royalfan

Good coaching adjustments by the staff for sure. People are starting to understand their roles. And shortening the lineup sometimes can help with that. Feel bad for a kid like Rivers, but you know what. It is part of the deal. Very impressed by the want to get it done attitude on defense, by pretty much everyone. Obviously it helps when they miss a lot. So we need to be careful to overreact. Side note, I hope like hell that Dave is correct on CU trying to full court pressure a lot. It won't work and we should get easy hoops. I don't agree that they will try to make it that kind of game though. Hope he is right.

Yep, Throwback quickly becoming a posting MVP.

We have far better athletes than they do. But they can shoot the ball. Be very tough to win given the importance they put on the game and being an experienced team that knows what the game is about. As for them, I noticed they continue to flop a lot. The offensive flop where a guy acts like he get mugged when there is little or not contact. Pretty pathetic to watch. In a side note it is going to so much fun to watch the portion of the fan base that thinks they are better than everyone else reeling when Doug is gone next year. Crappy coach, poor recruiters of athletes, no All-American to hide the weakness is going to be fun. It makes me smile thinking of Double Douche/Huskerhoopsfan/Creightonfan going through misery. Man would it be sweet to beat them this year when they are actually solid.

Interesting. Doubt many do know that rule. Not that it matters as someone always fouls first so they should make that judgement call and decide who it was. It is so close to being impossible for 2 guys to foul at the exact same time that it would be a cop out to make that call. Even if someone fouled a billionth of a second sooner which will always be the case. Refs need to make the determination IMO and not reward someone with 4 FT because they were unwilling to make the determination.

Great news Cip. Best wishes. Knowing the area, it will go well if you dominate the food quality. And I have a strong suspicion you will. Can't wait to get there sometime in the near future.

Failure in terms of our chances of dancing at the end of the year. Although there are some positives in terms of seeing our talent match up with team like UMASS. We did not appear to be outmanned by a pretty athletic, decently coached, experienced club. We didn't catch a break with the officiating down the stretch, had arguably our 3 best players miss much of the contest in foul trouble and still had a shot to win. You never know. If we somehow got that one, we could have won the whole damn thing. Fine line. Very evenly matched tourney field. But we didn't get it done. We didn't learn how to win yet. It is not easy thing to do. Hopefully the experience will help us learn how to do so.

Yep and he is probably the 3rd or 4th guy we can leas afford to get hurt. And you could make a case for even more important than that.

When he and Shields are our two best players IMO and he is our best attacker arguable in our motion offense I think we need him out there almost all the time other than to let him get a quick blow and a quick reminder to stay within himself when he gets a bit carried away on what he thinks he needs to, which I think most would agree is a fine line. I like starting with our best guys, but I can see the logic as he would give us a spark off the bench since he is a spark plug.

Thanks for the reports fellas. Much appreciated.

Good comparison.

All interchangeable depending on the night and matchup aside from Petteway and Shields should be out thre 33 minutes each.

Several times Petteway happened to get the ball up against shot clock. He had to shoot and they were not high percentage looks. And at least 3 or 4 times Petteway drew the entire defense, flipped it up on the rim and easy putback as there was no weakside d left. These things look bad on shot counts and shooting percentages but helped NU. We need him to be aggressive IMO, and find the open man when that is a higher percentage play than trying to finish. I am still not sure how much I believe in his outside shot. Haven't seen him shoot enough of them yet to determine if I like him taking an open three. A couple were not very open and certainly shouldn't have been taken. If we are going to be a great basketball team, I feel pretty confident that Petteway is going to have to be a huge piece of it.

Yeah exactly. Not going to see me bitching if he is putting the ball in basket. He is getting to the line as well. I think( and hope I am right) that is an able and willing passer. Time will tell. We haven't seen enough yet, at least I haven't to make blanket judgements of him being a guy that makes us worse. If anything it is the other way around for me, but again time will tell if my reads are accurate.

Well said. My only concern is: what if what the players are buying into is this isolation type offense? With the rule changes, I definitely think Miles has emphasized the importance of getting to the free throw line. And the easiest way to do that is attack the rim. It's very possible Petteway may be doing mostly what the coaches want. The guy is an excellent free throw shooter...but he also misses wild shots for every time he gets fouled, shots that look dumb if you aren't fouled and look good if you are. Personally I have not seen him get yelled at or benched for anything other than foul trouble, so I am not even sure if he is doing anything wrong in the coaches' eyes. How many times did Petteway take a bad shot in your opinion? I just didn't see it as much as most so obviously I am wrong.

