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Post by Commissioner on Dec 20, 2020 14:55:40 GMT -5
Couple of quick thoughts on Saturday's game. I am an old school basketball fan. I like pass first point guards who run the offense and big men who play like big men. Given that, I was pleased to see what Koka did. He's definitely raw, but he scored nine points and blocked a couple of shots in 18 minutes. I guess he had been doing some conditioning work somewhere, because I didn't expect so many minutes in his first game. Good for him. Antoine isn't a pass first/run the offense point guard, and I don't expect him to try to be one. But one thing that is clear is that he is not a knock down accurate long distance shooter like Sweet Du or Archie Tullos. No shame in that, those guys were special. But Davis seems to gear his offense towards shooting the three, and his percentage doesn't warrant that. I have said before that I would love to see him do more driving to the basket and using his midrange game. Over the past couple of decades, we've heard people say that you shoot yourself out of a slump, so if you're not hitting you should keep shooting. The philosophy used to be that if your long shot isn't falling, shoot from a shorter range and try to draw fouls. I would like to see more of that. Antoine shot 42.1% from three in his first 18 games of his freshman year. But over the last 11 games of his freshman season, Antoine shot just 31.6% from three. Last year he shot 32.4 percent, and entering today's game he's shooting 12.2%. His career percentage over his last 46 games is 30.5%. I think we can assume he'll pick it up this year, but increasingly it looks like Antoine is a fairly average long-range bomber who was really hot for about 60% of one season. Here at halftime today he's 0-5 from deep (not included the numbers above). I'm not sure what the answer is. I appreciate the old view that you've got to let him shoot his way out of the slump, but there's no way around it, his shooting so much is hurting the team. In that last possession of the half, I was thinking AD was the one guy on the floor I did not want to take the final shot (which he did, missing a two). I'm not sure any more that he is the crack shot we once thought, and if that's the case, you don't want him trying to "shoot his way out of the slump," you want him to stop shooting so much. He has the worst shooting percentage of any Titan with at least 5 attempts. I guess the coaches have to figure out the answer. As it stands today, this is the 8th straight season in which we've been below .500 against D-1 teams. It would be nice to see winning ball at Calihan again.
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Post by therealcoach on Dec 20, 2020 14:57:06 GMT -5
35-32 them! AD still cold from the floor! We are still in this, so hopefully the halftime speech is come out and play team basketball. As opposed to coming up with a strategy to get AD going. The first time in 3 years, the obvious is, AD isn’t the best player of the floor. Buol and Johnson are the best two players on the team. Recognize it Coach Davis!
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Post by dtowntitan on Dec 20, 2020 14:57:07 GMT -5
Really think we need to move AD off the ball for a while. Allow Kuol, Fraser, Johnson to initiate and let AD be a spot up shooter for a while. Even with his struggles these other teams are still respecting him as a shooter, allowing our slashers a bit of room when they driver towards him. If they collapse we have a wide open AD to shoot. Just have to change things up a bit to get him going, seems like it is becoming mental for him right now.
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Post by titantarheel on Dec 20, 2020 15:06:50 GMT -5
Gave up a 3 and 2 layups in the opening 90 seconds. Woof.
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Post by JDetroitTitan on Dec 20, 2020 15:08:16 GMT -5
Twon needs to play like a pg and just push the ball up. We are giving to much time and letting there guys get into position on defense
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Post by titantarheel on Dec 20, 2020 15:28:12 GMT -5
Willy fouled out with a quick 2 more fouls - unnecessary and lazy both of them. A game to forget for him. Disappointing as a junior.
Titans hanging tough. AD has chucked a few more bricks. Johnson has a smooth stroke and Brandon settling in more and more. Lots of fouls at both ends of the court bogging this down.
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Post by titantarheel on Dec 20, 2020 15:46:09 GMT -5
Under 4 timeout, Wright up 75-70. we actually had the lead for a hot second.
