uneblinstu's postgame chatter: vol 12; ed 16 - @ Northwestern

23 hours ago, Husker Hoops Penitent said:

I don't understand the complete abandonment of Green. I admit I know very little compared to Coach but it still seems odd. If this lack of playing time continues I don't expect to see him on the roster next season. Perhaps that is what the staff is doing in order to get a better player? I'm always interested in roster upgrades.

agreed, The way we were struggling shooting the ball it would have been nice to see what Green could have done.  Don't get it!!!

23 hours ago, Art Vandalay said:

 

Listening to coaches I do not think we had the same game plan. We just did not have the intensity and urgency we needed. Iowa we were going to let certain guys take shots to keep Garza in check, these guys did not have anyone near that formidable inside. I was comfortable letting Yvan guard any of their bigs 1:1

Thanks for the info.  I stand corrected @HB.  

On 1/11/2020 at 5:25 PM, HB said:

Lost this game on defense.  We gave up 42 points in the first half to a depleted Northwestern squad that hasn’t been able to score all year.  

 

I can handle us being bad.  I can handle us being erratic and inconsistent.  We have all new guys who haven’t played together, or in a Power 5 conference.  That’s  to be expected.  It would be strange NOT to be inconsistent under the circumstances.
 

But I can’t handle piss poor effort.  Which is what we got today.   Watch the film, especially the first half, and see the lackadaisical close outs on the 3s.   Token 

waving of the arms like damn ballerinas.   Matador flat-footed defense on some  drives.  Passivity all over the place.   Just a pathetic, disgraceful effort on defense the first half.  

I think HB has hit on it.  It seems like this is the problem for all the games we've lost.  It seems like HCFH's first problem has been coaching the team 'How To' play together, and the second is coaching the 'Want To'  play together (& Win).  As has been noted by most everyone, when adversity hits sometimes they just don't respond and seem to shut down.

re: poor defense

Best case scenario here is that we're switching and we lost Miller Kopp, their best shooter, on the switches. This was part of Cheatham's bad day.

23 hours ago, hhcmatt said:

re: poor defense

 

Best case scenario here is that we're switching and we lost Miller Kopp, their best shooter, on the switches. This was part of Cheatham's bad day.

 

 

That was a pretty good set by NW.  If you watch before his man popped out, Cheatham was actually helping on the underneath cut/post and Mack was trailing his man pretty badly.  Everyone has to do their job and sometimes it's an earlier disruption that leaves a guy wide open.  Cheatham was overhelping and lost his man, but I wouldn't call his effort poor on this play necessarily.  It looks like Mack is half assing it chasing his man, and I see him do that often.  He gets away with it because he's the quickest guy on the court 100% of the time, but he might've screwed his whole team on that play.  

1 hour ago, LK1 said:

 

That was a pretty good set by NW.  If you watch before his man popped out, Cheatham was actually helping on the underneath cut/post and Mack was trailing his man pretty badly.  Everyone has to do their job and sometimes it's an earlier disruption that leaves a guy wide open.  Cheatham was overhelping and lost his man, but I wouldn't call his effort poor on this play necessarily.  It looks like Mack is half assing it chasing his man, and I see him do that often.  He gets away with it because he's the quickest guy on the court 100% of the time, but he might've screwed his whole team on that play.  

Have looked at that clip multiple times, and, not knowing for certain what our game plan was, this opinion may be misguided. My apologies if my assumptions are incorrect, because I don't like to call out our guys because I root for all of them and I know that to err is human. It appears Cross was also a culprit of Cam's lapse here, as he is sagging in the lane waiting for Cam to catch up to the cutter. Had Cross been able to slide out towards #15, he could have switched out on to Kopp and at least have challenged that shot. Just shows the systemic nature of playing defense and what happens when one guy doesn't do his job. Mental lapses are one thing and everybody that has played has had them. Loafing and not busting your butt to correct the error is another thing. With our razor-thin margin for error, this cannot happen if we want to be competitive. When we don't lock in on defense, we simply don't have a chance to win. Once again, it could be that Cross was not to leave the lane and wouldn't have been switching, and maybe Cheatham was not supposed to be sagging so much, given that Kopp was one guy we did not want to leave open. 

That NU vs NU game totally sucked in the 1st half. Still annoys me, even more than the Ohio St. ballgame that just occurred. Nebraska has to bring it a full 40 & then some !! Ughh. It is what it is--I know it will get better under Freddy so I'm not upset long-term by any stretch. I just want to see more dubs out of them since they appear to be competing well, for the most part.