***OFFICIAL LOYOLA MARYMOUNT AT MINNESOTA GAME #1 IN-GAME THREAD!!!***

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MennoSota said:
Watching Michigan State after watching the Gophers. We will get killed by MSU if we play like we did tonight. MSU is so efficient on offense and disciplined on defense. Glad we have these few games to help us, but MSU looks like they are in mid-season form. We need to get better in a hurry.
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MSU with 53 assists on 60 field goals ... our assists are mostly due to one-on-one failing and some how the pass in desperation works. This is winning mid-major basketball. Worried about the Big Ten if this is the offense “style”.
 

I like this roster through two games. Lots of athletes. Carr, Gabe, Gach, Johnson, Omersa, Williams and Mash are all athletic. Robbins moves well for his size. Shot blocker who needs to avoid foul trouble.

Curry can provide minutes. Ihnen has a place on this team. We have depth, athleticism, scoring. We have one really really good player and you need that in college basketball.
 

MennoSota said:
Watching Michigan State after watching the Gophers. We will get killed by MSU if we play like we did tonight. MSU is so efficient on offense and disciplined on defense. Glad we have these few games to help us, but MSU looks like they are in mid-season form. We need to get better in a hurry.
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This may surprise you but MSU is better than Minnesota so they will generally look better
 

the interesting thing about playing a team back-to-back is that we get to see how each coaching staff adjusts from the 1st game to the 2nd game.

If I'm LMU, I throw everything I can think of at Carr to try and keep him from going off, and basically dare the rest of the team to score.

Then, it's up to the Gopher staff to counter that.

I wonder if it will be the same refs or a different crew. that could also have a big impact on how the game is played.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the interesting thing about playing a team back-to-back is that we get to see how each coaching staff adjusts from the 1st game to the 2nd game.

If I'm LMU, I throw everything I can think of at Carr to try and keep him from going off, and basically dare the rest of the team to score.

Then, it's up to the Gopher staff to counter that.

I wonder if it will be the same refs or a different crew. that could also have a big impact on how the game is played.
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You don’t have to throw everything at him ... foul hard early, double team / help side overplay, make him make decisions where he has to see the whole court AND PASS EARLY to be successful.
 





MUgopher32 said:
Hes a complete nightmare offensively. Plays hard and can do some things on D so hes not a complete negative on the court. But hes the one guy I do not have confidence in at all when we have the ball.

Although he did just make two free throws actually.
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He needs to play by Miles Tarver rules only. You can do anything you want, as long as you never dribble and never shoot anything that you didn't rebound first.
 



Was worried a bit after the gb game. Feel better about the team after watching this game. Need to keep improving though, not yet where we need to be.
 



My thoughts after the game.

The good.
(1) LMU is a well-coached team. It's clear they scouted us well and the players did a nice job of implementing their game plan. I didn't know (and I didn't have the announcers on, so I apologize if this was talked about 5,000 times during the game, but Stan Johnson is a former Bemidji State player and coach.

(2) Carr is a good player but Pitino needs to figure out a way to manufacture more time with him not in the game.

(3) Other than Curry getting minutes with Robbins. I liked our rotations. I liked the combinations of players playing together.

(4) Jarivs shooting FTs.

(5) Johnson, Gach, and Robbins all looked the part tonight.

The bad.
(1) Our offense. I hope it's not by design, but we tend to set a few down screens and then let our primary ball handler go one-on-one. There is very little cutting. Way too much dribbling and the spacing is off. I'm worried this is, to some degree, by design because it was the same issue during the Amir years. We are getting away with it now because Marcus Carr is such a good iso player, but it's not sustainable. We need way more quick passing, more cutting, and less dribbling.

(2) Marcus Carr's minutes. We need to figure this out. Marcus Carr should not be averaging more than 32-33 minutes per game. I know we're only two games into the season and we need Mash to earn some minutes, but it's really important.

(3) Stop playing Curry with Robbins. Play Robbins with someone who gives the team more spacing (Johnson/Ihnen).
 



First viewing overreactions:

I'll start with the positive, because there wasn't much.

Both Gach's combination of speed/athleticism and ball handling was a much needed addition to this roster. I was impressed with his all around game and he will have a positive impact even if the jumper doesn't fall consistently.

