royalfan

While I would probably coach it exactly how Dean described, I am still not sure math would say that it would be the correct approach trying to make both. If you miss the second a big man will likely get the rebound and then have to turn and fire. Probably goes in one in 1000 times, but you do lose the game if it does. If you go up 3 and they inbound it to half court or maybe even inside half court, you likely have a guard shooting and lets say it goes it one out of 40 times, which could be low. That ties the game. And you will lose half of the time or more in overtime. I think I have officially changed my mind. Better to miss the second no matter what. The math doesn't lie IMO. They are basically drawing dead if you miss the second one.

Good point on the personnel possibly not being conducive to the motion offense that we are able to play now. Those two players you mentioned are sort of like fitting a square peg into a round hole in regards to motion offense.

Jones is certainly correct that he should have missed. I believe he was trying to miss, but it would be interesting question for Miles.

I barely got to see any of the UCLA game last night. The small sample that I did see suggested we might be a fair bit more athletic. Is it safe to say we are athletically superior, or was my sample size about 37 minutes too small?

I watched the entire Dayton game at Alabama a week ago. They have a reputation for being a great defensive team. And they were in that Alabama game, which led them to a nice road win over the Avery Johnson coached club. Their rotations were good. I thought we were going to struggle to score. Wow, was I wrong. Our flow and spacing gave them all kinds of problems. Driving angles were there all night. It is very encouraging to see our offense function against a good defensive team that has a good shot to be in the NCAA tournament.

All good points LK. My thoughts on Lewis are about 20 times stronger than Mo by the way. Our defense was so bad at times last year, that is still weighing on my mind. Hopefully, it will be shown to be a blip in the grand scheme of our defense.

1. Athletes Our athletic ability upgrade is very noticeable. We have a lot of what I call "dudes." When you know you are as athletic as the elite school guy across from you, there is no need to be scared. I don't think our guys are or will be. Possibly scared to win, like last night, but not scared of the opposition. Morrow transformation is awesome to see. Easy on the weights big guy. Jacobson obviously is bigger than last year, but with that seems to have brought a little more athletic ability as well. Dayton isn't the biggest team around, but he was affecting quite a few shots. Then another type of athletic ability is having two guards that can get by people. Obviously this is a stretch, but sort of reminds me of Boatright and Napier leading a surprise run. Teams like that are tough to play against at the end of the game. And sure enough Watson got game winning drive and foul. We also have freaks like Roby coming in and swatting shots. Nobody is used to playing against a guy like that. They don't exist. 2. Offensive flow. I have no clue how Lewis fell into our laps, but give the man a raise. Damn, our offense looks improved. Spacing is better, flow is better, confidence is better. Guys like Jack know if open he is supposed to fire, and he is doing so without thinking about it. Webster the same. The spacing is so much improved that it is creating good driving angles as well. We are getting into the paint and finding open guys or finishing. It looks like an offense is supposed to look. Big tip of the cap to Coach Lewis. 3. Webster He is playing with a sense of urgency and has elevated his play about 3 levels. Deadly combination of shooting and driving. Very few college players can check him. His 3 point shot give me confidence that it will go in for the first time in his time here. Not just because of the results, but because it actually looks good and confident. 2nd team all big ten could be in the future for him on the ambitious side. 4. Watson. One of the most annoying things ever for me to watch last year, was Watson taking so many 17-19 footers. I despise long 2 point shots. That is exactly what you want your opponent to be taking. Yet he couldn't make threes last year. It was a flawed approach, even though he did make a lot of them to be fair. Now, he is not taking those. I cannot think of one all year so far. Instead, he has the same chance of making a three as he did a long 2 last year. And he is taking those instead. I think his outside shot is only going to improve during his time here. Another deadly combination of shooting and driving ability. Webster does it with elite athletic ability. While fairly quick and athletic himself, Watson does it with fluid technique mixed in. 5. Taylor. Not a huge game impact here, but a tip of the hat to find a guy like him after White did us a bit dirty. A guy that can come in and run things, can play really good D, has major level athletic ability etc. is really good. If we get in foul trouble we still have an athletic ball handler that can play D. To be honest I don't think he is much worse than Parker was. 6. McVeigh Really like what I am seeing from him. He knows he has a role to shoot when open. He is doing so with confidence. It isn't a deal where if he misses a couple, he is hesitant. No, he is instructed to fire when open, and he is doing just that. An open three from him is a good shot for us. And we are getting him a lot of them with good drive and kick action. Needs to keep working to become better rebounder, defender, and press breaker:) 7. Player development. It took Miles a little bit to find his traction on the recruiting front, but they seem to have done so. We showed signs of guys developing as well in this offseason. We are always going to have to be a program that develops their players well, as we aren't going to get 5 star players. This offseason has seemingly been the best on this front since Miles has been here. Not sure if anything was done differently, but it is very encouraging, as I was really starting to doubt his ability to develop guys. I could probably go on for another hour, but those are a few random general thoughts on what I am seeing in the early part of the season.

I think it is safe to say coach Lewis deserves most of the credit for our offense looking like a dangerous one. We are having no trouble at all getting good shots. Granted, we do have some dudes now, but the movement and spacing probably wouldn't be there without coach Lewis. I am still a little bit frustrated by our defense as well. I thought Molinari would be a little better than he has shown thus far. He has been a lot better on the recruiting front than I ever would have imagined though. I wish his defense reputation would start showing a little better results on that end though. The adjustments need to be better, like you mentioned. I still think back to that NW game last year at home. A freshman back up big man had 30 or so on about 12 pick and roll dunks. It showed a bit of a problem with adjustments.