Damn Hooper. That might be the best post I have ever seen on here. I would give several bumps on the cred if I could. For those that think I am a Petteway lover, Hooper summed up my thoughts. I am excited by the potential he provides more than anything. Too early to define him as anything yet. Incredible post. Lets get a W Sunday.

Defense is a total team effort. It is difficult to work hard for that guy next to you if you are still mad at him for that shot he just took. Do you feel the sample size is big enough to feel confident that players were playing bad defense because they were mad at Petteway for taking a certain shot?

Actually I do agree that the guy that scores the most isn't necessarily your best player. But I do think he is right up there on our pecking order of good players. He will figure it out. I think he is a guy that wants to win.

Just because you score the most points doesn't mean you are the best player. Right now, Petteway is doing more harm than good for this team. Don't agree at all unless you speak of his performance at the defensive end which I would agree with. He needs to be the leader at that end as well if he is going to be at the offensive end. He has the skill set to make a difference on the defensive end. But I am of the belief he is a willing and able passer. Just didn't happen for whatever reason in those two games. I think his game meshes well with Gallegos. Time will tell.

Well put Dean.

NU favored by 3.5. I predict a nice win and a cover. Lets get one and get out of this debacle 1-2 and regroup.

He has not made me happy at the defensive end thus far though. He needs to be the leader on that end. He is athletic enough to be a big factor on that end and he needs to worry about that end far more than he has thus far.

I believe that one of Dean's main points is that Terran's antics on offense may be affecting the whole team in energy and morale, which may be a reason why we are also struggling so much on defense. Of course, it shouldn't necessarily be that way. The other players should suck it up and still get back and play 100% all out on offense and defense no matter what Terran is doing. But they are college kids and they have emotions and get frustrated like anyone else. If they see Terran jack up a wild shot with 30 seoconds on the clock without ever looking to pass, it is human nature to drop and shrug your shoulders a little. Meanwhile, the opponent is blazing down the court and getting in position to score. Bad shots take the wind out of the sails a little. It is similar to a turnover by the offense in football, psychologically it just makes it a little more difficult for the defense to go out there and try to get yet another stop so soon. Yeah I guess I could see that logic, even though I personally don't agree with it at all. I don't think he took that many bad shots though and think it is completely overblown and had we won the games people would be praising him. He was usually attacking from what I saw, not jacking up a ton of shots he cannot make. I haven't watched him enough yet to know what I am comfortable with him taking though quite yet. Others seem like they do know just because he missed the other day from deep. What is he from 3? Is he a 40 percent shooter? Is it 25 percent? I don't yet know so I am not going to judge the shot selection as harshly until I do.

I think one of the reasons that Miles mentioned him as a "point forward" is that he's one of the guys on the team that can regularly slash into the lane. Are Biggs and Tai ready to carry this load right now? Is part of Shield's game slashing to open up shots? Yeah that is what leads me to believe he is a more willing and able passer than he has demonstrated. It is also the main reason that I wouldn't be surprised if down the road our best lineup includes none of the "point guards." If we are quick enough to stay in front of folks, I am not sure a Gallegos, Petteway, Pitchford, Smith, and Shields lineup won't be our best. Would make us much bigger. Obviously we would not be able to play that lineup for bulk minutes due to being think on front line and one of the bigs needing to be out there at all times.

He does need to improve his vision and passing as his ability to draw defense to him and kick to Gallegos, Pitchford etc for open threes could be deadly. Sometimes good vision cannot be taught. You have that skill or you don't. Lets hope he does. Cannot yet tell from this sample size.

We put up plenty of points to win. Offense functioned plenty well with Petteway leading the charge. He isn't scared. I like it. Defense is the issue, not Petteway scoring a lot of points and even leading to easy put backs when he did miss by drawing the defense to him. Very pleased with what I have seen from him. Nothing remotely resembling your post that we would be better off without him and he should be ran off. I stick by my statement I made then regarding Petteway. It is Miles job to define what is a good shot for him and what isn't. He is shooting over 40 percent from the land of plenty in early going. So if he is wide open is he supposed to turn that shot down? I don't know the answer. I trust Miles to make that determination. So far it seems he is told to take the shot. Same people that don't like his shot selection probably didn't care for Talley and Gallegos shot selection either.