Matt Johnson. Stud. His shooting kept us in this. Brandon has further come alive and had a fierce dunk over Love. Catch that replay if you can.
Love adds a few more easy buckets (well what he made look too easy). He just absolutely slays us. Some FTs for wright also meant easy points.
The line up that really clicked best today has been- Davis, Fraser, Brandon, Johnson and kuol.
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Post by titantarheel on Dec 20, 2020 15:58:43 GMT -5
Final score 85 - 72
Wright is good. Outclassed us yesterday and today. It is what it is.
We showed some good bad and neutral things this weekend. Hung relatively tough with the Raiders.
A shot chart from today would show Wright scored 90% of their points right at the rim via layups and dunks. It was just too clinical down low for them, and we never had an answer.
Brandon is found. AD is lost.
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Post by therealcoach on Dec 20, 2020 15:59:36 GMT -5
Looks like another lost! Can’t wait for the press conference excuses from Davis!
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Post by dtowntitan on Dec 20, 2020 16:04:59 GMT -5
I will say that AD made a much more concerted effort when we went on our run of finding other guys that were open. He a few times still got into the I need to get mine mode, but otherwise did well in distributing. We had no match for Love and Basile, and I'll venture to guess that most of the HL teams wont either. They are both skilled bigs that are tough to match up against. I think if we meet them in the tournament we are going to have to have all of our guards and wings shooting at a high clip to knock them off, and hopefully Coach can come up with a different game plan defensively.
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lafan
Iyapo Montgomery
Posts: 45
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Post by lafan on Dec 20, 2020 16:13:48 GMT -5
Obviously better effort and closer for longer periods that yesterdays game, but Davis was still 3/18 and 0/7 from 3-point range. He had six assists. Is he a good passer? Maybe they should reduce his minutes to try some other combinations.
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Post by ptctitan on Dec 20, 2020 16:26:32 GMT -5
Shooting: Antoine 3-18. Rest of the team 22-46. And we still could have won this game. AD is now 5-48 shooting 3's. In the final 3 minutes, WSU backed off him and clamped down on Matt and Bul. The technicals only caused the scoring difference. Coach had a legitimate beef with ref's on how they were calling moving screens and contact because they let WSU step out late into our defender's path and didn't let us do it, too. But, this was our game to win and Antoine did not deliver the needed scoring for us.
I think we'd be better off not playing next weekend and letting these guys get more reps with the new players now available. The break might also help Antoine regain his touch by getting him some R&R. But, right now, he's a liability to our scoring. And before this season started, I never thought I'd be saying that for the 5th straight game.
Matt and Bul stepped up. So did Fraser. Koka will help us. We gave a good effort and never quit; but we had only one big left at the end. But Antoine needs to score for our offense to work. Otherwise, the floor will get clogged and they'll just play off him. If he's marketed as the big time scorer, then he needs to score. Maybe he should have another heart-to-heart with Rashad. Twon is probably being harder on himself than any of us are being on him about his shooting.
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Post by nctitan on Dec 20, 2020 17:06:47 GMT -5
Another game we were in for 38 minutes, then it falls apart.
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Post by fan on Dec 20, 2020 18:35:25 GMT -5
AD came here with a amazing amount of skills and basketball knowledge. He hasn't improved either going into his 3rd year of D1 ball. Because he is a coaches son and brother we have to assume was the reason he had those skills when he came here. Perhaps those coaches are the wrong coaches for AD to reach the next level.
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Post by Commissioner on Dec 20, 2020 20:11:49 GMT -5
I think we'd be better off not playing next weekend and letting these guys get more reps with the new players now available. The break might also help Antoine regain his touch by getting him some R&R. But, right now, he's a liability to our scoring. And before this season started, I never thought I'd be saying that for the 5th straight game. Another option would be to pick up a local small college. I know Coach hates those games normally, but this isn't a normal year. The key is don't let the guys play street ball and just overpower Adrian (or whomever) with raw talent disparity, but make them work on stuff against actual competition. I don't really know. Just a thought.
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