, tell me I am wrong and the sky isn't falling and then I feel better.

[hhcmatt]

 sorry for a blunt first post but its the truth. There is not a current player here who is safe for next year. Miles is already looking at a juco PG.... that tells me he has doubts about his best recruit so far.

 

Welcome.

 

If you mean, no player is a sure thing as a starter next year, you're absolutely right.

If we want to be a big-boy basketball team, we have to recruit over everyone and either guys keep their starting job/minutes or they get taken over by the new guy.

 

Is Miles recruiting a superstar Juco because he doesn't believe in TW? Absolutely not.  

Miles doesn't just run one point guard.  He wants to run combo guards...guys who can shoot and handle the ball.  He'll run a lineup of 4 "point guards" and a center if that's the best team.  That's why there is talk of running Webster and Biggs at the same time.