Marcus Carr is quicker than last year and yet still plays with better balance and body control. I liked what I saw from Marcus, though I was holding my breath every time he fell to the floor on a drive given how important he is to this team.

Brandon Johnson had some nice moments on offense in the second half. The 4 position looked like a total wasteland for the first half, but Johnson might be the answer there when he's completely healthy.

Need to see more of Liam Robbins, but it appears he could do a lot more for us on offense if he was featured a bit more. He's one of the guys on the team that has a feel for the game and can make others better if the ball is in his hands a bit more. Disappointed not to see any/many true post touches for him.

For the first 10-15 minutes of this game, I would have sworn the Gophers had no coach. The offense was a complete mess and looked like an especially bad pickup game where everyone is selfish and completely unfamiliar with their teammates. So many terrible forced shots, bad possessions, no ball movement, little player movement. If Marcus Carr didn't hit a couple of low percentage shots, the Gophers would have been down double digits.

Was Pitino trolling with the top of the key dribble handoff/screen in to a mid range jumper that the team ran multiple times (including to start the second half)? Lets not a run a play for the worst shot in basketball. Way too many mid rangers taken in this game.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment (again this is a 1st viewing of the team overreaction) was in individual player development.

Jarvis Omersa: Woof. At the very least, Jarvis should be consistently playing with his force in his 3rd year. His skills did not appear to be improved at all and he didn't bring a physical aspect to the game either. There are so many instances where it appears that Jarvis is playing basketball for the first time. What has been the development plan with him?

Isaiah Ihnen: Looks like the same guy from last year too. His contribution on offense is to shoot the moon ball 3 and that's it. On defense he had an atrocious possession to end the half where he went way under a screen and allowed LMU a wide open 3 at the top of the key to end the half. I didn't see anything to suggest Ihnen was simply adapting to the States last year and a breakout was coming.

Gabe: I think Gabe will be fine, but they need him to shoot (and make) 3's at a high rate in order to open up driving lanes for Carr and Gach. The attempts weren't there today and this team will need them to be.

Eric Curry: Great to seem him out there, but scary to see him starting. He's struggling athletically against LMU, lets hope he's not needed to start against B1G opposition. Even getting back on the court is a big win for Eric.

Through one game (and one boxscore) I am not seeing the quality depth this team hoped to have this year.

I'll be interested to see how this team responds to playing Loyola Marymount a second time in a 3 day span. I'd like to see a blowout the second time around and on the flip side if it's somehow closer than this game was it won't speak well to the teams chances going forward.
 

Count me in as unimpressed, knew we would win after 5 minutes but wow was that first half brutal.......Observations

Gach can ball
Robbins underwhelming
Gabe looks exactly the same as last year (not a good thing)
Ilhen looks.....exactly the same


Listen, I wasn't expecting them to be jumping out of the gym, but visible improvement from Gabe (who had an impressive freshman year) and Ilhen who showed flashes towards the end of last year shouldn't be too much to ask, sure it's early but I am starting to doubt the ability to develop talent especially considering the canvas is there on the aforementioned players.

That being said this is our deepest team in years, not as top heavy as previous years but we will see if we actually convert that depth into W's...
 
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Lots of new faces on the team. So I'm not going to hold too many judgements yet. The few I do have are:

(1) Robbins does need to get featured more. Post that man up more. Pitino has done a good job in the past setting up his big men, i suggest him do it now. Since there is a lack of open looks in whatever offense Pitino is running, an inside out look may open things up a bit.

(2) Carr needs to be better at setting others up if he wants to make it to NBA and for this team to be successful. Also, Pitino needs to trust the rest of his players more. Carr not only needs to sit more to rest, he needs a mental break too.

(3) After watching part of that MSU game, this team needs to step up their defensive intensity. With the depth they have now (going 13 deep), theres no reason why the team shouldnt be busting their butts with frequent subs. This isnt a Pitino 6 or 7 man deep team
 

Offense is dribble weave and hand-off until someone takes it one-on-one by driving into the lane. Very few sets to get open looks. Only the guy with the ball in his hands really knows what’s next.