I am guilty of some of that for sure. Schematically, I remain disappointed in what he has brought to the table, but great to see he is a much better recruiter than I thought he would be. I didn't know he had that in him. I still think he has it in him to coach the defense better than he has so far.

On the coaching front, it is too bad he didn't just coach our team back when he played. Nee is one of the few to find a way to get outcoached by Nolan Richardson after Lue made the first half 20 minutes of hell for the team known for 40 minutes of hell.

So awesome to see him in Lincoln today. He looked excited to be here, which was equally important to me. Long overdue based on his play here. The fact that he is an NBA championship coach is really mind boggling.

Smart move by White here. His defensive weakness will not be on display as much in the zone, while his defensive strengths(length and rebounding will be showcased in that zone. He will also be able to jack up a lot of 3's in this offense.

This game still gets my blood boiling when Maryland would let ten seconds run off the clock before grabbing the ball to inbound fairly late in the game.

A few things. 1. This does stink bad. 2. Izzo can think it is bad, but also feel he is putting his program at a disadvantage if he doesn't go after a guy like White if if falls in his lap. Tough to be overly critical of him. He didn't write the rules. 3. Wasnt Biefeldt sort of forced out of there due to lack of room? I didn't think Michigan wanted him back. Someone correct me if I am wrong here as I very well might be. If I am correct, then it apples and oranges type of thing IMO.

This guy seems to have the athletic ability to have a chance to succeed. That cannot be taught. If you don't have that you don't have a chance. There is a decent chance that he can be a guy that we don't cringe when he has to come in the game. Not to knock Joe Holmes, who was the starting point guard on a decent team back in the day. He tried and competed, but was extremely limited. There can't be anyway Holmes is better than Taylor. Holmes made no treys all year, shot 36 percent, averaged 1.7 a game, 1 rebound a game and 1.3 assists and .5 steals. Without adding someone like Taylor, we could be looking at worse than Holmes type of production in a hurry with a couple of injuries.

This will only be his 3rd year in college so highly doubtful he would graduate. His redshirt remains though so it's possible. Oh yeah, I am stupid. I was thinking that there was a sit out transfer year when he left Samford when thinking that might be possible. Obviously, not the case.

These were my first thoughts as well. After thinking about it for a little longer, I think it will work itself out. There are some factors that I don't know. Is he going to be a graduate transfer candidate next year? If things do not go as he hopes this year, then he could use that option next year. And maybe things will go well for him. Either way, he seems to be a D1 type of athlete at the guard spot. Something to be said for that if we need him to play here or there for whatever reason. I think it is much more pro than con.

There's only a certain number of offensive possessions in a 40 minute game, though.If Petteway is able to score more readily because of Andrew White being on the floor, who gets fewer shots? It's going to have to come from somewhere. Does Shavon drop under double figure scoring? Who gets fewer shots? Petteway. I don't think he would have forced things. He wouldn't have had to. Imagine if Gallegos shot at the level White did? Think how much better that would have made the team? Having more high level players wouldn't have made the team worse. Remember, Pitchford was supposed to have been on that team, too. Had he been able to keep things together and improved on his sophomore season, that should have been a high powered team. How many shots each guy was gonna get really wouldn't have been a concern. Perteway had his strengths but shot selection was not one. He would continue to take bad shots and even would have made some of them. He did take some bad shots, quite a few actually. However, the perception of his shot selection was magnified by how many bad shots he had to take at the end of shot clocks due to less than stellar offensive scheme/flow.

Yeah this is the game they need to win for sure.

Hopefully Dimes can correct me, but I don't think there is anyone left that remotely fits this mold.

We could play a tall long zone with that lineup to try to cover up bad matchups on the perimeter.

I think I'd take him. Scoring point guard eligible the year after Tai graduates. What exactly is indicating that this isn't a done deal? The dude is gonig to Gonzaga. The problem with AWIII taking his sweet time is that our fairly small chance of even getting Matthews or others to visit is that a lot of those ships have sailed. You mentioned you were tracking the market closely. When I looked at the guys showing available on the graduate transfer market a couple days ago on ESPN it was extremely bare. Do you have anyone in mind that Miles might be considering? We really do need a depth guy at the very least.

Amen. Been saying for a long time I wanted another guard. I never got the disregard for Evelyn either. I hate to say it...but I really wish he was still around. I know he had a bad shooting percentage last year, but I never felt he was a bad shooter...if that makes sense. He was an athletic guy that could have...especially now...a role on this team. Agree completely. People looking at that ridiculously small sample size to determine he is a terrible shooter. He was a good 3 point shooter in high school.

I have a question regarding these graduate transfer situations. Are there rules regarding recruitment of potential grad transfers? Can players line up opportunity before declaring it? Can someone please brief me on how this works. You have a prominent Cal player just bolt for Gonzaga etc. Now White does it at the 11th hour. What is the player allowed to do in terms of reaching out to schools prior to doing it, and what are schools allowed to do to try to talk players into transferring. This whole graduate transfer thing is starting to smell bad to me. It seems like it is going to beg people to take more BS classes to get graduate status after JR. year to keep this open. I like it in its purest form, but it seems to be getting out of hand.

Is there a reason why you can't spill it? You don't owe White anything. That ship sailed, no? Cause he doesn't know any more than the rest of us. It's all just speculation at this point. Andrew is very good about keeping things tight lipped. Also of schools have been mentioned so it's possible he goes to 1 of them but I doubt he knows anymore than anyone else does. That isn't how I read it. It sounded like he believed he did have a good idea, that is why I asked the question.