Carr has the ball 80% of the time so he has the best chance of hitting a 3 because he knows when the shots coming. Plus, he’s looking to score 80% of the time so this is not a team / program for shooters.

Defending shooters in this offense is easy because you rarely have to catchup running through screens to close-out.

Many local kids have developed as good shooters. Even the bigs. The best PGs have been very good distributors. Not surprising they’ve all gone someplace else.
 

Lots of negativity here that I don’t think is justified. Annual reminder that these are college athletes and we cannot expect NBA level consistency and efficiency out of everyone.

This is game 2 following a broken off season!! We have soon many new pieces and we know that the gophers lost two weeks of practice this month. Guys are going to continue to gel, the offensive scheme will continue to grow.

Our shot selection seemed so much better than in game one, and that, above all, makes me satisfied with game 2.
 

kix4kix said:
Count me in as unimpressed, knew we would win after 5 minutes but wow was that first half brutal.......Observations

Gach can ball
Robbins underwhelming
Gabe looks exactly the same as last year (not a good thing)
Ilhen looks.....exactly the same


Listen, I wasn't expecting them to be jumping out of the gym, but visible improvement from Gabe (who had an impressive freshman year) and Ilhen who showed flashes towards the end of last year shouldn't be too much to ask, sure it's early but I am starting to doubt the ability to develop talent especially considering the canvas is there on the aforementioned players.

That being said this is our deepest team in years, not as top heavy as previous years but we will see if we actually convert that depth into W's...
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Disagree regarding gabe. While his 3 pt shot is the same, his dribble drive is light years ahead of last year. Agree regarding Ihnen, disappointing that he has not shown improvement from last seaaon.

At this point, they do not seem like a tourney team , but i have trust in pitino to bring them along and get the most out of them.
 
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Have to admit i dont get the criticism of our offense by some. I dont see other teams running offense that is better than ours.
 

Pretty obvious who is our best 5. At this point i have confidence playing a rotation of 8 guys. The starting 5 plus mash, tre, and jarvis.
 

Was driving home last night and turned on the radio to listen to the game. Was the 2nd half and was going to take me 20 minutes to get home so for some reason thought i would count how many times grimm would complain about the gophers getting jobbed by the officials. I counted 4 times including "that's ridiculous" and "blood on one end and fingernail on the other end" comments. Grimm is like Paul Allen, announcers who are also fans. Enjoyable to listen to him and Tollackson.
 

howeda7 said:
He needs to play by Miles Tarver rules only. You can do anything you want, as long as you never dribble and never shoot anything that you didn't rebound first.
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This is one way you end up never being good enough...playing players without skill.

Good coaches find enough players who can at least contribute in both ends of the court. When 20 percent of your offense can't play offense, you're at a huge disadvantage.
 

7' Robbins stuffing 7'3 Markusson was nice. I guess we made the right decision!

 

golf said:
Agree regarding Ihnen, disappointing that he has not shown improvement from last seaaon.
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Maybe he's just a slow starter or he's not sure of his role so far. When he played very well at the end of last season, he was the first forward off the bench. He played well in the defensive interior and stopped just shooting threes and started to go to the basket (with pretty good results). Now, the team has Brandon Johnson and Omersa is playing well defensively so far.
 

USAF said:
This is one way you end up never being good enough...playing players without skill.

Good coaches find enough players who can at least contribute in both ends of the court. When 20 percent of your offense can't play offense, you're at a huge disadvantage.
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Last year I'd say it was more like 60% of the offense couldn't play offense (especially with Gabe having a lousy shooting year). This year's team definitely has more offensive weapons but so far I don't think all of those weapons are being integrated well enough.
 

golf said:
Pretty obvious who is our best 5. At this point i have confidence playing a rotation of 8 guys. The starting 5 plus mash, tre, and jarvis.
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Curry started both games. I hope you're not saying that Brandon Johnson shouldn't play.
 

cjbfbp said:
Curry started both games. I hope you're not saying that Brandon Johnson shouldn't play.
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No. Curry isnt in the top 8 imo. They showed some video last night of freshman curry and kind of sad how much he has regressed. Agree that Johnson certainly looks like he will contribute. Looks like wont be Stull/Demir 2.0.
 
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